How to Encourage Bulk Orders with Smart Shipping Discounts

"I'm losing money on shipping because customers keep placing separate orders instead of buying everything at once."

I hear this from merchants all the time, especially those running t-shirt stores, craft supplies, or really any store where customers tend to buy multiple items. The good news is you can fix this with smart shipping discounts that actually encourage customers to order more at once.

Here's what one of our most successful t-shirt merchants did: they noticed customers often bought 2-3 shirts, but in separate orders to "save on shipping". So they flipped things around. Instead of charging more shipping for more items, they started reducing the shipping cost for each additional t-shirt.

They set their base shipping rate at $12 to cover their actual shipping cost. Then they took $4 off for the first shirt, another $4 off for the second shirt, and with the third shirt shipping became free. Now when customers add more shirts to their cart, they can see the shipping cost dropping. It works like a game. Each time they add another shirt, they save more on shipping. Their average order went from 1.5 shirts to 2.8 shirts per order. And because they're not paying for multiple shipments, they're actually saving money even with the discounts.

The really cool part? You can group products together in the shipping discount. So if you sell t-shirts, hoodies, and hats, you can put them all in one "apparel group" that shares the same shipping discount tiers. Or split them up and create different discounts for heavy items versus light items.

I've seen this work in all sorts of stores. A beauty supply shop groups their skincare products together in clever ways. When customers buy a cleanser and moisturizer, they get a discount on shipping their serum. A coffee roaster encourages customers to buy multiple bags by dropping the shipping cost for each additional bag. They told me coffee buyers usually know exactly how much they need each month, so making it cheaper to buy it all at once was a no-brainer.

One craft supply store took this even further. They set their shipping discounts to match their product margins. High-margin items get bigger shipping discounts to encourage bulk buying. Lower margin items get smaller discounts. Smart right?

A kitchenware store had an interesting approach. They noticed customers often bought one expensive item (like a stand mixer) and then came back later for accessories. So they set up their shipping to give bigger discounts when mixing main products with accessories. Buy a stand mixer and get heavily discounted shipping on attachments. You can set this up using product-specific shipping rules. It's easier than it sounds.

Setting this up in Better Shipping takes about 5 minutes. Create your base shipping rate, turn on tiered product rates, add your products to groups if you want, and set your discount amounts. Just remember to test your setup with a few example orders.

Before you dive in though, let's figure out if this makes sense for your store. First, look at what you're actually paying for shipping. If shipping one t-shirt costs you $8, but adding a second only costs $2 more, you've got $6 you could turn into a discount. Look at your last 100 orders and see how many customers placed multiple orders within a week. These are the customers you could convert to single larger orders.

Here's a real example: say you're shipping 3 separate t-shirt orders at $8 each. That's $24 in shipping costs. One combined order might only cost $12 to ship. That's $12 in savings you can use to encourage customers to order everything at once. You can use our free shipping threshold calculator to find the sweet spot for your store.

This works great for stores selling products that are easy to combine in one shipment, especially if you have repeat customers. A yarn store I worked with saw huge success because knitters often buy multiple skeins anyway. The shipping discount just gave them another reason to buy their whole project's worth at once.

But it's not for everyone. If you're selling furniture or other huge items, or if your shipping costs increase equally with each item, this might not be the right strategy. And while it might seem pointless if most of your customers only ever buy one thing, you might be surprised how many would buy more with the right incentive.

Here are some extra tips I've learned from our merchants that you might want to save for later:

• Make your shipping discounts visible. Add a note near the add to cart button saying "Add another for discounted shipping!" Some merchants even show the exact savings with messages like "Add one more shirt to reduce shipping by $4!"

• Keep an eye on your analytics after setting this up. If average order value goes up but total orders go down, you might need to adjust your thresholds. One merchant found their sweet spot by testing different thresholds each month until they hit the right balance.

• Remember that seasons matter. Holiday shoppers often buy more items at once, so you might want to adjust your discounts during peak seasons. Black Friday is a great time to be more aggressive with your shipping discounts since customers are already in a buying mood.

• Start with your best sellers. Test your shipping discounts on your most popular products first. Once you see what works, roll it out to other product lines. A beauty store owner told me she started with just her face creams. After seeing orders increase, she expanded the discounts to all skincare products.

Quick troubleshooting guide:

If orders aren't increasing: Your discounts might be too small to notice. Try making the savings more obvious. If margins are suffering: Your base shipping rate might be too low. Make sure it covers your actual shipping cost before applying discounts. If customers are confused: Your discount structure might be too complicated. Keep it simple, like "$4 off shipping for each additional item."

Want to track your results? Here's what to monitor:

• Average items per order (this should go up)
• Total shipping costs (this should go down)
• Customer feedback about shipping
• Repeat purchase rate (this usually goes up with good shipping deals)

Need help figuring out the right discounts for your products? Email me. I love chatting about this stuff and helping merchants figure out what works for their store. Or if you want to try it yourself first, you can test it out with Better Shipping for free on the Shopify App Store.