Valentine’s Day is almost here! We work with hundreds of Shopify florists, so we know exactly how tough the preparations for the busiest day of the year can be - let alone the day itself. It’s all sleepless nights and long days getting those orders ready!
Zapiet - Pickup + Delivery can make life much easier for florists who use Shopify. To help merchants make the most of the app this Valentine’s Day, we’ve rounded up some of the most helpful features for February 14th and how to use them.
Scheduled pickup and deliveries
Give customers the ultimate convenience by letting them choose a date and time that suits them. Especially on Valentine’s Day, that’s a great feature: customers can be confident about flowers arriving with the recipient at just the right time, or picking up a gift on their way home from work, for example.
However, convenience works both ways. By adding your own calendar rules in advance, you can be sure to only offer collection or delivery windows that work for you - meaning you don’t need to contact customers to rearrange.
Date and time restrictions
Every florist offers special Valentine’s Day gifts and arrangements and Zapiet - Pickup + Delivery lets you define exactly what you offer and when with multiple offsets, breakpoints and blackout dates.
To make things easier, you can add these products to your store early and configure when exactly they’ll be available - to stop customers from buying them before or after the big day.
As you can control pickup and delivery calendar rules independently, you can offer pickups later in the day than delivery, letting you catch those last-minute orders. That’s especially useful if you know your last delivery window is, say, 2 pm, but you’re able to deal with walk-in customers into the evening.
Add increased preparation times for complex products
When dealing with complex products, it’s crucial to leave yourself enough time to get them ready before customers or couriers arrive. While some bouquets can be prepared in minutes, others can take hours to put together.
To deal with that, Zapiet - Pickup + Delivery lets merchants specify how much preparation time individual products need. For example, product A might need one hour to prepare, while product B takes four, and those preparation times can be easily set within the app. That ensures collection doesn’t happen before the product is ready.
On top of that, mark individual products as available only for pickup, delivery or shipping. That’s important for fragile arrangements that you want customers to come and collect themselves. On the other hand, you might have some products located in a distribution facility that you can only offer shipping on.
Delivery validation
Zapiet - Pickup + Delivery offers extensive local delivery customisation. To prevent customers who live too far away from ordering, merchants can define limits in terms of driving distance, maximum radius (as the crow flies), and exact or partial postal code matching.
With the unique Delivery Validator widget, you can let customers check if they are eligible for delivery right from the homepage or individual product page. That greatly improves the customer experience - shoppers don’t need to reach the checkout page before discovering they’ll need to collect or buy elsewhere.
Did you know?
You can charge customers delivery rates according to distance from your store with our Zapiet - Rates by Distance app.
Delivery slot limits
At Valentine’s Day, the sheer volume of orders can easily overwhelm an independent florist. To manage total volume as well as workload throughout the day, set delivery slot limits within Zapiet - Pickup + Delivery.
The granular controls allow merchants to set location and product availability right down to 5-minute intervals and limit the number of delivery orders that can be taken in each time slot.
Telephone orders
Some customers prefer to order over the phone, especially at Valentine’s Day when they want to be certain of getting the right product at the right time. Merchants can easily accept telephone orders using Zapiet - Pickup + Delivery by converting any draft order into a pickup or delivery. Thanks to our seamless integration, all of that can even be handled directly through Shopify POS.
Order management
Our app makes it easy to stay organised. Merchants can see at a glance what orders need preparing when and by which location. Filters allow sorting by checkout method, location and time, and each brick-and-mortar store is notified the moment and order is placed for them. In-store, seamless integration with Shopify POS makes dealing with high volumes and complex orders much easier.
Next steps
We know how hard you’re working ahead of Valentine’s Day, and we hope these tips help make the day easier and more successful! If you’ve yet to join the thousands of Shopify merchants using Zapiet - Pickup + Delivery, start a free 30-day trial now!
