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Offering Shopify deposit payments

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1. Why should you offer partial payments/deposits?

1.1 What are Shopify deposit payments?

Offering Shopify deposit payments as an option allows the store to charge a portion of the sale up-front, basically the customer pays a required partial payment of the cost of the goods/services they purchase to secure the pre-order.

1.2 Benefits of deposit based pre-orders

  • Increases the window of time that you can acquire orders.
  • Accepting deposits means you can pre-sell and start receiving cash-flow before the product is available.
  • Customers have a stronger commitment to the pre-order as they have paid a deposit.
  • Split payments can make the financial outlay easier for customers.

1.3 Deposits in the real world

An example of Shopify deposit payments from the real world is the Holochain Foundation. They harnessed the power of deposits and split payments in their rollout of a new decentralised Web 3 platform. Charging an upfront amount to pay for the HoloPort hardware from their audience ahead of the final shipping date. This meant they were in complete control of when to charge the remaining payment and ship out the HoloPorts. Flexibility like this can come in extra handy with more ambitious product launches like this one.

holoport

2. Adding Shopify deposit payments manually

2.1 Intro

It is possible to start collecting deposit pre-orders manually without installing any apps or paying a developer to modify your theme, through a very bare-bones approach.

This would not be our recommended approach for a few reasons; both pros and cons are highlighted below. If you do want to go ahead with adding Shopify deposit payments manually the steps are also outlined below.

2.2 Pros and Cons of manual deposits (split payments via multiple products)

Pros

  • Free of charge.
  • Stays within Shopify’s admin.

Cons

  • Bad customer experience due to lack of communication touch points.
  • Bad customer experience due to email instructions at payment step as opposed to one click link.
  • A lot of time consuming manual work in Shopify, meaning staff expense and possible room for error.
  • Can only safely support purchases of 1 with a deposit (due to discount code).
  • No dedicated analytics on who’s paid a deposit and who’s paid in full.
  • No tagging or deposit specific segmenting in Shopify.

2.3 Steps for setting up manual Shopify deposits

  • Create a new Shopify product that will be your ‘deposit’. For example, call it ‘A test product – deposit’ (in the description explain your deposit process and terms).
  • Make sure the product isn’t marked as a ‘physical product’ in Shopify’s product admin. This is so shipping isn’t charged by default.
  • Collect payments and orders of this deposit product.
  • Now list your main product in Shopify with its full price.
  • When you’re ready to charge customers the outstanding amount. Create a Shopify deposit code for the price of your deposit product, it’s important to make it only applicable to the main product that you’ll be charging for. Also, look at limiting the usage to 1 use per product per customer, so it’s not abused.
  • Now go into the ‘orders’ section of Shopify and filter by the deposit product. You can now click on each of these orders, copy the customer’s name and email into a third-party email provider, along with the discount code from step 5 and a link to your main product.

3. Adding Shopify deposit payments via Shopify deposit apps

3.1 Intro

There are a few different Shopify apps available that will allow your store to take deposits. Both a deposit management app or a pre-order app like PreProduct will allow you to take deposits, with each app offering a variety of features and options.

It’s essential to carefully assess which one aligns best with your business needs.

We believe one of the best Shopify deposit apps is our app PreProduct (surprised?), which has a holistic deposit system that works through your existing Shopify checkout via Shopify payments or PayPal. It allows you to accept partial payments (based on the amount or percentage you setup when creating the listing), and gives you full control as to when you trigger the remaining payment amount. It also allows you to charge the remaining payment automatically, via our auto charge automation.

3.2 Pros and Cons of running deposits through PreProduct

Pros

  • Ensure customers are committed to their pre-orders.
  • Receive some money paid upfront, to assist with cash flow.
  • Email campaigns to keep customers in the loop and engaged throughout the pre-order process.
  • Great customer experience with email communication and deferred charges or one click payment links.
  • More automated process so less manual work and room for error.
  • Products on pre-order will automatically gain the Shopify tag ‘pre-order’ and deposit products will gain the tag ‘deposit’ to help with filtering in your Shopify admin.
  • A user interface to choose which of your products/variants will be on pre-order and when.
  • A designated dashboard for your pre-orders, without regular orders being mixed in and analytics to show number of orders received, and number who have paid.
  • Third-party customer support, both technical and strategic.

Cons

  • PreProduct is a paid app.
  • Has to work within the e-commerce platforms constraints.

