Preorders: Boost Sales and Forecast Demand in 2025

Preorders have evolved from a simple product reservation system to a powerful tool for revenue generation, demand forecasting, and customer engagement. They also enhance the customer experience: Shoppers can place an order for a new product and have the thrill of anticipating its arrival ahead of everyone else.

But there’s an art and science behind every successful preorder model. Accept orders too far in advance and customers might lose their excitement before their order is shipped. Failure to communicate the fulfillment delay can also entice refunds and cancellation requests. 

In this guide, learn how preorders work, when they make sense to sell online, and how to use Shopify to offer preorders to boost sales for your business.

What does preorder mean?

A preorder allows customers to buy products before they’re officially released or restocked. Merchants collect full or partial payment upfront, and the product ships once it becomes available.

Preorders act as reservations, guaranteeing customer access as early as possible—whether a product is temporarily out of stock or launching soon. When a merchant accepts a deposit for a preorder, they often charge the remaining amount using a customer’s stored payment method.

💡 Check out Shopify’s collection of preorder apps.

Why you should offer preorders in 2025

Preorder selling provides significant advantages by increasing revenue, streamlining operations, and building customer loyalty.

Increase sales and reduce cart abandonment

Customers have more options when shopping than ever before. Ecommerce has effectively put the entire world at their fingertips, and any product is available with a single tap.

For retailers, this means competition is fierce. If your product is unavailable or out-of-stock when shoppers want it, they’ll simply move on to a competitor. This contributes to rising cart abandonment rates: Baymard estimates that 70% of all online shopping carts are deserted. 

Preorders give you a competitive edge by securing sales even if your merchandise isn’t ready to ship. You no longer have to turn away eager customers; when they’re ready to buy, you’re ready to sell (even if you’re not ready to ship).

Plus, preorders offer flexibility in when a customer pays, either by deposit, upfront, or once the item ships. This makes it easy to shape your strategy to fit your unique cash flow needs.

Forecast demand by meeting it

Selling physical products comes with inherent risks. Whether you’ve invested in the research, design, and manufacturing of your products or you simply purchased inventory, accurately predicting demand is essential.

Instead of relying on gut feelings, preorders provide accurate, actionable insights into customer preferences for product sizes, colors, and styles.

“Anybody who is running a rapidly growing inventory-based business knows that getting ahead of cash for new product lines that have a significant investment can be hard to catch up,” says Sarah Resnick, founder of Gist Yarn, on a Shopify Masters episode. “It’s hard to make the cash flow that you need to launch something new. It’s expensive. Preorders have let us do that. It’s our customers investing in us and getting yarn back.”

The past few years have also highlighted how supply chain issues can cause major problems for even the most established businesses. Preorders assist with inventory management by enabling accurate forecasts of minimum product quantities required to fulfill orders. 

Generate excitement and drive growth

By offering preorders, you’re not just selling a product; you’re selling an experience. Beyond a transaction, preorders are all about creating excitement, giving customers something to look forward to, and making them feel that they’re part of something exclusive.

Between targeted ads and the dozens of screens the average shopper sees each day, capturing consumer attention is challenging. This makes driving awareness and excitement about a new release—or the return of a fan favorite—especially difficult.

Successful preorder marketing campaigns share common traits, including:

• Professional product imagery and copy. Use factory samples or professional retouching services if final products aren’t available yet.
• Preorder incentives. Offerlimited-time discounts, early access sales, limited edition preorders, and free customization to boost sales while generating excitement.
• Paid and social media promotion. Flood your target audience’s preferred platforms with engaging preorder announcements.

Build customer loyalty with exclusive access

Offering exclusive preorder access to mailing list subscribers or loyalty program members not only boosts the odds of these repeat shoppers converting, but also helps build brand loyalty. It shows that you appreciate their business and understand what they want to buy.

According to Gorgias, repeat shoppers generate 300% more revenue than first-time buyers. They generate 44% of revenue and 46% of orders—despite only accounting for 21% of a brand’s typical customer base.

