How to Set Up Spend Tiers on Cart Drawer

Spend tiers add a progress bar to the cart that rewards customers for spending or adding more: "Spend $20 more for free shipping", "Add 1 more for 15% off", or "Spend $75 to unlock a free gift". When a goal is reached, the reward applies automatically at checkout. No code to type.

This is the feature merchants also call a "free shipping bar", "reward goal bar", "rewards" or "Buy X Get Y".

Turn it on

1. In the editor, open the Spend tiers section. It has two tabs: Offers for the goals and rewards, Design for the look.
2. Switch it on for your market. Your primary market is listed first.
3. Click Save.

New to spend tiers? Pick a template to start. You can change and add tiers after.

Step 1: Choose what unlocks the goals

Under Reward when, pick what fills the bar:

• Cart amount reached: the cart subtotal. The most common choice.
• Item count added to cart: how many items are in the cart, for "Buy 3, get 15% off".
• Specific products added to cart: the tier unlocks when its product is in the cart. Each tier takes one product, with its variants and a quantity.

The choice applies to every tier on the bar.

Step 2: Choose which products count

With Cart amount reached or Item count added to cart, Count products from sets which cart items fill the bar:

• All products: everything counts. You can still exclude products or collections.
• Specific products: only the products and variants you pick.
• Products in specific collections: only products in the collections you pick.

Order discount tiers then apply only to the products that count. See Choose Which Products Count Toward Spend Tiers.

Step 3: Add your tiers

Each tier is one goal on the bar. Order them from the lowest goal to the highest.

For each tier, set:

• Min cart amount or Min items in cart: the goal. With Specific products, pick the product and quantity instead.
• Text before reaching the goal: the message while customers work toward it. Use {remaining_amount} for the live amount left, like You're only {remaining_amount} away from free shipping!
• Text after reaching the goal: the message once the goal is reached. Set how long it shows with Display duration.
• Reward type:

For discounts, pick % or fixed amount with the two icon buttons, then enter the value.

• Reward description: the reward text on the progress bar, like Free shipping. Use {goal_amount} to show the goal's amount.
• Show reward milestone badge: shows an icon on the bar for this tier. Pick Shipping, Free gift or Order discount, or upload your own.
• Discount name (under Discount settings): the label customers see at cart and checkout when the reward applies. If empty, order discounts and gifts use the Reward description, then Order discount or Gift. Shipping discounts show Shipping Discount.

Good to know: a Shipping discount applies to every checkout in your store once the cart drawer is published, even if the drawer is only on a draft theme. The admin says so under the reward type. See Why does free shipping apply on my live store?

Unlock free shipping with a discount code

Shipping discount tiers have Unlock with discount codes. Tick it and enter one or more codes, separated by commas, like FREESHIP, QUIZ10.

While one of those codes is applied, the tier shows as unlocked and moves to the start of the bar. The code itself must grant the free shipping in Shopify. This option only changes what the bar shows.

Step 4: The "all rewards unlocked" message

Under the tier list, set Text after completing full rewards bar. Customers see it once they unlock every tier, like You've unlocked all rewards!

If customers say "nothing happens after the last tier", this is the field to fill in.

Step 5: Choose what customers keep (reward stacking)

The Reward stacking card decides what happens when a customer passes more than one goal:

With the last two options, goals the customer passed are removed from the bar. The last option is not available while the bar has a Visual spend tier only goal, because rewards from other apps can't be removed.

Two goals with the same amount

If two tiers share an amount, Goals with the same amount appears under the tiers. Pick Next to each other (two badges) or As one goal (one badge, names joined with " + ").

Show spend tiers in the empty cart

Switch on the Empty cart card to show the bar when the cart is empty. Customers see your goals before they add anything.

Common setups

For a "Buy X, get Y at a discount" deal, use an upsell offer with a discount instead. See How to Set Up Cart Upsells.

Which products count

Use Count products from and its exclude options to count only some products or collections, or to keep items like gift cards out of the total. See Choose Which Products Count Toward Spend Tiers.

Selling in several currencies

Enable automatic currency conversion sits under the "all rewards unlocked" text. When it's on, you enter the money amounts in your store currency and the app converts them to each customer's currency with Shopify Markets exchange rates. New spend tier sets start with it on.

For different goals per market, see Different Spend Tier Thresholds and Rewards Per Market.

A note on the automatic discounts

When a tier gives a reward, the app creates Shopify automatic discounts: up to three, one per kind of reward. In Shopify admin > Discounts, search "Essential Cart": Essential Cart - Product discount (free gifts and upsell discounts), Essential Cart - Order discount (order discount tiers) and Essential Cart - Shipping discount (free shipping tiers). This is expected. It's how the rewards apply at checkout. Don't delete them. Stores that haven't saved spend tiers since 27 Oct may still show one older discount called Essential Cart - Automatic Discount. Saving once in the app replaces it with the new ones. See Discounts and the Discount Code Field.

Design and translations

• The Design tab sets the layout, celebration, Shine and colours. See Spend Tier Layouts, Celebrations and Shine.
• Each tier's texts can be translated per language.