How to sell more gifts online by completing the gift

To sell more gifts online, make the gift easy to find before checkout, then sell the piece that completes it right after payment. A matching item, the full set or the boxed version makes the gift look finished. In Post Purchase Upsell Abakira, a funnel with the condition Order contains shows that offer only after orders that include your gift products, or only their gift variants, and the item joins the same order and the same parcel.

This works all year: birthdays, Valentine’s Day, Mother’s Day, Father’s Day, graduations, weddings, and December. December offers have their own article. Below are the usual gift-selling tactics in one table, then the post-purchase offer in detail, with the exact settings.

What sells more gifts online?

Selling more gifts online comes down to two jobs: helping the buyer find a present before checkout, and helping them finish it after. The table lists the tactics that come up again and again, and where each one acts in the purchase.

Tactic	Where it acts	What it does
Gift guides by recipient, occasion or price (“for her”, “under $30”)	Before checkout	Turns a vague search into a short list
A “Gifts” entry in the main menu and a gift landing page	Before checkout	Makes gifting visible on every page
Gift sets and bundles	Before checkout	Sells a finished present instead of a single item
Last order date for each occasion, on the home page and product pages	Before checkout	Removes the “will it arrive in time?” doubt
Gift cards	Before checkout	Catches the buyer who doesn’t know what to pick
Gift wrap and a card message	Cart or after payment	Makes the parcel ready to hand over
Shipping to the recipient’s address	Checkout	Lets the buyer skip the post office
Occasion emails to past buyers	Before the occasion	Brings last year’s gift buyers back
A longer return window on gifts	After delivery	Lets the recipient exchange without stress
The piece that completes the gift	Right after payment	Raises the order once the main present is chosen

Do the first rows if you haven’t. The last row is the one this article is about, because it is the one that adds revenue to orders you already have, without a single extra visitor.

Why should a gift offer talk about the recipient?

A gift offer should talk about the person opening the box, because the offered item completes the present. Write the headline about what the recipient gets, and keep the discount in the body. The product and the price stay the same as in your general funnel; only the reason given changes.

Take the pour-over kit. In a general funnel, coffee is offered as the thing the buyer will need on Monday. In a gift funnel, the same bag is offered as what makes the kit usable on day one for the person receiving it. Same product, different reason, and the reason belongs in the headline.

The discount moves down the page. “Save 20%” is a line about the buyer’s wallet; “Make it the full set for her” is a line about the gift. Put the second in the Selling headline and the saving in Your argument, where {save} writes the real amount.

How do I find which of my products are bought as gifts?

Your gift products are the ones whose orders carry gift signals, and your own Shopify orders show them. You don’t need a survey. Look at the last twelve months of orders and note the products that keep showing up next to these signals:

1. A gift wrap line, if you sell wrap as a product. Every order with it is a present.
2. A shipping address different from the billing address. The buyer is sending it to someone else.
3. An order note with a message (“Happy birthday Mom”, “for Sam”), if your cart note is on.
4. A gift-box or gift-set variant. If a product has one, every order of that variant is a gift.
5. Sales that jump in the two weeks before an occasion and fall back after it.

Two or three signals pointing at the same product are enough to call it a gift product. Write down the product, and, if the gift version is a variant, the variant. That list is the condition of your gift funnel.

Some products are gifts by design: gift boxes, engraved items, a gift-set variant. Others are bought both ways, for the buyer and for someone else. The targeting below handles both cases.

What does a complete-the-gift offer look like?

A complete-the-gift offer is a single item, priced well below the gift, that makes the present more finished: the matching piece, the refill that lets it be used on day one, or the accessory that turns one item into a set. It is offered right after payment, on the one-click page, and joins the same order and parcel.

