How To Set Up BOGO Discounts on Shopify [Step-by-Step Guide]

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Buy One Get One (BOGO) deals get customers to stop and take notice. About 80% of all ‘free’ promotions are BOGO deals and over 66% of consumers say it’s their favorite type of discount. 

But how can you use this hypnotic power of free to attract customers, move inventory faster, and increase store revenue? By adding BOGO offers to your Shopify store. 

We’ll cover the exact step-by-step process to create:

  • Automatic conditionally triggered Buy X Get Y discounts on Shopify using Automatic Discounts & Gifts
  • BOGO discount code setup on Shopify
  • Setting up automatic BOGO without a Shopify app

What is the purpose of BOGO? And why do brands use it? 

BOGO deals are extremely effective in generating sales and bringing in customers with minimal downsides. 

They’re more effective than a “50% off discount”, even though both the deals are mathematically identical—all because of the word “free” used in Buy One Get One free

Burger King and other large brands frequently run BOGO and similar freebie deals to incentivize customers and increase their sales.

Source

Dan Ariely ran a famous experiment where to test how “Free” affects purchase behavior. 

He gave participants two choices: a Hershey’s Kiss for $0.1 and a Lindt for $0.15. 

73% of the participants chose Lindt. 

In the next set, the prices were lowered by $0.1 making the Hershey’s Kiss free and Lindt $0.05

This time, the choices skewed towards the free product and 69% of the participants opted for Hershey’s Kiss. 

Similar to the above experiment, a BOGO deal where customers get the second product for free has more power than a percentage discount. 

Should you use an app to run BOGO discounts on Shopify?

When it comes to creating BOGO deals on your Shopify store, you have two choices: use the default Shopify discounting features or go with an app like ADG. 

Let’s look at the pros and cons of both approaches.

Using an app to build BOGO discounts on Shopify

There are many apps on the Shopify app store that can help you create BOGO deals on your store. 

Some of the benefits of using a Shopify discounts app are:

  • You can create more complex and flexible BOGO deals, in a matter of minutes.
    • For example, you can set the offer to trigger when the minimum cart value is $50 + the number of items in cart is more than 2 + there is at least one “specific” product in the cart + the customer is logged in + more
  • Apps also allow you to create different types of BOGO discounts like buy 2 get three free or buy 1 get 2 free and more.
  • You can track and analyze the performance of your BOGO deals with analytics and reports
  • Apps help you easily add interactive elements on your site that notify users of a discount (see below)

Some of the drawbacks of using a Shopify app are:

  • You have to pay a monthly fee or a commission for using the app. But once those discounts start bringing in revenue, the ROI is huge. 
  • You may need to contact the app developer for support or troubleshooting which can require you to test different apps

Super easy and intuitive to use, but this tech dummy couldn’t quite figure out how to do a tiered discount for the first time, so RG from support jumped straight in to help! He not only set up the tiers to exactly my specification, but he also created a video showing me step by step what he did for next time, AND took the time to test all three tiers and the exclusion on the video as well! Above and beyond on the service side of things and I’m sure the app itself will be a game changer for us going forward. Thanks again RG, you’re a legend!

Popping Candy, a 5-star reviewer on the app store

Using Shopify’s platform features

You can also create BOGO discounts on Shopify without using an app. You can do this by using Shopify’s discount codes aka automatic discounts. 

Some of the benefits of using Shopify’s native features are:

  • You pay no extra fees or commissions for creating BOGO deals
  • You will not experience compatibility issues with other apps or themes on your store
  • You can use Shopify’s built-in support and help center for any questions or issues

Some of the drawbacks of using Shopify’s native features are:

  • Lacks conditional triggers to offer targeted discounts to customers
  • Does not offer a way to create discount popups, notifications, and other interactive elements to capture user attention. This is usually included by app developers.
  • The setup isn’t easy and it takes a bit of time to get a hang of it.

To conclude, for a simple BOGO offer, Shopify’s discounting features work perfectly well. 

When you want flexibility in how the offers are triggered and want to add more complex conditions to get the most out of your BOGO deals, go for an app like ADG

We’ll set up a BOGO offer with and without an app for this demonstration.

Setting up BOGO deals on Shopify (with and w/o an app)

Let’s take an example of a clothing and apparel store. We’ll set up a BOGO offer on belts. When a customer purchases two belts, one of them is offered for free. 

Create Automatic Buy X Get Y Discounts on Shopify with ADG

Shopify discounting features are quite limiting when you’re dealing with multiple SKUs. For a better seamless experience, we’ll set up automatic conditional BOGO discounts using ADG on Shopify. 

Here are the steps:

Step 1: Install ADG on Shopify

First, let’s get Automatic Discounts & Gifts (ADG) set up on your Shopify store. Go to the ADG Shopify app store page and click “Add App”. 

You will be redirected to your Shopify admin page where you can install and authorize the app. Once you set up the app and choose the plan, move to the next steps. 

Step 2: Set up the custom BOGO deal

Once installed, go to the app by clicking Apps (bottom left) > and then click Custom deals.

BOGO deals can be created under the Custom deals section. Click New deal.

Pick BOGO – Discount pairs as your deal type.

Finally, create your discount code by clicking on Wish to change the code? and add a custom name here. This step is optional and you can use the autogenerated discount code too. 