Nonny Beer combines scarcity with exclusive access in its preorder marketing strategy. Its limited offer of 100 lager cases is available only to email subscribers, urging shoppers to act quickly before the product runs out. 

Preorder methods

There are multiple ways to structure preorders, depending on your business goals, cash flow needs, and customer expectations.

Pay now preorders

“Pay now” is the most common type of preorder. The full sales price of the item is due at the time of the preorder, and payment is collected like a normal purchase. You can almost think of it like a standard sale, but with an extended fulfillment time.

Pay now preorders are great for businesses that want to:

• Get paid upfront. If cash flow management is important to you, pay now helps ensure you always have the cash you need on hand.
• Capture immediate customer demand. Avoid losing sales due to out of stock products. Pay now lets you make the sale whenever shoppers are ready to buy.
• Automatically update out-of-stock products. Many preorder apps automatically accept preorders whenever a product becomes unavailable, reducing lost sales.
• Keep customers informed. Pay now preorder site messaging can be customized to display additional information, like expected shipping dates.

📚Read more: How to Handle Back Orders and Keep Ecommerce Sales Flowing

Pay later preorders

“Pay later” preorders let customers reserve items with either a deposit or without upfront payment. Customers are billed for the remaining or full sales price once the item ships.

Pay later preorders are ideal for businesses that want to:

• Offer flexibility for delayed products. This type of advance order gives you more fulfillment flexibility when informing customers that a product will ship later than intended.
• Test the market for new products. Pay later lets you gauge interest in a new product so you can produce the right amount.
• Charge customers at fulfillment. Align billing with supplier payments. This can also reduce refunds for people who change their minds between placing the preorder and receiving their product since they’re only billed when their order is picked. 

Subscription-based preorders

Subscription-based preorders are ideal if you want to:

• Generate recurring revenue. Subscriptioncustomers authorize recurring billing on a preagreed schedule (e.g., every month). Once you calculate churn and growth rates, you can confidently estimate how much revenue you’ll make from these subscriptions each month. 
• Build a community. Treat your subscription service as a premium community. Provide early or exclusive access to new products. For example, you could launch monthly product drops as a way to encourage retention and aid product discovery.

Limited edition drops and waitlists

Product drops involve retailers selling a small quantity of inventory for a limited time. When combined with preorders, both sales tactics are designed to build buzz and get people excited about a new product, using scarcity to entice orders.

The product drop model works well if you want to:

• Increase perceived value of a product: Scarcity influences how customers perceive a product’s value. Items in limited supply are seen as more valuable.
• Experiment with new product categories: Perhaps you’re selling tons of sneakers but aren’t sure about the launch of a new boot. The preorder model helps you assess demand before committing to inventory purchases, while still building hype for the category expansion. 

“[Product drops] give merchants a very good way of controlling demand,” says Christian Mackie, a technical service delivery manager at Shopify Plus. “It helps them control when they release certain items and how much [of a certain product] they release. If they know it’ll never be available again, they can control how much they actually have to spend upfront in producing those products.”

Preorder marketing strategies that work

Preorders have the potential to create buzz around a new launch, but it takes thoughtful marketing to convince people to commit to buying a product they won’t receive immediately. 

Email campaigns for preorder announcements

Unlike other marketing channels, email offers direct communication with your customers, without depending on algorithms to show your content to followers. Subscribers on your email list have willingly opted in to hear from your brand, making it ideal for preorder announcements. 

Consider an early access program that gives email subscribers first dibs on your new product. Use marketing automation tools like Shopify Email to schedule a sequence that encourages them to take action. 

Here’s what that might look like: 

• Email #1: Tease your new product launch.
• Email #2: Product launch alert with a call-to-action to preorder.
• Email #3: Last call reminder with a deadline to preorder.