Some pairings by type of store:

The gift in the order	The piece that completes it	Headline that speaks about the recipient
Pour-over starter kit	A bag of coffee, ground for pour-over	”Add the coffee so they can brew on day one”
Candle	A matching wick trimmer or a second scent	”Make it the full set for her”
Skincare gift box	The travel size of the same cream	”One for the handbag too”
Leather wallet	A matching keyring	”The set, in the same leather”
Baby blanket	The matching hat	”Complete the set for the little one”
Dog bed	A chew toy in the same color	”Something for the first night”

On our demo coffee store, the gift is the Pour-Over Starter Kit at $49. The kit comes with a dripper, a server and filters, and the product page says it plainly: “Coffee sold separately.” The offer after payment is House Blend, ground for pour-over, at 20% off: $14.40 instead of $18. That’s 29% of the first order, inside the quarter-to-half range our guide chapter on what to offer recommends.

The one-click page shows “Charged to the card you already used: $14.40” under the price. In our demo offer, the two lines of our own copy above the price, “Your kit is ready. Add the coffee to go with it and save 20%.” and “No additional shipping charge.”, come from Your words on this page. The buyer taps once and the bag goes into the box that was leaving anyway.

How do I set up a gift funnel in Post Purchase Upsell Abakira?

A gift funnel in Post Purchase Upsell Abakira is a funnel whose condition is Order contains with your gift products, placed above your general funnel. Funnels are checked from top to bottom, and the first one whose condition the order meets is the one shown, so gift orders get the gift offer and every other order falls through to the next funnel.

1. In the funnel list, click Create a funnel and give it a name you’ll recognize in a month, such as “Gift box buyers, matching mug”.
2. Set its condition to Order contains, click Choose a product, and pick your gift products. One condition accepts up to 300 products.
3. Use the arrows to move the gift funnel above any funnel set to Everyone, then save. The admin warns you with “Never shown: a funnel above applies to everyone” if a funnel sits below a catch-all.
4. Open the funnel with Edit offers. Set What this offer proposes to A product and pick the item that completes the gift.
5. Under Discount, pick Percentage or Fixed amount and enter the value.
6. In Your words on this page, write the headline and the argument (next section).
7. Place a test order with one of your gift products, paid by card, and check that the offer appears and that the item lands on the same order in your Shopify admin.

Keep one funnel with no condition at the bottom. Without it, a buyer whose order matches none of your conditions sees no offer at all. Targeting and several funnels are on the paid plans; the guide chapter on multiple funnels and targeting walks through each screen.

How do I show the offer only after the gift version of a product?

The gift version of a product gets its own offer when you target its variant instead of the whole product. In the product picker of Order contains, untick every variant except the gift one (the gift box, the engraved option, the wrapped set). Post Purchase Upsell Abakira then serves the funnel only when that variant is in the order.

This is the cleanest signal you can get. A buyer who picked “Gift box” on the product page has told you who the order is for, so the headline can talk about the recipient without guessing. The same product bought without the box falls through to your general funnel, where the offer speaks to the buyer.

If your catalog has no gift variant, it’s worth adding one before the next occasion. A “Gift box” option at a few dollars more does two jobs: it sells the box, and it labels the order for your funnel.

When the product was picked whole, every variant matches. When only some variants were picked, the button in the condition shows the product name followed by the variants you kept, so you can see at a glance what the funnel listens to.

Can the buyer pick the color of the item that completes the gift?

The buyer can pick the color, size or scent of the offered item on the one-click page, when you tick several variants of it. In the product picker for the offer, select the variants you want to propose; the admin then reads, for three ticked colors, “3 options the buyer can choose from”. Up to 25 variants are offered. Leave out the ones you can’t ship this week.

Offering the colors lets the buyer match the set. The discount doesn’t depend on the variant: it comes from the offer, so the price shown stays right whatever the buyer picks. And a variant you didn’t tick is refused if anyone tries to send it, never swapped for another.

What should a gift offer say?

A gift offer should talk about the person receiving the present and what the extra item adds to their moment, not about the saving. In Post Purchase Upsell Abakira, each one-click offer has its own words under Your words on this page, with a preview of the page next to the fields.

