Shopify Scripts and What They Mean For Your Business
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A PreScription For Pricing Success
Shopify Scripts are a Shopify Plus feature that lets you completely change the way you interact with shoppers at checkout. Scripts, such as “Buy 1 Get 1 for $X off”, can help you take your marketing and sales conversion to a whole new level. It’s one of our favourite features. Here’s why:
Staying On-Script
Think about the difference between driving an automatic vs. a manual car. With an auto transmission, you get a bit of control and some basic features – but with a manual car, you have a whole new level of interaction with how your vehicle responds to the road.
For Shopify merchants not using Scripts, there are plenty of great features and helpful tools. But Shopify Scripts, available for Shopify Plus users, allow merchants to make nuanced adjustments in pricing and sales. These in turn help you do things like attract new customers, incentivise higher spends and bigger carts, get certain products off your shelves quicker, create product bundles and market directly to VIP customers.
Scripts have historically been the tradeoff for ecommerce merchants – do you keep a hosted platform with low customisation or switch to a fully customisable one but with far less support and way more hassle? Shopify Plus lets you do both.
Your Marketing ManuScript
Remember our bit on Data Analytics? Getting good data on how your customers are responding to your products and marketing is crucial to running a great online business. But great, you have your data, what’s next?
Scripts are a way to experiment with new pricing models that are based on that data. For example, if you find that a lot of people are buying two particular items together, you can create a script for a bundle that includes those two items – plus maybe one more small one – to incentivise that double purchasing.
Or, say you’re finding that one item is selling really well with one of your sales channels (such as your Instagram sales). You can create a script that lets a customer buy that item plus gives a discount to a similar item, and market it directly to that sales channel.
There is plenty to play around with scripts, including the following:
Tiered Pricing
Your most straightforward – when a customer buys X quantity, they can get $Y or %Y off. You can go further by saying things like “Buy 2, receive a free gift” or “Buy one get one free” etc.
Minimum Threshold Discounts
These incentivise a customer to spend at least a certain amount before being rewarded.
Bundling Items
Bundles are a great way to push people to spend that little bit extra to get a product that goes well with what they’re already purchasing. Scripts let you set up any kind of bundle you see your customers asking for.
Attracting New Customers
You can use a script to give new customers a percent or amount off their first purchase, making a straightforward discount that draws people in.
Targeting VIPs
When you know who your loyal customers or big spenders are, you can draw them in to buy more with scripts. For example, you can set up a script that lets people who have made five previous purchases receive a storewide discount, or a discount on big-ticket items.
Making Quick Sales
You can take a percent or dollar amount off particular items, making them more attractive if they’re not moving off the shelves.
The Stage Directions
Scripts are segments of code written in Ruby. They can then be tested for errors and bugs, and after they’ve been live for a while can be incorporated into your usual data analytics. There are a couple of limitations to what you can do with scripts (for example, you can’t have a script run only on Tuesday mornings), but for the most part scripts are an excellent tool that you can play around with and change fairly often depending on the pulse of your ecommerce business.
If you’re looking for a developer who can create and manage scripts for you, Elkfox is a registered Shopify Plus Expert. We help businesses make the most of their Shopify account, and can bring your business to the next level with Shopify Plus features like scripts. Talk to us today to get started.