Social media strategies for building anticipation

Preorders naturally generate buzz and excitement, making social media the perfect marketing channel to spread the word about your launch. Here’s how to maximize your social media campaigns to increase sales:

• Share sneak peeks: Get people excited about your new product launch by sharing behind the scenes of its development. You could also use creative imagery to tease what the new product (or its packaging) looks like. 
• Collaborate with influencers: Expand your audience beyond the people who already follow you by partnering with influencers or creators. Use Shopify Collabs to find creators, send them the new product, and track any sales they generate. 
• Run targeted ads: Use Shopify’s segmentation tools to divide your audience into groups based on shared traits like purchase history, email signups, or referral source. Retarget customers with personalized marketing campaigns that guide potential buyers toward your preorder page. 

Using scarcity and FOMO (fear of missing out) to boost sales

“While supplies last” is a marketing strategy that leans into the scarcity principle—the idea that customers need to act now if they want to get their hands on something. 

Limited supply heightens a product’s perceived value, enticing on-the-fence shoppers to commit to preorder before it’s too late. 

Here’s how to apply scarcity and urgency in practice:

• Countdown timers: Set a deadline for when customers need to place their preorder, then use countdown timers to help them visualize how long they’ve got left. 
• Live inventory badges: Highlight limited quantity of products available to preorder (e.g., “Hurry—only six left!”) to prompt preorders sooner rather than later.
• Tiered early bird pricing: Give customers a greater discount if they lock in their preorder early. For example, customers might get a 25% discount if they place their order within seven days, 15% within three days, and 5% on the day the preorder sale closes.
• Consistent “While supplies last” messaging: Reinforce urgency through reminders.From email subject lines to announcement bars on your website, remind potential customers of the upcoming preorder deadline at every touchpoint in the customer journey. 

📚Read more: 15 Creative “Coming Soon” Pages to Inspire You

How to set up preorders on Shopify

Setting up preorders can be complex, and there’s no one-size-fits-all solution. Shopify partners with the best preorder apps to ensure seamless integration and simplify preorder management for any business.

“We needed to provide a flawless in-store experience for our customers, even for preorder items,” says Benjamin Mateo, chief revenue officer at Asphalte. “This was challenging, because it meant that the sale did not generate stock withdrawal and that the customer would receive their garment months later. Shopify helped us make this process very smooth and easy.”

Popular preorder Shopify apps

Ready to start offering preorders? Try one of these preorder apps from the Shopify App Store.

PreProduct

PreProduct lets you accept preorders for upcoming product launches at any point in the product cycle. Choose between pay later and deposit-based preorders. Charge customers when you’re ready—via payment link or deferred payment.

Example: Endless Blading Co., maker of precision, multi-setup inline skate frames, uses PreProduct to forecast demand and place orders with vendors.

Amai PreOrder Manager

Amai Preorder Manager automates preorder dates based on stock levels, reducing manual work.

Example: The Century Guild, a fine art book shop, says the Amai app has saved it “countless hours of administrative work” while providing a “simple, seamless experience” for customers.

Purple Dot

Use Purple Dot to set up 100% Pay Later terms. Customer debit and credit cards are saved at checkout and charged when the product is ready to ship.

Example: Menswear brand SPOKE uses Purple Dot, allowing it to flexibly launch preorder products on schedule—some in stock and some on lead time. SPOKE says that preorders helped it "“achieve a 400% higher sell-through than we expected if we had had to wait to sell.”

Notify!

Notify! combines preorder waitlist management with scarcity tactics, including low inventory alerts on your product pages. You can also email customers when an unavailable product comes back in stock. 

Example: Bayyāra relied on this Shopify app to manage preorders before its official brand launch: “Our entire store was preorder only for a few months, while we waited for our first shipment, and the app enabled us to generate sales during that time.”

STOQ

Built for Shopify, the STOQ app simplifies preorders and deposits or partial payments. It also integrates with other Shopify apps, including Klaviyo, to handle customer preorder management. 