Three fields do the work:

• Selling headline, up to 90 characters. Its help text reads: “It is added above the product name, which always stays visible: Shopify requires the product to keep the title it has in your store.” The product name can’t change, so the headline carries the gift angle.
• Promise line, up to 140 characters, at the top of the page.
• Your argument, up to 6 lines. A line starting with a dash becomes a bullet.

You can write {product}, {price}, {amount} (the price after your discount) or {save} and the real figure takes their place, so the numbers in your sentence never contradict the price shown below it. Exclamation marks are refused on this page; the editor blocks them when you save.

Headlines by occasion, for the same offer:

Occasion	Selling headline
Birthday	”Add the coffee so they can brew on their birthday”
Valentine’s Day	”Breakfast for two: add the coffee”
Mother’s Day	”Make it the full set for her”
Father’s Day	”So his first pour-over is a good one”
Graduation	”For the first apartment: add the coffee”
Christmas	”Ready to brew on Christmas morning”

In Your argument, two or three lines are enough:

• ”- Ground for pour-over, ready to use”
• ”- Same parcel, no extra shipping”
• ”- Saves {save} on {product}”

The what to offer chapter goes deeper on which product to pick; the wording is where a gift funnel differs from your general one.

What about gift buyers who pay with PayPal or Apple Pay?

Gift buyers who pay with PayPal, Apple Pay, Google Pay, Klarna or a gift card never see the one-click page, because Shopify shows it mainly after card payments. They reach the thank-you page instead, and the same gift funnel can serve them there with a block that adds the item to the order they just placed.

In the funnel’s Thank-you page tab:

1. Add a Single product block with the item that completes the gift, or a Bundle block if the gift needs two or three pieces.
2. Set Show it to to Buyers who did not see the one-click page. The admin calls this rule “Your safety net”.
3. Set Where the purchase goes to Same order, only until the first parcel ships. The item joins the order while nothing has left; once a parcel is on its way, the buyer pays in a new checkout and gets a separate order.

Under the button the buyer reads “Added straight to your order above. You only pay the difference.” A Bundle block is the strongest gift format on this page: on our demo store, “Complete your brew set” puts the coffee, the filters and a mug together, with the mug at 100% off, so the buyer sees $26.00 instead of $42.00 for three items. Each bundle item has its own discount from 0 to 100. On a Single product block, a percentage stops at 90.

The thank-you page block must be placed once in Shopify’s checkout editor (the “Thank you page offer” block), otherwise nothing you build there appears. Our guide chapter on the thank-you page has the screens, and why Apple Pay, PayPal and Google Pay orders never see your post-purchase offer lists every payment the one-click page skips.

Which occasions should a gift funnel cover through the year?

A gift funnel should cover every occasion your products are given for, and the funnel itself doesn’t change between them: same condition, same offer, new headline. The dates below are the ones to plan the headline swap around for the next twelve months.

Occasion	Date	Change the headline by
Christmas	Friday, December 25, 2026	December 1
Valentine’s Day	Sunday, February 14, 2027	February 1
Mother’s Day (US)	Sunday, May 9, 2027	April 25
Father’s Day (US)	Sunday, June 20, 2027	June 6
Graduation season	May and June	May 1
Birthdays, weddings, housewarmings	All year	Keep a neutral headline between occasions

Between occasions, use a headline that works for any recipient, such as “Make it the full set”. The day after an occasion, put it back. Each swap takes a minute: open the offer, change the Selling headline, save. For May, Mother’s Day upsell ideas turns the same funnel toward the buyer: the gift they chose, offered to them.

If you also sell gift wrap, it pairs with this funnel. On a paid plan, the wrap can be the offer in the If accepted branch, for a buyer who now has two items to wrap; the setup is in gift wrapping upsell on Shopify, offered after checkout. For the other levers on order value, before and during checkout, see what actually raises average order value on Shopify, and the seasonal articles gather the rest of the calendar.

How do I check that the gift offer works?

