Shipping Experiences Overview
How shipping testing works and how to get started.
What is a Shipping Experience?
Intelligems gives you the tools to test your shipping rates, free shipping threshold, and beyond. Testing your shipping rates with Intelligems allows you to find rates that work for you and your customers. The right shipping profile can allow you to boost profits, maximize conversion without sacrificing on margin, or boost AOV.
The 2 experience types
Find the rates that hold your conversion without giving away your margin.
Give free shipping above a cart value, so shoppers add more to get it.
Both types can give you a free shipping threshold, and they get there differently. The difference is what decides which one you want.
Shipping Rates replaces the rates in your Shopify shipping profiles for the length of the experience. Intelligems becomes a rate carrier on the profiles and zones you pick, hides the rates you selected to test, and serves its own rate to each group. Use it when you're changing what shipping costs, including the cart value where it becomes free.
Free Shipping leaves your Shopify rates where they are. It's an Intelligems offer that takes the shipping charge to $0 once a cart reaches the value you set, the way a discount does. Use it when your rates are staying as they are and you're adding or moving a free shipping reward.
Because they work on different mechanisms, they don't collide. A Free Shipping experience keeps applying while a Shipping Rates experience is running, and it will take the rate to $0 for any shopper whose cart clears the threshold, whichever group they're in.
How does a Shipping Test it work?
Intelligems runs Shipping Rate Tests using a Shopify feature called the Third Party Rate Carrier API. This feature allows Intelligems to calculate a shopper's rate based on which group they are in, what products they are purchasing, and where they will be shipping to. Because Intelligems provides the rates while the experience is running, we automatically hide the rates you selected to test when you start it.
To activate the third-party carrier-calculated shipping a Shipping Rates experience depends on, your store needs to be on the Advanced or Shopify Plus plan. This is a Shopify limitation. If you're on the Shopify plan, then you can add this feature for a monthly fee (paid to Shopify) or switch from monthly to yearly billing. For more information, contact Shopify Support.
Only one Shipping Rates test can exist at a time, including one you've created but not yet started. Intelligems installs the carrier rate on your Shopify profile as soon as the experience is created, so a second one in a pending or running state causes conflicts. To build a new one, end any that are running and delete any that are pending.
Free Shipping experiences aren't affected by this limit.
After you save a Shipping Rates experience, check that Intelligems appears as a rate carrier in your Shopify shipping settings for every profile and zone you selected. If it isn't there, add it from the carrier options. Until it is, none of your Intelligems rates will show at checkout. The Shipping Experience QA Checklist covers this and the rest of what to verify.
Managing the rest of the experience onsite
Intelligems also provides features to manage the onsite merchandising a shipping experience needs. A few examples:
A shipping progress bar. If you're testing your threshold, you'll likely want the Intelligems shipping progress bar, found in your Global styles components, so the correct threshold displays in the cart for each group. There's also a Shipping Progress Bar block for your Shopify checkout, available to Shopify Plus stores on every plan, so the two surfaces show the same number.
Different copy for each group. If you have text on the site that mentions your control shipping options, in your announcement bar or on a shipping FAQ page, use the Visual Builder to add a Content Edits modification to show the correct copy for each group.
How can I get started?
Before you can run a shipping test using Intelligems, you'll need to add the Intelligems script to your theme; here is our help guide on adding that snippet.
Once the snippet has been added to your theme, see the guides below for more information on shipping testing:
How to Set Up a Shipping TestHow to Set Up a Free Shipping ExperienceShipping Experience QA ChecklistStarting a Shipping ExperienceEnding a Shipping ExperienceShipping Progress Bar IntegrationShipping Experiences FAQsThe Shipping Experiences FAQs cover carrier behavior, international rates, and progress bar questions. For test ideas, see Shipping Experience Use Cases.
Shipping experiences can't be rolled out the way other types can. See Ending a Shipping Experience for how to make winning rates live in Shopify yourself.
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