Best Pre-Order Apps for Shopify

Resources, Shopify

In this article, we will be reviewing some of the best pre order Apps for Shopify to add to your fashion store.

A pre-order App can be used both in case your item is temporarily out of stock, or in case you want to use a full pre-order business model.

As you might have noticed in the last few years, pre-orders are becoming more and more common in the fashion industry. The concept was first pioneered by luxury brands and is quickly being adopted by growing businesses as well.

The pre-order model is also known as “reserve and collect”. In this model, customers can reserve their favorite pieces before they reach the store, and often retailers offer limited quantities of merchandise at a discounted price. They then sell out and wait for the next batch of orders.

The customer pays a deposit at the time of ordering and then receives their items once they arrive. Quite straightforward, right? Let’s now dig deeper and see what are the pros and cons of such a peculiar model.

What are the advantages of a pre-order business model in fashion?

To sum it up: looking good, doing good and generating revenue do not need to be mutually exclusive.

1. Better for the seller

Brands rely on estimates to make sure they know how many items they need to produce. However, the pre-order method allows them to see if there is enough interest in an item before they start producing it. This helps them plan production and inventory levels, which in turn means no leftover fabric, no deadstock, less storage costs, no waste of resources.

And even if you are not going for a full pre-order model, consider this: your product is temporarily out of stock (be it for a great marketing campaign or a supply issue). What about substituting that “out of stock” message with a more conversion-effective “pre-order to make sure you’ll get this item in your size” ? Shoppers, and especially new shoppers, have a short attention span, and it takes very little to see them drop off of your shop altogether. Make sure they get what they came in for, and don’t hesitate to play a bit with their fear of missing out.

2. Better for the environment

If you work in fashion, you are surely familiar with the negative impact of the industry on the environment.

Each year, 30% of produced clothes will not be sold, as reported by a survey realized by ShareCloth, a cloud-based platform to connect fashion brands and manufacturers for on-demand production.

And according to Forbes – “The apparel industry accounts for 10% of global carbon emissions and remains the second largest industrial polluter, second only to oil.”

The pre-order model avoids overproduction and waste, offering a much smarter environmental choice. In fact, sustainable brands are the ones adopting this model the most.

3. Better for the customer

Pre-orders give consumers more time to think about what they want to buy. This gives them more time to decide if they really need or want the item. Impulse purchases are out of the equation and shopping becomes conscious and more responsible.

Features of the best Shopify pre-order Apps

Most of the Apps you can find in the Shopify App Store share some features, and you should aim at the very least at the following ones:

Variant options: user should be able to pre-order the item in every size, color, fit available.
Availability dates: users should have a clear understanding of when exactly they should expect to receive the garment.
Automated updates: to manage the expectations of the purchasers and avoid clogging customer support with update requests.

Best Pre-order Apps for Shopify in 2022

Pre-order apps are a great way to make sure you can generate revenue even from an out-of-stock item or get people excited about your upcoming launch.

There are a lot of valid pre-order apps for Shopify in the App Store, and in the list below are some of our favorites which we think you should consider for your apparel store. All of them will help you to set up a pre-order system without having programming skills.

Timesact | Discount Pre-Order

This app lets you easily create an automatic pre-order button for your products. You can choose any text you want to display on the button. When a customer clicks on the button he gets directed to a web page where he can order your product. No coding required, and users get updated by both email and SMS on the status of their order. The most interesting part is that the TTimesact is free, and you only pay if you do make a sale through it.

Review Score on Shopify: 5/5 Stars, 399 reviews

Features:

Auto-detect and switch “Sold Out”, “Out of Stock”, “Backorder” or “Coming Soon” buttons to “Pre-Order”
Set Pre-Order for specific product variants.
Pre-Order discounts.
Bulk variant editing.
Search/set by product tag.
Set limits or unlimited Pre-Orders.
Set availability dates.
Edit cart label (i.e. “Shipping May 31th)”.
Edit message on product page.
Edit button text.

Pre-order Today

Pre-Order Today also requires no involvement of your IT department, it is quick and easy to install and set up and it needs no theme customization. The plus is their solid reporting dashboard, which allows merchants to get a clear understanding of their pre-order data and use it to predict customer demand.

Review Score on Shopify: 5/5 Stars, 205 reviews

Features:

Set preorder status on coming soon and to-be-launched products.
Automatically set a pre-order status on out of stock products.
Offer discounts on all pre-order items.
Super-fast customer support.
Manage your pre-orders with features like badges, emails, tagging, cart alerts, pre-order discounts, and more.
Mixed cart alerts to notify shopper of both pre-order and in-stock items in the cart.

Back in Stock

Born as an alert platform to notify customers of restocked items, Back in Stock by Swym Corporation offers also the possibility to set up pre-orders on specific items. Can be easily integrated with several other platforms such as Facebbok, Klavyio, Hubspot etc. for a complete automation of the alert, which makes the perfect “set-and-forget” option; it also boasts plenty of features even on the free plan.

Review Score on Shopify: 5/5 Stars, 574 reviews

Features:

Intuitive Dashboard for all the key metrics and analytics for the products that are interesting to your shoppers.
Detailed reports on which products have the highest demand, and which users are signing up for back in stock alerts. Easy for you to restock wanted products.
Integrations:
- ESP: Klaviyo, Omnisend, dotdigital, Listrak, ReSci, MailChimp, Sailthru, SendGrid and more.
- CRM / CDP: Zaius, Salesforce SFMC, Cordial, HubSpot and more on the way.
- Social: Facebook, Instagram.
- Automation: Zapier, Shopify Flow, Klaviyo Flow.
- SMS: Twilio.
- Tapcart.

Advanced PreOrder

Advanced PreOrder by Shine Dezign Infonet offers pretty much all the features offered by all the best pre-order Apps for Shopify, but with an interesting extra: user can choose if they want to pay the full amount of the item in advance, or if they prefer a partial payment, and then complete the payment once the order is ready to be sent. No need to say, this is an excellent strategy to entice the user to commit to the purchase.

Review Score on Shopify: 5/5 Stars, 197 reviews

Features:

No hard coding required.
Geo Location: Show Pre-order button based on the geo location of the user.
Fixed or percentage partial payment

Increasing conversion rates in your fashion store

As you can see, adding one of the best pre-order Apps for Shopify to your fashion store is a great opportunity to increase conversion rates and make sure you are not wasting advertising money. Users that land on your shop should be able to find exactly the item they are looking for, and it’s part of your job to make sure that they do.

But when it comes to fashion, conversion rates can often get hindered by the so-called sizing issue, which is unfortunately a known issue across the industry.

The lack of standardization in sizing generates confusion and uncertainty in shoppers, who too often hesitate to complete the purchase or buy the same item in several sizes just to return those who do not fit them.

Large brands have been solving the sizing problem through the adoption of comprehensive sizing solutions that provide users with accurate size recommendations based on their inputs. Thanks to the latest developments of AI and machine learning, these solutions are now finally available as well to growing businesses.

FitAnalytics, the team behind Fit Finder™, recently launched Sizefox, a sizing solution consisting of a size recommender and a size chart creation tool, aimed at Shopify fashion shops. Sizefox is completely free of charge, and with its 15-minute integration a perfect solution for the less technical shop owners and one of the best Shopify Apps for clothing stores.