Example: Clothing retailer moshi moshi mind praises the app’s effectiveness: “We have generated quite a few sales through the back in stock-notifications already.”

Build your own custom preorder solution

Established merchants with complex needs can build their own preorder flow in Shopify, with preorder APIs. These tools allow partners and developers to build new preorder experiences directly within Shopify Checkout.

Optimize the mobile preorder experience

It’s estimated that by 2026, some 63% of all online orders will be placed on mobile devices. To capture those sales, the preorder experience and mobile checkout need to be seamless on smartphones and tablets. 

Start by implementing one-page checkout with Shop Pay. This feature saves customer payment and shipping details, enabling frictionless checkout in just a few clicks. It’s proven popular with online shoppers: when Shop Pay is available as a checkout option, Shop Pay buyers choose it two-thirds of the time.

Plus, if you use mobile apps (including Shop) to communicate with customers, take advantage of in-app push notifications to keep them updated throughout the preorder process. For example, you could send automated order tracking notifications that let an excited customer track their order when it leaves your warehouse—no manual intervention required. 

Measuring preorder success

Many retailers use preorders to successfully increase sales and boost conversions. Here’s how to measure whether the strategy is working for your online store.

Key metrics to track

Ecommerce analytics tools, like Shopify Analytics, can help you evaluate the performance of your preorder strategy. Focus on these preorder metrics:

• Preorder rate: The percentage of orders that were made through preorders. A higher preorder rate (e.g., above 60%) indicates that people are excited about the new release and the product is in high demand. 
• Time to sell out: The time it takes between launching a new product and selling out your inventory. Quick sellouts signal high demand and effective marketing campaigns. However, it can also indicate inventory forecasting issues, especially if you sold out of new stock much quicker than expected and still have a waitlist of purchase-ready shoppers. 
• Preorder conversion rates: The percentage of visitors who place a preorder after landing on your product page. If this is lower than expected, work on optimizing the checkout process and gather feedback to fix friction points in the customer journey. 
• Refund or cancellation rate: Even after a customer has placed their preorder, they can change their mind and request a refund or cancellation before the product ships. 

Combine these quantitative metrics with qualitative data through customer feedback surveys. Why do people cancel their preorder? What made them commit to their purchase? Where did they hear about the launch?

Using preorder data for future planning

Even if the first rollout wasn’t a roaring success, preorder analytics help adjust your strategy going forward. Analyze trends to optimize the customer experience: 

• If unclear shipping timelines lead to cancellations, emphasize delivery estimates more obviously throughout the customer journey. 
• If the preorder window was too long, shorten the gap and begin accepting preorders closer to the estimated fulfillment time for your next launch. 

Preorder customer communication

With preorders, customers have a gap between purchase and delivery. Clear communication is paramount—besides setting customer expectations, it also helps to keep customers excited about their new product. 

Setting clear expectations

Transparent, automated updates help build customer trust and reduce pressure on your support team. When shoppers know what to expect, they’re less likely to ask “Where is my order?” questions or request a return. Add elements like shipping timelines, FAQs, and trust badges to help reassure first-time preorder customers.

Start by sharing the product’s estimated shipping or delivery date wherever you advertise preorders. That includes:

• Announcement bars 
• Product pages
• Checkout page
• Order confirmation emails

Update templates and timing

With some preorders, shoppers have committed to a purchase through a “pay later” program. The last thing you want is to debit their card on file unexpectedly. Send regular notifications—like an email reminder the day before you process their payment—to keep them excited about their new product and reduce the likelihood of refund requests.

The team at Suri, which launched 5,000 preorders for its sustainable toothbrush, learned firsthand the importance of regular communication with preorder customers. They set up proactive customer support early on, in anticipation of shipping delays. Support teams could proactively communicate with affected customers and maintain goodwill.

“We didn’t have a single refund as a result of that,” says co-founder Mark Rushmore on a Shopify Masters episode. “I think a combination of thinking about your infrastructure to help you address customers [and] being proactive in your communication [were key].”