Free shipping to products has been one of most common promotion method used on online stores.

I have been seeing a lot man of these days in the past week./. so I thought I will post in some of the deciding factors

1. Minimum Order Amount
“Free shipping over 100$”
always compute the relative profit you would be making by making the shipping free and make sureyou would be able to make up for the products price ( at the least ) when offering free shipping.

2. Number of products offered

Free shipping could be selectively offered to just a few products. Depending on the number of products you offer free shipping for, decide on the database changes. If you are offering the shipping module for a number of products, then you would probably go for a per products setting. If you offering only for a handful of products, better go for a single configuration base settings. ( Also,this helps in slightly improving on the store performance ).

3. Free Shipping Coupons
“for Free ground shipping use FREESHIP”

Some stores even provide coupons so that the free shipping facility is available at checkout. In this case, always make sure that you give a option among shipping options for free shipping. Also, make sure that the terms and conditions clearly dictate the free shipping terms ( like method/mode of shipping, shipping service like UPS or USPS generally used with the free ship service).

4. Terms and conditions
Like in all other cases, terms and conditions play an important role in deciding on the store performance in the market. Always update the Free shipping modules terms and conditions, so that there is always a page for the customer to look to when he has to approach for a free shipping option.

I have listed just a few of the many variations possible.. If you think there is something , I forgot mention please put in a comment, so that it helps someone reading this post .

Now back to work..
Cheers
Shiva