Free Gift Copy: Banner, Cart, Checkout

A free gift offer banner is usually written once, and then the same words are reused everywhere else. That is where the trouble starts. The banner has room for one condition, the cart has room for a progress line, the product page has room for a sentence about the item, and checkout has room for a title and nothing more. Copy that works in one place and omits the rule in the next breaks the requirement at the center of the Federal Trade Commission's guide to "free" offers: say the terms where the offer is made. This page treats the banner, the product page, the cart and checkout as four separate jobs, and gives twenty lines you can adapt, each tied to the condition it states.

One offer, four placements, four jobs

Take one offer: a free tote with any order of 75 dollars or more, while stock lasts, one per order. The offer does not change between screens. What the shopper needs does.

• Banner: get attention and state the main condition. The shopper has not chosen anything yet.
• Product page: say whether this item counts. The shopper is deciding about a specific product.
• Cart: show the distance. The shopper has a subtotal and needs one number.
• Checkout: confirm what was applied. The shopper wants to know why the total is what it is.

Four jobs, so four kinds of sentence. A banner that tries to do the cart's job reads like a legal notice, and a cart line that does the banner's job repeats the pitch to someone who has already accepted it.

What the FTC guide asks of each line

The Guide concerning use of the word "Free" is 16 CFR Part 251. Its paragraph (a) opens with a warning about care: because shoppers regard a "Free" offer as a special bargain, the guide says such offers "must be made with extreme care so as to avoid any possibility that consumers will be misled or deceived." Paragraph (c) is the one that shapes copy. It says the terms, conditions and obligations "should appear in close conjunction with the offer of 'Free' merchandise or service," and that a footnote reached by an asterisk is not regarded as disclosure at the outset.

Read that as a test you can apply to every line in this post. For each sentence that says "free", ask what the shopper must do to keep the item, and whether that is stated in the same sentence or the one right beside it. If the answer is "on the terms page", the line fails the test.

Two more paragraphs matter to wording. Paragraph (b) says the shopper has a right to believe the merchant will not recover the cost of the free item "by marking up the price of the article which must be purchased," so a banner never sits next to a price that rose when the offer started. And paragraph (i) says that swapping in words like "gift" or "bonus" does not fix an offer that fails the guide, which matters here because the offer is called a gift: the same conditions apply.

This is not legal advice. If your offer includes a former price, a limited run or an unusual rule, ask counsel.

Banner: offer plus the main condition

The banner is the first place the word appears, so it carries the main condition in the same line. One line, one condition, and the minimum is the condition most offers have.

• Free tote with orders of 75 dollars or more.
• Free sample with every order. One per order.
• Buy a candle, get a mini candle free.

A second condition, such as an end date or "while supplies last," goes on a second line directly beneath, not behind a link. If there are more conditions than fit on two lines, the offer has too many conditions.

Product page: eligibility on the item itself

The question on a product page is whether this item counts. Shopify's Buy X get Y documentation is clear that the customer must meet the buy requirement: the page says the shopper "must add all items to their cart manually," and that the free or discounted item "is never automatically added" under a native Buy X get Y discount. That describes the native discount. Our Spend X, get a gift template is described in its template index as a gift that is added automatically once the shopper reaches the cart value, so the copy you write depends on which one you run. If a gift is added by itself, say so; if the shopper must add it, say that instead.

A product page line has two forms: the item qualifies ("Counts toward the free tote") or it does not ("Not included in the free gift offer"). Put whichever applies next to the price, where the shopper is looking.

Shopify's page also lets you limit who gets a discount by customer eligibility: all customers, specific customers, customer segments or markets. If your gift is for one market, the copy must say which, since a shopper outside it will see the banner and not the gift.

Cart: progress lines

The cart is where a number helps. The condition now has an amount attached, and the line states the distance: how much more, and what the shopper gets. The page on free shipping progress bars lays out the four states of a bar and the sets for a shipping threshold, so this page keeps to gift wording and does not repeat them.

Checkout: the title the shopper sees

At checkout the shopper reads the name of the discount that applied. Shopify's documentation describes automatic discounts as ones that apply once the cart qualifies, and the Buy X get Y page says that if free-product inventory drops to zero, the products display as sold out, so a gift can disappear from an offer while the banner still advertises it. Our post on discount messages at checkout covers titles in full; the lines below add only the gift-specific ones.

Twenty lines, each with the condition it states

Three details separate good lines from bad ones. First, every line that says "free" also carries a condition, even short ones. Second, the numbers repeat exactly: a banner that says 75 dollars and a cart that says 80 is two offers. Third, the lines describe the cart honestly: rows 13 and 14 tell the shopper what happens if the cart drops below the threshold, which is the moment shoppers most often get surprised. In our app, when a cart change leaves the offer unqualified, the storefront script removes the auto-added gift line; a gift the shopper removed on their own is remembered for that browser session and not put back. Use rows 13 and 14 only after you have removed an item in a test cart and watched what your offer does, since the line must match the behavior, not the other way round.

When the offer should stop

Paragraph (h) of the guide says that, to keep a "Free" offer meaningful, a single size of a product or a kind of service should not be advertised with a free offer in a trade area for more than six months in any twelve-month period, that at least 30 days should pass before the next one, and that no more than three such offers should be made in an area in any twelve months. A banner with no end date is the easiest way to drift past that. Put an end date in the offer's settings and a date in the banner copy, and make a calendar entry for the first of the month the offer must be reviewed.

Check the cost before you write the line

Copy cannot save an offer that loses money. Before the banner goes up, check the gift's landed cost against the margin on the order that triggers it. The post on free gift with purchase shows the arithmetic, and letting shoppers choose their gift covers the case where the line must name more than one item.

Building a progress bar

For the cart, start from the progress bar template, which the template index describes as showing how close the cart is to a reward. Set the reward to the gift, use the same threshold as the offer, and paste the cart lines above into the bar's states. Then place a test order on a phone and read every screen against the twenty lines: if any screen says "free" without a condition, rewrite that line before you launch.