September 10, 2024
If you plan to offer preorders on your Shopify store, delivering a great customer experience is important to securing the pre-sale revenue and minimise your customer support time.
It requires thoughtful planning and clear communication, but it's more straightforward than you might expect!
Here’s how you can offer a great Shopify pre-order customer experience:
Keep it simple, don't overcomplicate it. Let your customers pay the full amount upfront, or use a Shopify pre-order app like ours (Early Bird) to offer a partial deposit option.
With the partial deposit option, your customers can pay part of the total now and the rest at a later date of your choice. Typically when the product is ready to ship.
This flexibility allows your customers to reserve their items if you're pre-selling in limited quantities, while giving you a clear picture of committed sales and not just an expression of interest.
Unlike BNPL services, you won't have to worry about our app eating into your margins when capturing partial payments.
Incentivise your customers to pay in full upfront by offering discounts or free merchandise.
This strategy not only adds perceived value for the customer but also improves your business’s cash flow too. Keep experimenting with the best pre-order offers that encourage your customers to pay in full upfront. So you can secure immediate funds to cover production while maintaining your profit margins.
When your customers are browsing your pre-order product pages, it's important to make it clear they're looking at a pre-order item. "I didn't realise it was a pre-order" is one of the most common complaints.
Early Bird can help you set clear customer expectations by displaying the customisable details directly on the preorder product page, right above the "Add to Cart" button. When customers add preorder items to their cart, they will see relevant information about the preorder status, including estimated delivery times and payment terms.
This information is also visible when they view their cart and at checkout, ensuring your customers are fully informed throughout their preorder purchase process.
You can view our demo store and see the info for yourself here.
Clear customer communication should span across their entire purchase journey, including post-purchase.
When your customer places a pre-order, it's also important to include all the relevant details in their order confirmation email. It should include the pre-order product, a breakdown of the payment terms (e.g. amount paid upfront today, the deferred payment date and amount if you're offering a partial payment option), and the expected delivery date.
Early Bird automatically populates the pre-order details in your Shopify order confirmation emails, to ensure your customers have a clear understanding it's a pre-order purchase.
Customers will always appreciate your transparency. Always be upfront about potential delays and have a pre-written Shopify preorder delayed email ready to send in case of any unforeseen circumstances.
(You can set one up in your email platform, or use the pre-order delayed email feature and template in our app.)
You can also automate email updates in your Shopify flow to let your customers know the status of their pre-orders - by exporting a list of profiles who have placed a pre-order and set up when the updates will be triggered at various stages of the fulfilment process.
You should also repurpose these pre-order status updates as social media content and even include them in your storewide marketing emails. This way you can keep existing pre-order customers in the loop but also potentially capture sales from customers who haven't purchased a pre-order yet.
Customers who pre-order early should feel they're valued and appreciated.
You can prioritize shipping based on pre-order dates, ensuring those who placed their orders first receive their items first. You can also consider implementing shipping tiers, where different groups of customers (based on their pre-order dates) receive their items at different times.
This adds another incentive to committing to a preorder for your customers.
"Customer service is the new marketing. It’s what differentiates one business from another." - Jay Baer
Customer support plays a critical role in your Shopify store's pre-order experience. Make sure your support team is quick to respond to inquiries, especially those related to order status. There's nothing more frustrating for your customers than feeling neglected when they’re eagerly waiting for their purchases, let alone a pre-order.
Timely and helpful responses can turn potential dissatisfaction into positive experiences.
Yes, order cancellations and refunds aren't fun, but your customers should feel confident that they can cancel or refund their preorder if necessary.
Having a clear Shopify preorder policy gives them peace of mind.
With Shopify's new customer accounts, you can enable your customers to self initiate order cancellations and refunds using our app's 1-click app embed. Freeing up your time from going back and forth on live chat and emails when dealing with preorder refunds on Shopify.
This not only helps keep your customers happy, but will encourage them to return for future purchases (even if they've refunded their pre-order this time).
A great preorder customer experience isn't just about the purchase, it starts from the moment a customer sees and considers your product to the moment it's been finally delivered.
