#tech-talk

Hey @Wes Moore, unless a customer is logged into your store and/or you’ve implemented your own cookie to track existing customers, you won’t know whether a shopper is an existing customer w/ orders.

I know you’re trying to avoid a discount code but if you’re simply overriding the price via Shopify Scripts, you’re going to discount a lot of existing customers w/ orders b/c most folks aren’t logged into your store when they shop.

You could try a hacky solution using a free shipping discount + apply it to a specific customer segment (ppl w/ zero orders) + then a script to auto-apply the discount code to shoppers you believe aren’t existing customers w/ orders (again, only way youll know is by them being logged into your account portal and/or via your own cookie tracking solution).

so, I think your best shot is:
1. create a segment in shopify for “no orders’ (customer accounts who’ve placed 0 orders)
2. create a free shipping discount & set that “no orders” segment under Customer Eligibility
3. you’d need to use a Shopify script to auto-apply the discount (you can’t use Customer Eligibility w/ Automatic Discounts, just manual ones). The caveat here is that it’d apply the discount code to every shopper, and customers who are existing, will lose the discount on your checkout page.
Alternatively, you could try to do this same thing using your own cookie system, so you can at least exclude customers who are logged into your store (and have orders).

Hope that helps.

(attached screenshot of error a customer w/ existing orders would see on checkout page if the discount code was applied. unfortunately there’s no way to have it fail “silently.“)

(and the segment filter that is used by the discount for eligibility)

Yea that makes sense. I think a wombo combo of scripts is the only actual way to run it without running into a million issues every other day. Appreciate you going so in depth.

np — good luck!

https://changelog.shopify.com/posts/new-automatic-free-shipping-discount

This update was made for you! 😄 See if it’s already available in your store

Interesting. Not avail yet in the stores I’ve checked — but the coincidence of timing is wild!

Available in mine but there no option to select first-time customers only, unfortunately. So scripts still need to be involved.

@Dima Kim are you able to specify segment?

Only these settings:

ah ok, yeah, so can’t specify segment so wouldn’t work. Thanks for clarifying!

Who from Shopify is in here 👀

Hmm yea weird that they don't let you segment customers for this.