A gift offer works when a test order with a gift product shows the offer and ends as one order with both items in the same shipment. Place two orders before each occasion: one with a gift product paid by card, which should show the one-click offer, and one with a product outside your gift list, which should show the general funnel instead.

Then open each order in your Shopify admin. On the gift order, the completing item sits next to the gift in the same unfulfilled shipment, at the discounted price. A test order on our demo store, #1010, shows the Pour-Over Starter Kit at $49.00 and House Blend at $14.40 in one shipment, for a total of $63.40. If the second order showed the gift offer too, a funnel above it has no condition or the wrong product: check the order of the list first.

The results screen of Post Purchase Upsell Abakira splits conversion by funnel, so after a few weeks you can compare the gift funnel against the general one on the same store, and keep the headline that wins.

Post Purchase Upsell Abakira has a free plan that runs on a live store; the listing has the current plans and what each one includes.

Set up a complete-the-gift offer after checkout with Post Purchase Upsell Abakira

1. Create a funnel for your gift products In the funnel list, click Create a funnel and name it after the gift, for example Gift box buyers, mug in matching color.
2. Set the condition to Order contains Set the funnel's condition to Order contains, click Choose a product, and pick the products people give. Untick variants in the picker to target only some of them, such as a gift-box variant.
3. Move it above the catch-all Use the arrows to place the gift funnel above any funnel set to Everyone, then save. The first funnel whose condition the order meets is the one shown.
4. Add the first offer Open the funnel with Edit offers, set What this offer proposes to A product, and pick the item that completes the gift. Tick the variants the buyer may choose from.
5. Set the discount Under Discount, choose Percentage or Fixed amount and enter the value. Aim for an offer priced between a quarter and a half of the gift.
6. Write the words for the recipient In Your words on this page, write a Selling headline about the person receiving the gift, and two or three lines in Your argument.
7. Cover buyers who skip the one-click page In the funnel's Thank-you page tab, add a Single product or Bundle block, set Show it to Buyers who did not see the one-click page, and set Where the purchase goes to Same order, only until the first parcel ships.
8. Place a test order Order one of the gift products with a card, accept the offer, and check in your Shopify admin that both items sit on the same order.

Frequently asked questions

Does a complete-the-gift offer only work at Christmas?

No. The funnel is built around the products people give, not around a date, so it runs all year. Only the wording changes: rewrite the Selling headline before Valentine's Day, Mother's Day, Father's Day, graduation season and December, and keep the same products and targeting.

Can the extra item ship to a different address than the main gift?

No. An item accepted after checkout joins the order the buyer just placed, so it goes to that order's shipping address, in the same parcel. That is the point of the offer: the piece that completes the gift arrives with the gift.

Can the buyer pick the color or size of the item that completes the gift?

Yes, on the one-click page. When you pick the offered product in Post Purchase Upsell Abakira, tick the variants you want to offer; the admin shows how many options the buyer can choose from, up to 25. A variant you did not tick is refused, never swapped in.

Can I run a gift funnel on the free plan?

The free plan runs one funnel with one offer level and shows 100 offers a month on the one-click page, and that funnel is shown to everyone. Targeting with Order contains, several funnels at once and the follow-up offers after a yes or a no are on the paid plans, listed on the App Store page.

What if the buyer is shopping for themselves?

Then the offer still makes sense, because the piece that completes a gift also completes the product for its owner. Write the headline so it works for both readers, for example 'Make it the full set', and keep the recipient-specific wording for products that are gifts by design, such as a gift-box variant.

Related articles

• Mother's Day upsell ideas: one for her, one for you
• Tax refund season marketing ideas: upsell the full kit
• New year new me marketing ideas that outlast week three
• Valentine's Day upsell ideas for after checkout on Shopify
• How to sell dead stock on Shopify after the holidays

Seasonal

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Written by Abakira. We make small software: Shopify apps, web tools and iPhone apps. This article is about Post Purchase Upsell Abakira.