Shopify Permalinks: Increase conversions and subscription attachment

Learn how to add selling plans to your Shopify permalinks

Rob Johnson

by Rob Johnson

Sep 18th 2023

# commerce # shopify

Are you looking to make the most out of your Shopify store's marketing and enhance your sales? Shopify has introduced a powerful new feature that allows you to create cart permalinks. This means I can now direct customers to my Shopify checkouts or online store cart with pre-loaded items. What's more, I can also append query parameters to these permalinks to include additional information and attribute orders to my sales channel. In this guide, I'll walk you through the process of creating these cart permalinks and even show you how to add a selling plan and a discount code to an item.

https://yourshopifystore.com/cart/1234:1,5678:1

In this URL, you can see that I'm adding items to the cart. Each item is represented by a unique identifier followed by a colon and the quantity. In this case, I'm adding two items to the cart. It's as straightforward as that! Customers clicking on this link will find their cart pre-populated with the selected items.

Adding Additional Information

But what if you want to do more with your cart permalinks? You can append query parameters to the URL to include additional information. Here's an example:

https://yourshopifystore.com/cart/{variant_id_1234}:1,{variant_id_5678}:1?selling_plan=555&discount={DISCOUNTCODEHERE}

In this URL, I've added two query parameters: selling_plan and discount. This is where the magic happens. By specifying a selling plan, you can attach a subscription to the line item and adding a discount code can help with increasing your checkout conversion rate.

What About Selling Plans?

One thing to note is that Shopify's documentation might not cover how to add a selling plan to an item in detail. However, with the method I've shown you, you can easily incorporate selling plans into your cart permalinks. Just make sure to include the selling_plan query parameter followed by the plan's identifier.

Applying a Discount and Redirecting Customers

There are times when you want to apply a discount for a customer without pre-loading their cart with products. This is ideal for campaigns where you're sending customers to a specific collection or landing page to choose their own eligible items.

The following link structure activates a discount code for the customer's shopping session. The discount will then automatically apply in the cart as soon as its conditions are met.

https://yourshopifystore.com/discount/DISCOUNTCODE?redirect=/collections/eligible-products-listing

How it Works:

  1. https://yourshopifystore.com: Your store's primary domain.
  2. /discount/DISCOUNTCODE: This part applies your specific discount code (e.g., TAKE20) to the user's session.
  3. ?redirect=: This is an optional parameter that tells Shopify where to send the customer after the discount has been applied.
  4. /collections/eligible-products-listing: The relative path to the destination page. If you omit the redirect parameter, Shopify will send the customer to your homepage by default.

Conclusion

Shopify's new cart permalink feature is great for creating simple URL's that provide a seamless shopping experience for customers. By creating custom cart permalinks with added information like selling plans and discount codes, you can take your e-commerce strategy to the next level. So, go ahead, experiment with these powerful links, and see how it help improve your Shopify store metrics!

For more detailed information, you can refer to the official Shopify documentation.

Shopify had an old way of creating permalinks. Check it out »