Hi there, I have an idea to incentivise customers to spend more in my shop. I thought that I would give free postage on any order over £20. I asked Folksy if this was possible to set up, but got the reply that the system was not set up for this. The only thing I could do would be to refund the postage after the sale had been completed. Would anyone else be interested in this idea? Could we ask Folksy to set this up? I know that this incentive works when I order supplies. If I get free postage for ordering a little bit more, I will take that opportunity. Lets see what interest this idea generates. Thanks for listening, Margaret (lancsrosedesigns)
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Why don’t you just do as Folksy suggest and say you will refund after payment has been made. I do it all the time if someone buys more than one piece, I refund total postage back to the actual postal charge.
If you want to request a change to the Folksy functionality then there is a specific place where you can do that and where suggestions get prioritised.
https://folksy.uservoice.com/forums/117463-suggested-features
It would be useful for some sellers to maybe have a little ‘star’ or ‘balloon’ on their shop front clearly stating the ‘free postage on orders over…’ offer. That would be a nice touch as an optional extra that sellers could add to our shop page if they wanted to. I do think that it would maybe encourage multiple purchases. Then we could refund the postage as others do. It wouldn’t work for everyone but it would be nice to clearly show what’s on offer.
No harm in asking 
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Hi Margaret
You can advertise postage is free, my wife does this for her enamel jewellery shop. jax enamelled jewellery and sends everything out by 1st class large letter, I am of a mixed opinion as to whether free postage means more sales buyers will be aware of postage costs and if you are fair they will still buy. The problem here is not enough customers !.
Mel
Thanks for this feedback. I’ll try what you suggest.
This is a good idea
Just as a matter of interest I’ve just had an order for multiple items.
The system charged postage on each one as that is the way I have it set up as it is impossible for it to calculate accurately if I have more than one piece in an order.
As usual I straight away checked the order and worked out how I will be posting it… what size, weight package, signed for or not.
I then went into Paypal and refunded back 2/3rds (£22) of the postage charged.
The customer has not batted an eyelid at paying postage even on an order in excess of £100… after all somebody is paying for the postage somewhere.
I had a query about postage earlier in the week as I wanted to offer free postage on all listings but there was not a banner showing that there was free postage so it seemed pointless. I was told that it might be added later in the year so perhaps Folksy will be updating their systems later in the year to make these sorts of offers easier to make clear to customers.
In the meantime, @katiesshed, perhaps you could write it in your shop announcement section? Not a banner, I know, but still visible. I’ve seen alot of shops advertise their postage rates and the like in this section.
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There is nothing at all to stop you editing your own banner to add a note that you do free P&P.
Or adding that as a Notification… which is one of the reasons that function was added by Folksy.
But I wonder if you have have seen the fuss this week on the E*** side about the need to offer free postage if you want your listings to be found. The UK sellers are Very upset by it !
I wonder also why anyone wants to offer free P&p on a site such as this where you are selling your skill and artistic talent and hard work. Somebody has to pay the postage. I might expect free postage on Amazon but Folksy is not Amazon … I hope.
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hello, I have seen that yes but it isn’t clear enough for me personally so I’m no longer offering free postage at the moment.
I have to admit I think it makes buying a lot quicker - I bought something from the E*** site last night and it was one click to buy where postage was free - easy and quick, that’s what we need! We don’t want anyone to have time to ponder, just one click and it’s bought.
You would not be under selling your item as you would incorporate to postage cost into the cost of the item and then there are no surprises at checkout!
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Thank you Petra, I tried that but it wasn’t clear enough for me so I guess it wouldn’t be clear to a customer either!
You might shop like that I don’t think many of my customers do. I find that a quite astonishing response. If your customer must buy so quickly in case they change their mind then surely you must be wary of those who do after purchase.
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We all know, sellers and customers alike, that there is no ‘free postage’. Someone has to pay it sure, but the original post was asking about having a way of clearly offering free postage on orders over a certain amount as an incentive to encourage multiple buys. It’s not really any different than offering a small discount on bulk purchases really. Something that is often negotiated between a buyer and seller.
We thought that it was a great idea to have a clearly visible way of making such an offer and may well work for sellers of smaller less costly items. Of course it probably wouldn’t suit sellers whose items are higher priced one bit.
On our stall we have little multibuy discount offers on things like fridge magnets, decorations and suchlike and the offers are very popular with buyers. We may be taking a little less on a multi buy offer but we’re taking more money per sale and for us that’s good news.
@Dosrodgerspottery I do absolutely vagree with you that there is nothing wrong at all about special offers to customers.
I really don’t see though that the initial suggestion for a ‘clearly visible way’ is going to get anywhere at all, and certainly extremely unlikely just by way of the forum.
