Digital products: you gotta love ‘em. The only way that they could be better is if you could guarantee that your customers would love your product before you even made it. 

Oh wait — you can! My friends, let’s talk about preselling. I’ll also show you how to set up a presell product in Shopify!

Why pre-sell digital products?

By “pre-selling” your product, you are offering your customers a chance to reserve your digital product before you ever lift a finger to create it. It saves you the time and stress of wondering whether anyone will appreciate the hard work you put into your product and, as a bonus, it’s a great way to boost your digital sales.

Gauge interest

Preselling also lets you gauge your audience’s main interests, as well. Do they flock more to checklists or are templates a more immediate need? Whatever pre-sells the most, that’s where your focus should be.

Increase perceived value

By putting a close date or limited quantity on your pre-sell, you can build even more hype once you launch the product. The scarcity ups your product’s perceived value, and even more people will want to buy after seeing the amazing value you have to offer.

If you’re new to the digital product scene, then preselling may be unexplored territory for you. You don’t need to be a computer wiz to make this work for you. Let’s go through the process step by step, and you’ll be generating your own pre-sales in no time!

How to presell your digital product in your Shopify store

Whether you’re brand new to Shopify or an online selling veteran, the process of pre-selling your digital product is fairly straightforward. 

You’ll start by setting up your product like you would any other. Select “Products” from your home screen, and once it brings you to your products page, click “Add New Product” at the top.

Make sure you specify that it is a presold product — you don’t want any confusion there! Put “Pre-Sale” in the title and in the very beginning of the description. You can use nice bold letters, or you can play with the formatting to make it more distinct. 

Make your description succinct yet snappy. When in doubt, something quick and to the point will keep your audience engaged. You’ll generally want to deliver products within 30 days, especially since presell items tend to be discounted due to the wait. However, 14 days is a good place to start. If you can surprise your client with even faster delivery, that’s even better! 

Add media and pictures for a little flourish. It doesn’t have to be a picture of the product specifically: just something visually dynamic and unique to you.

Next, you’ll have some general housekeeping to take care of. Your digital product doesn’t need inventory or shipping, so make sure to uncheck “Track quantity” and “This is a physical product.” If your digital product has some variations, however, you will want to add those under “Variants.” This could include sizes, different versions, etc. This is a great tool if your product can be customized for different niches, like a coaching template!

Under “Options,” it’s always best to put a specific prompt like “Choose Your Speciality Below,” otherwise your customer might get confused. 

And of course, if you are a new store, make sure your pricing is set up like you want it. You can customize the pricing for each variant, so if a particular specialty takes more effort (like “business” versus “lifestyle” coaching templates), then you can adjust each specialty accordingly. 

Shopify also gives you the chance to see what your search engine listing will look like, so I like to tweak this a bit as well. I remove “Pre-Sale” from the page title, since the ultimate goal is to have your product on full-time in the near future. That way, you don’t have to change it when it’s no longer on presale.

I also like to add “New!” or something similar at the beginning. This can make your description stand out and grab more attention when your customer is scrolling.

And finally, here’s what the final page will look like once you hit “Publish”! (See how “Choose Your Specialty Below” makes a lot more sense here than “Options”?) If you don’t like the way the preview looks, you can go back and adjust it.

Now you’re a preselling pro!

And that’s how you can easily set up a presell in Shopify to boost sales in your business! Preselling saves you time, makes you money, and takes the uncertainty out of the equation. Can you ask for anything more?

If you have any questions about preselling on Shopify or digital products, be sure to leave them in the comments below. Not sure if you’re ready to take the leap and start your Shopify store? Check out this helpful introduction to Shopify to see if it’s worth it for you.