3.3 Functionality of PreProduct

PreProduct utilises a secure system for your Shopify store so that customers card information is vaulted with your payment processor. Basically when the customer places their pre-order Shopify will vault customers card details. This allows you to initiate payment collection manually on a specified date or automate it as inventory is added to your platform. This feature is a game-changer, particularly for an ecommerce business extensive product catalogs.

3.4 Steps for setting up a PreProduct deposit listing

We have a dedicated doc for how to create deposit listings here.

Dashboard (PreProduct app interface)

Navigate to the ‘New Listing’ screen in PreProduct and select/search-for the Shopify product you would like to list.

Under ‘What kind of listing are you creating?’, select ‘Deposit upfront’.

Now enter the deposit amount or percentage, which customers will have to pay upfront per item and click ‘create listing’. The amount entered defaults to your store’s primary currency.

choosing deposit pre-order

You can also offer a discount with deposit based pre-order sales. You can utilize both general discount codes and discounts tailored for pre-orders. However, it’s important to note that as of September 5th, 2023, ‘buy X, get Y’ Shopify discounts are not currently supported.

Front-end

The PreProduct pre-order front-end will explain that a deposit is required, how much it is and then an incentive phrase afterwards.

A product set to use shopify deposit payments

The wording can all be edited via the ‘customise wording’ screen in PreProduct. Just make sure to select ‘deposit based pre-order’ before editing.

customising deposit pre-order wording

Campaign

Pre-orders will populate in the PreProduct dashboards, allowing you to view and interact with them.

A solution like PreProduct allows you to ensure customers stay informed throughout the entire process, starting from the product page to shipping, using customized front-end messages, dedicated customer portals, and email campaigns. By entrusting PreProduct to handle communication for deposit pre-orders as soon as orders are made, you not only relieve your customer support team but also maintain a high level of customer satisfaction.

The PreProduct dashboard is also where you trigger the deferred charges. You can either select and charge separate product for specific customers, or you can choose to charge all customers at once.

pre-order campaign to take shopify deposit payments

4. Summary

Offering Shopify deposit payments gives many benefits to Shopify businesses when selling upcoming or out of stock products.

Whether it’s increasing cash flow and gross sales or improving forecasting ability, using PreProduct to offer deposit based pre-orders can help super-charge the above and improve the customer experience, all whilst saving you time in the process.

Pre-sell With PreProduct

7 day free trial with all plans

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Adding pre-orders to Shopify Dawn

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The Dawn Shopify Theme

Dawn is Shopify’s exciting new theme. As of the end of August 2021, new stores will be set-up with Dawn as default and have access to a bundle of new features which Shopify are calling ‘Store 2.0’. Among these new features is the long rumoured ‘sections anywhere’ ability, speed increases, support for 3d models out of the box and much more. However, the topic of this article is how to add pre-orders to Shopify Dawn. There are many compelling reasons to offer pre-orders, including their positive effects on cash flow, the flexibility they afford your product launches, and the risks they can offset. If you would like to read more about the benefits and strategies of pre-orders, we have an article on why you should take pre-orders on Shopify here.

Dawn theme

ref: Shopify

Adding Pre-orders Manually

I do not recommend this method at all, but realise that some people would prefer to see a free of charge version of offering pre-orders.

Word of warning

It’s possible to start collecting pre-orders without installing any apps or paying a developer to modify Dawn through a very bare-bones approach, although I don’t recommend doing this for several reasons that will be soon become apparent. Here are the steps:

  • Backup your theme. (you should always backup theme files before you change code, so you have a safe version to revert to if something goes wrong).
  • Shopify has a checkbox in the Shopify product admin under ‘inventory’ called ‘continue selling when out of stock’. When checked, your store will accept orders for that product, even when the stock level is 0.
  • You can then made a code change like the below to what text is outputted in your add-to-cart button. You’ll be looking for something similar to the first block of code below; which you’ll want to change to the block below.

