Bundle Names, Pages and Savings Claims

A bundle can be priced correctly and still fail on the page. The name does not say what is inside, the contents are a paragraph of text, and the savings line says something the numbers do not support. Bundle merchandising is the work between the price and the buy button: the name, the contents display, the savings claim and where the bundle sits in the store. Bundle Pricing Strategy covers how to set the price, and Holiday Gift Set Bundles covers planning a gift set. This post covers the page, with the savings claim checked against the FTC's pricing guides. It is not legal advice.

A name that says what is inside, or what it is for

A shopper scanning a collection page decides in a second whether a product is for them. A good bundle name answers one of two questions: what is in it, or what is it for. "Morning Coffee Trio" says there are three coffees and when you drink them. "Starter Skincare Kit" says who it is for. "Value Pack 3" says nothing, and "The Ultimate Bundle" says less.

Three habits keep names honest and searchable:

• Put the product type first and the count second, so the name works in search results and in a cart line: "Coffee Trio, 3 bags".
• Name the occasion or the person only when the contents match it. A "Movie Night Set" should be something a person would use on a movie night.
• Keep one naming pattern across the store, so the shopper learns that "Kit" means a starter set and "Trio" means three of one type.

In Shopify the name is the bundle product's title. The Help Center's instructions for creating a bundle say to enter a title for your bundle in the Title field, so the title you type is what appears on the product page and on collection pages.

Showing the contents at a glance

Shopify defines a bundle as "a set of two or more related products, commonly offered at a discount." The shopper's question is which products, how many of each, and what each is. Answer it above the fold with a short list, not a paragraph:

• One line per item, with the quantity first: "2 x Dark Roast, 12 oz".
• One image per item, or one image that shows all of them laid out, so the shopper sees the set.
• The size or count of each item, because that is what the savings are measured against.

How the bundle looks after the click is partly Shopify's doing. The developer documentation says checkout lines present bundle products as a group of lines, and that the online store's cart page shows the bundle parent, with the option to return the bundle components. In the order, Shopify's Help Center says SKUs are listed for the individual items, not for the bundle SKU, which is what your warehouse will pick from. So write the contents list with the same item names your pickers see.

For limits, the Shopify Bundles page says fixed bundles can have up to 30 components and dynamic bundles up to 150, so a gift set with 12 items fits, and a bundle builder with hundreds of choices is a different design problem.

The savings line and the FTC's pricing guides

A savings line compares the bundle price with something. The FTC's Guides Against Deceptive Pricing, 16 CFR Part 233, are the federal reference for such comparisons. They do not mention bundles, so what follows is how their text applies by analogy, not a rule written for bundles.

Section 233.1 treats a comparison with your own former price as legitimate if the former price is the actual, bona fide price at which the article was offered to the public on a regular basis for a reasonably substantial period of time. A bundle's "if bought separately" figure is the same kind of claim: it should be the price you actually charge for each item. If you raise a single item's price a week before launch so the saving looks larger, the comparison fails the guide's own test.

Section 233.4 covers offers where you get something when you purchase another article, the "Free", "Buy One, Get One" and "50% Off" family. It says that where the seller increases the regular price of the article required to be bought, decreases its quantity or quality, or attaches other strings, the consumer may be deceived, and it says all terms and conditions of the offer should be made clear at the outset. For a bundle, the practical reading is to state the contents, the price and the condition in the same place as the word "save".

One Shopify detail makes this a maintenance job. The Shopify Bundles page says the bundle price does not update when a bundled product's price changes, and that you must update it in the admin. If a component's price rises and the bundle price stays, a "Save 12 dollars" line may no longer be true. Add the bundle to the checklist you run whenever you change a price.

Three pages, worked

The numbers below are assumptions for arithmetic, not store data.

A consumable set. Three 12 dollar bags of coffee, sold as a trio for 32 dollars. Separately they cost 36 dollars, so the trio saves 4 dollars, about 11 percent. Page copy: "3 bags for 32 dollars, 4 dollars less than three single bags." The comparison is to your own single price, stated in dollars, with the contents named.

A starter kit. A shampoo at 22 dollars, a conditioner at 22 dollars and a mask at 28 dollars come to 72 dollars. Sold as a kit for 60 dollars, the saving is 12 dollars, about 17 percent. Page copy: "Starter kit, 60 dollars. The three products cost 72 dollars separately." Show the three items and the sizes next to the line.

A pick-any-three set. Four snacks cost 5, 6, 7 and 8 dollars, and the shopper picks any three different ones for a fixed 15 dollars. The cheapest combination costs 18 dollars separately and the dearest 21, so the saving runs from 3 to 6 dollars, or roughly 17 to 29 percent. "Save 25 percent" is false for the cheapest combination. "Save at least 3 dollars" is true for all of them. Had the cheapest three cost 15 dollars, the honest line would have been "any 3 for 15 dollars", with no saving claimed.

Where bundles sit in the store

Give bundles a collection of their own, named for what they are, such as "Sets and kits", and link it from the main menu if bundles are a real share of what you sell. On a product page, show the bundle under the single item as a second choice, with the saving stated, so a shopper who came for one product sees the set at the moment they are deciding. For a gift season, put the sets collection on the home page and in the announcement bar. Product Bundling on Shopify compares the ways to build them, and Shopify Bundle Inventory covers stock.

Building a mix and match set

If your bundle is a set the shopper chooses from, start from the Mix & match template in Freebies Engine by Log Studio Lab, described in the catalog as "Shoppers pick any items from a set for a fixed price." It fits the pick-any-three example above. Bundle templates have plan requirements, so see the pricing page before you plan around them. Then write the name, the contents list and the savings line from this post.

This post applies public pricing guides for planning and is not legal advice.