I’ve given the link above somewhere to the official route for suggestions.
The Shop announcement came about via just such a route.
A shop notice which appears not just on the shop front but also on every listing for the shop - which is pretty important because people will very often land on a specific listing rather than directly to your shop front, especially if driven there by social media.
I must admit I had envisaged the Announcement as a bright coloured sticky tab notice with very limited but stand out text, not just lines of unformatted text as it is but it is what it is and serves its purpose.
@Dosrodgerspottery I see you do as I do by having a Facebook page ShopNow button direct to your Folksy shop and your own website is like mine, not a selling site but a pointer to your shop here. It works for me and hope it does for you too.
So there is already a mechanism for notifying customers that you are doing free post etc but… will that actually help improve sales ?
Surely the main problem is actually getting people / potential customers to your shop. If they are not in your shop then they are not going to see any notices about free postage incentives however big and bright you make your notice.
As I said, I use social media to get customers to our shops. I know it works for me and I also know that some customers enjoy a leisurely browse through my shop choosing what they want to buy… and I’m pretty sure than none of them are looking for a quick click and buy when they have made their selection and go off to pay…
Customers may well do that when they buy my scrap glass on Ebay but I would hope that when they are buying my carefully crafted glass pieces from a lovely Art and Craft platform like Folksy they are enjoying their shopping experience not trying to get it over with as quickly as possible . Does anyone really want shoppers to treat Folksy like an Ali Express ?
I did also suggest that it is entirely possible to add any special offer notice you want to your shop banner. The text box to the right of mine is there for just that purpose and was put there long before the Shop Notice facility was made available. I used to change the text, as appropriate to warn of upcoming holidays, of reopening after I’d been closed, to offer seasonal greetings etc. The main problem with that is that the banner only shows on the shop front and not on individual listing pages so was likely to be missed by people landing directly on a listing rather than on my shop front. Hence the need for the Shop Notice which is on every page.
I am trying to be helpful here.
I have quite a busy shop, lots of return customers and many very happy ones.
I work at my promotion, I drive people to my shop, to my individual listings and I have never seen any need to offer free postage nor to attempt to disguise the postal costs by including them in the listing price.
As my customers often buy several pieces at once (Yesterday I had two orders, one for 10 pieces and another for 3) that would unfairly inflate my prices to them. I don’t pay Folksy fees on my postage charges and refund back any excess on multi item orders. If I were to do that with postal charges incorporated in the listing price that would be very silly as I would be having to pay Folksy fees on money refunded.
So use the facilities already available to you to offer discounts, free postage if you wish but do please remember that the best incentive to get people to buy from your shop is to actually make sure they have found your shop in the first place.
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@JOYSofGLASS That all makes sense.
Maybe the best place for sellers to adverise any free postage/bulk buy special offers is on social media with a link to the Folksy shop item in question.
Oh how we wish selling online was as straightforward as doing a fair. But then again it’s taken us years ( nay decades ) to learn fairs too.
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@Dosrodgerspottery to my regret this year I can’t do any fairs or plan any. I need my husband as a pack horse to carry my boxes but he has angina and so far we’ve been waiting 4+ months to find out how / when he will be fixed. Think they might be waiting until he is too old to bother !
And of course I can’t book anything anyway as that would undoubtedly clash with whatever operation date we get when we eventually get one !
I love the occasional fair that I do, mainly at Christmas. It is sooooo lovely to actually speak to people instead of just sending messages… and yes if someone wants to buy two+ things and ask nicely then I will usually oblige with a little discount here or there. That’s the personal touch which I’m going to miss in 2019.
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Hello. I think perhaps my reply came across in the wrong way. Apologies. My customers are absolutely lovely and I am so very lucky, my customers mean everything to me. I couldn’t do what I love without them. Just wanting to make a shopping experience as easy as possible.
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Hello - I totally agree with this and clearly what works on one platform may not work on another. It is all trial and error like you say. I have been tweaking about with my shop to try to find out what will work best.
Inflating the cost of an item to absorb the cost of s&h to simply make it appear s&h is free is deceitful. I make most (actually all of ) my sales in Etsy and I refuse to participate in their amazon-esque incentive. I’m not Walmart. People who must ship hand crafted heavy pieces track and sign would disagree with inflating the cost of their item to sneakily absorb the s&h cost. Surely customers aren’t that stupid to think anything is free? It would be obnoxious of me as a buyer to expect an artist who has hand crafted something of good value to then absorb the cost of s&h so the item might be conveniently shipped directly to my door. Free s&h doesn’t incite me to buy. Quality items I want does. Oh this ruffles my ever loving feathers
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