Step 3: Configuring the BOGO deal

Scroll down to the deal setup options. Here, we’ll begin with configuring how the deal is triggered, what type of discounts are offered, and more. 

In this case, we want our customers to pick two belts before they can avail BOGO discount. We also want our customers to get the second product for free—a 100% discount

And finally, we pick the product or products where this discount is applied. 

You can optionally choose to check the Consider pairs of different products (mix&match) if you also want this BOGO deal to apply to other products in the cart. 

For example, if a customer adds a belt and a hat to the cart, the cheaper product will automatically become free. 

Step 4: (Optional) Additional configuration

Your BOGO deal is ready to go live. ADG also gives additional options that you can configure or skip. 

For example, you can set up the BOGO deal to only apply when the cart value meets a certain threshold. Check the Cart requirement checkbox and set the dollar value here. 

You can also add a usage limit for this offer. For example, if we only have 100 belts in stock, the offer can run a maximum of 50 times before we’re out. 

Alternatively, you can add a usage limit per customer (like I’ve shown below). This will require the customer to be logged in to apply the offer. 

Finally, you can choose to trigger the offer for a specific set of customers using either their email or customer tags. 

Step 5: Set the deal to active 

Once you’re done with the steps above, save the offer and click “Automate It” when you get a popup. We’re done with the setup. 

Now, the final step is to set the deal to active

After you save the deal, you’ll be taken to the final page where you can customize the triggers when the order is applied. For this demonstration, we’ll jump right to activating the offer. 

Scroll to the end of the page to select Active and click Save. Your offer will now be activated in the store. Let’s try adding two belts to the cart. 

ADG automatically shows the coupon code popup the moment it detects the products in the cart. As you can see, it has automatically applied another BOGO offer for this product. Let’s check the box for the offer we just created—coupon code BOGO2023 and click Checkout.

And that’s it, you now have a BOGO offer on your Shopify store!

Method 2: Set up a BOGO discount code on Shopify without an app

Shopify offers a discount feature that lets you easily create a Buy X Get Y discount code. However, keep in mind that these coupon codes need to be made for individual products, one by one. 

  1. Go to the Discounts page in your Shopify admin and click “Create discount.”
  2. From the “Select discount type” menu, choose “Buy X get Y.
  3. Under “Method,” select “Discount code” and enter a name for the new discount code or generate a random one.
  1. Under “Customer buys,” set the minimum quantity of items or minimum purchase amount that customers need to qualify for the discount. Choose whether to include specific products or collections in the discount.
  1. Under “Customer gets,” set the number of items that customers need to add to their cart to receive the discount. Choose whether to include specific products or collections as discounted items.
  1. Alternatively, choose the discount percentage that customers receive when they buy the set number of items. You can offer a percentage discount or items for free.
  2. Set the maximum number of uses per order and to who this discount applies.
  3. Set the start and end dates for the discount, if desired.
  1. Click “Save” and the new discount will appear in the Discounts tab in your Shopify admin.

The coupon will now be activated and your customers can purchase two belts at the price of one using the BOGO23 discount code.

Method 3: Automatic BOGO offers on Shopify without an app

What if you don’t want a coupon code, and instead want the offer to get applied automatically? Let’s see how the Automatic Discounts of Shopify work. This method follows a similar process to the one above. 

  1. Go to the Discounts page in your Shopify admin and click “Create discount.”
  2. From the “Select discount type” menu, choose “Buy X get Y.
  3. Under “Method,” select “Automatic Discount” and enter a name for this discount.
  1. Under “Customer buys,” set the minimum quantity of items or minimum purchase amount that customers need to qualify for the discount. Choose whether to include specific products or collections in the discount.
  1. Under “Customer gets,” set the number of items that customers need to add to their cart to receive the discount. Choose whether to include specific products or collections as discounted items.
  1. Choose the discounted value that customers receive when they buy a set number of items. You can offer a percentage discount or items for free.
  2. Set the start and end dates for the discount, if desired.
  3. Click “Save” and the new discount will appear in the Discounts tab in your Shopify admin.

You can set up automatic discounts with multiple SKUs if they’re organized into proper collections. If you want to avoid using an app, this is the best method out there to give you the results you need. While not as flexible, this gets the job done. 

Watch your products fly off the (virtual) shelves with BOGO discounts

The power of “free” is phenomenal. You need to experience it to know how well it works. BOGO is an excellent example of this in action. When used right, it can help take your store from being unknown to being in demand within a very short time. 

But getting the offer set up right is crucial to its success. Automatic Discounts & Gifts makes setting up BOGO and many other types of discounts on Shopify, super easy for you. 

ADG extends Shopify’s existing discounting features giving you more power and control over how discounts are offered to customers. 

Spent a lot of time looking for an app that could suitably add a free gift to the customer’s basket upon inputting a discount code. Presently, this is the only app on Shopify that does so. And it does so impeccably. 

Naturally Wicked

Store owners that tried ADG haven’t gone back and we’re sure you would love the added power too. Also, ADG is available free—only pay a small percentage of the sales you make with ADG’s promotions. 

Boost your sales with ADG! Create irresistible gifts, upsells, and custom deals in minutes.

4.6 star with 200+ shopify reviews

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Don’t leave dollars on the table—ADG helps you add thousands in sales every day
4.6 star with 200+ shopify reviews
Don’t leave dollars on the table—ADG helps you add thousands in sales every day
4.6 star with 200+ shopify reviews