Before:

{%- if product.selected_or_first_available_variant.available -%}
  {{ 'products.product.add_to_cart' | t }}
{%- else -%}
  {{ 'products.product.sold_out' | t }}
{%- endif -%}

After:

{%- if product.variants.first.inventory_policy == "continue" and product.variants.first.inventory_quantity == 0 -%}
  pre-order
{%- elsif product.selected_or_first_available_variant.available -%}
  {{ 'products.product.add_to_cart' | t }}
{%- else -%}
  {{ 'products.product.sold_out' | t }}
{%- endif -%}

  • Finally, navigate back to the ‘online store’ screen in Shopify and click ‘Customize’, click through the store preview until you’re looking at your product page. Then click ‘Buy buttons’ from the list of ‘product information’ blocks and uncheck the ‘Show dynamic checkout buttons’ option so that only your main buy button shows up.
Problems with the manual approach

On top of the fact that this option hardcodes a change into your store’s theme and doesn’t localize to the user’s language, it also will mean:

  • Muddled up ‘pre-orders’ and ‘buy-now’ orders in your Shopify order section, leading to mistakes and laborious admin.
  • No efficient control of what’s a pre-order and what’s a ‘buy now’ listing in your store.
  • Your storefront won’t tell customers when they should hope to receive their pre-order.
  • You have no way of communicating with customers during the pre-order process. e.g. ‘Your Red Sneakers are two weeks away from shipping’.
  • Pre-order payment has to be upfront.
  • No way to place limits or any advanced pre-order features on your listing.

All of these drawbacks can very quickly add up to a bad customer experience with a lot of work on your end to stay afloat and in control. Luckily Shopify’s app ecosystem has apps listed by companies who spend their whole time solving these issues and figuring out the best way to increase your pre-orders. The best bit is… thanks to ‘Store 2.0’s new features, you won’t need to write a line of code to integrate one.

Adding a pre-order app

Like I mentioned above, Shopify’s Appstore is home to many pre-order apps that will help you find success with your pre-sales.
PreProduct offers the below benefits, as well as a customisable pre-order cart. However, there are many other good options on the Shopify AppStore. After selecting a pre-order app from the App Store, simply click ‘install app’ from the top of the page and Shopify will take you through a quick install process.

Pre-order app features can include:

  • A user interface to choose which of your product/variants will be on pre-order and when.
  • A designated dashboard for your pre-orders, without regular orders being mixed in.
  • Customisation of the visual design/messaging of the pre-order button and front-end, including real-time variables like shipping time.
  • Email campaigns to keep customers in the loop and engaged throughout the pre-order process.
  • Different pre-order payment options like; ‘pay later’, ‘deposit’ and ‘pay now’ meaning you can list pre-orders earlier and with more flexibility (and in some countries, conform to necessary legal requirements).
  • Analytics and dashboard for reporting/interacting with the individual pre-orders.

Pre ‘Store 2.0’, permanent code had to be added to your store theme to add a pre-order app, resulting in increased setup time while a developer made the integration, as well as the potential for your theme to acquire more and more third-party code as you installed/uninstalled various kinds of apps.
Now Shopify gives store owners the ability to add something called an ‘app block’. Instead of having a developer add permanent code to your theme, you can simply drag and drop a block into your product page. Meaning you’re in complete control of where the pre-order section goes in your storefront, as well as when to take it out.

How to add a pre-order app block to your product page with Dawn

Once you have a pre-order app installed from the Shopify app store, as long as it supports ‘Store 2.0’, you’ll be able to drag it’s block into your product page exactly where you want it. Here’s how:

  • Navigate to the ‘Online store’ section of your Shopify dashboard.
  • Click ‘Customize’
  • You will now be greeted with Shopify’s drag-and-drop editor. It will currently be set to your home page. Click ‘catalogue’ to go to a collection page and then click on any product to select your product page.
  • Notice the different areas of your product page in the left-hand side bar, signified by the tag icon and name in bold. We want to add to your ‘Product Information’ section, so click the blue ‘Add block’ link at the bottom of that list.
  • A pop-up should appear with a list of blocks under the ‘APPS’ heading. Click the pre-order app’s block.
  • The app’s block has now been added to the ‘Product information’ section. To choose it’s position, click the little back arrow to the left of the apps name so you can see all of the product page blocks again. Then hover over the app’s name in the ‘Product information’ section and drag it up or down until you’re happy with its position.
  • That’s it, you should be all good to go. Don’t forget to save! (Top right corner of the page).

Now that you have pre-orders set up on your store, you can start listing new products straight away and promoting them. Whilst there are specific pre-order marketing tactics, we generally find the usual suspects work well. For example, conversion and abandonment optimisation through an app like Tada, organic/paid social media, influencer partnerships, email marketing etc.

Summary

Once you have finished adding pre-order functionality to Shopify Dawn, you can start taking pre-sales straight away for your future and out of stock products. Now that Shopify’s clever ‘sections everywhere’ app blocks have been released, integrating exciting new features into your store has never been easier.

Pre-sell With PreProduct

7 day free trial with all plans

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