The gifting market continues to surge, with consumers increasingly cruising their favorite online brands to meet their gift-giving needs. For ecommerce brand founders running Shopify stores, this trend is both an incredible opportunity and a unique challenge.
How do you create a seamless, memorable gifting experience that drives sales, expands your audience, and fully blends in with the rest of a finely curated brand? This question has been tossed around for months as this ecommerce trend keeps getting hotter and founders realize that many online gifting tools just don't meet the moment.
For Shopify stores looking to bring their online gifting strategy up a notch (or 20), Zest is the gifting platform you’ve been wishing for. Zest goes beyond basic Shopify gift message functionality like cart notes or clunky apps. Instead, Zest empowers brands to build the right gifting experience that fits their audience best, whether that’s consumer or corporate gifters, in the swiftest way possible.
As gifting becomes the biggest opportunity for online brands in 2025, now’s the time to explore how the right gifting tools at your fingertips can do for your shoppers and your store.
Embracing the Emotional Side of Ecommerce Gifting
Today’s consumers expect more than just the best products — they want the best experiences. When someone purchases a gift through your Shopify store, it’s an intentional, thoughtful choice they made to create a moment of joy for someone (or many someones) they care about, and if your store’s experience requires them to go through a gifting process that’s:
- full of friction
- requires a phone call
- takes weeks to process
- one size fits all
…odds are good they’re going to head elsewhere for the perfect present, no matter how much they love your stuff.
This emotional connection between your products and your devoted shoppers isn’t a burden to sweep under the rug, though. It actually represents a powerful opportunity to differentiate your brand and give shoppers a reason to come back more often.
In other words, lean into the feelings.
Don’t ignore the emotional and psychological aspects of gifting. Instead, create a gifting experience on your store that aligns with the feel-good hormones flooding your customers while shopping for gifts on your site.
Nearly 75% of customers cite “experience” as an important part of their purchase decisions, noting qualities like convenience and a welcoming feeling as leading contributors to what makes an experience “good."
If your Shopify store is able to bridge the gap between what customers crave — a convenient and easy way to purchase gifts that doesn’t throw a wrench in their gifting high — and what your experience offers them, you’re setting your store up for wild success.
(Plus, research shows that customers who purchase gifts tend to spend more per transaction and are more likely to become repeat buyers. Not too shabby, eh?)
Many Shopify stores, however, still rely on outdated gifting solutions that create big friction in the buying process and miss opportunities to enhance the customer experience or align with expectations. Developing a comprehensive gifting strategy is essential for tapping into this growing market segment.
What Makes Zest Different from Other Shopify Gifting Solutions?
Is Zest the only gifting solution that integrates with Shopify? Nah, not even close. One glance at the Shopify App Store reveals a wide variety of gifting and gift-related apps ready to plug in.
However, most of the available apps are lightweight or single-purpose, and many feel disparate from a best-in-class ecommerce CX (think: outdated design, clunky UX, or overlays and popups that are jarringly off-brand. Yeesh.).
Zest was made to look and feel like your brand while providing shoppers with an intuitive gifting experience that goes with the rest of your site’s flow. Here are a few ways we ensure Zest fits snugly into any Shopify store’s funnel.
Seamless Integration with Popular Shopify Strategies
Unlike basic gifting apps that feel like afterthoughts, Zest integrates seamlessly into your existing Shopify workflow. The platform understands that gifting isn't just about adding a simple gift message — it's about creating an entire ecosystem that supports your brand's growth strategy.
Zest transforms the traditional Shopify gift message experience into something truly special. Instead of a basic text box that’s easy to overlook, customers can create personalized messages on custom digital card designs, send gifts via email or link, schedule delivery dates for the perfect timing, and even add multiple recipients to a single order from your regular DTC cart and checkout or a dedicated multiship gifting storefront. \
What's more is that Zest integrates with Klaviyo, empowering Shopify brands to trigger gifting-specific email and SMS campaigns that welcome and nurture both gifters and recipients. This full-bodied approach to improving customer experience with a toolset fully dedicated to better gifting sets successful brands apart from their competitors and opens them up to a whole new audience of gift-hungry shoppers.
Delightful Personalization Features
The modern consumer craves personalization, and Zest delivers this in spades. The platform allows gifters to:
- Create custom messages for every recipient in a gift order, no matter how many.
- Choose from a library of digital gift card designs that align with your store's aesthetic (and are super swappable for each changing season).
- Schedule gifts to send on specific dates in the future or send gifts instantly via e-gifting, which is a lifesaver for last-minute shoppers.
- Choose from add-ons in your Zest-powered gifting storefront. Include more personalization options here to scratch any itch, like handwritten notes, printed logo cards, and more.
Zest takes the most cumbersome parts of online gifting, such as adding personalized touches or managing gift message logistics, and makes them a natural part of the process. These personalization features are so seamless, your shoppers might not even notice they're new features. Instead, they feel like they've been there all along and they can't imagine a time before these gifting features.
Gifting Insights for Better Decision Making and Marketing
Without a dedicated gifting platform in your store’s tech stack, there’s little or no clarity around the channel as a whole. There’s no way to quickly see which orders are gift orders in your Shopify backend, which doesn’t help you in understanding how big the channel, or the scope of the gifting opportunity, is for your store.
Orders placed through Zest’s suite of gifting features clearly mark gifts in your Shopify data, but your own Zest dashboard finally gives Shopify brands a peek beneath the gift wrap. Understand who your gifting customers are, how many gifts are sold, gifting revenue, and more from the comfort of your Zest account so you can finally market and scale this channel as you would any other.
How Zest Enhances Your Shopify Store's Performance
Increased Average Order Value
Gift-givers typically spend more than regular customers, and Zest is designed to fully capitalize on this trend. The platform's intuitive ease of use, ability to add multiple recipients to one gift order, and digital-first e-gifting features that enable instant gifting naturally increase your average order value.
After all, when it’s easier for your shoppers to buy gifts, they’ll buy more gifts. It really is as simple as that.
Improved Customer Retention and Acquisition
When your store is a gifting powerhouse, customers will choose yours over competitors every time because of the sheer convenience and quality experience. However, Zest also turns every gift purchase into a potential customer acquisition opportunity. While the gift purchasers are free to opt into your marketing during the checkout process, a typical ecommerce practice, Zest also gives recipients the chance to opt in, too.
When recipients opt in and receive your thoughtful comms and reflect on the beautifully packaged gift with personalized messages they received from your Shopify store, they're more likely to visit your site and make their own purchases. This organic customer acquisition is invaluable for sustainable growth.
Streamlined Operations
Managing gifting logistics can be complex, especially during peak gifting seasons. Zest simplifies this process by streamlining gift processing and automatically pushing orders into Shopify (no more manual SKU entry here!), managing scheduled deliveries, fulfilling custom add-ons and gift messages, and providing a consistent process within one platform that integrates directly with your existing Shopify operations.
So long are the days of tracking down spreadsheets, digging through old email threads, and trying to manage all of the details on your own. Zest was made to take the stress out of gifting operations so your team can spend more time developing other client relationships, improving products, or generally making your business better.
Real-World Results: Why Brands Choose Zest
Shopify store owners who implement Zest typically see immediate improvements in key metrics:
- Increased gift sales and order values thanks to the ease and convenience of Zest-powered gifting.
- