We have been working with SommPicks for many years. You could say we have grown & evolved together. Over the years we designed & developed a highly customised theme and built a suite of bespoke apps as we have responded to their needs. So it wasn't unusual when they recently approached us with the new challenge of offering quantity based discounts to their customers without needing to upgrade for Shopify Scripts.
As a premium wine retailer, SommPicks wanted to increase their average order value by offering customers discounts when they purchased wine in bulk. When working with discounts any Shopify developer will instinctively look at the discounts API, the Shopify App Store or Shopify Scripts as potential solutions.
The discount API was quickly dismissed as it was important for customers to be able to take advantage of multiple discounts within a single order. After all we want to reward the customer for purchasing more per order not punish them. As we were working with such a bespoke theme off the shelf apps were quickly dismissed and with Shopify Scripts not available on the store's site plan we needed to get creative with our problem solving skills.
It was time for a quick huddle with the team. The specific challenges we identified were the following:
All of this when taking into account we are working with a store which does not have access to Shopify Scripts or the ability to edit the checkout.
A bespoke app would be called every time a user attempts to check out, if one or more offers are applicable a draft order would be created with the discounts computed to each relevant line item. Within milliseconds the user would then be seamlessly taken to the checkout page.
The team worked hard to put together a solution that would meet all requirements and a first penciled plan didn't take long to arrive.
We would use product tags with a specific format which would be targeted both in the frontend and the backend and, at the same time, allowing the merchant to define offers in a simple and clear way.
On this occasion the design was handed over to us by the client. We were tasked with applying the designs and taking care of the frontend functionality that read the product tags and communicated the discounts to customers throughout the purchase journey.
To make it even easier for customer we also included a simple one click add to cart functionality that allowed the customer to seamlessly add the correct quantity to the cart to qualify for the offer.
For the backend we built a bespoke app with nodeJS, which included an admin panel to allow the merchant to edit, delete and create offers. The app also handles the creation of draft orders on the fly and redirect users to the invoice url, or checkout.
I have been super happy with the app. It is easy for us to manage, it is easy for customers to understand offers, and we are seeing in uplift in conversions from it now.
The result is a frictionless user experience where the offers are clearly communicated throughout the entire purchase journey, from homepage, to collection, product, cart & even the Shopify checkout. The checkout is so important to the purchase journey as customers need to be confident they're receiving the offers they expected otherwise we risk customers becoming uncertain & abandoning their order.
The merchant is now able to offer their customers multiple discounts within a single order without the need for Shopify Plus or Scripts. All within an easy-to-use admin panel that allows the merchant to easily manage all the offers. But what did the client think of the end result?
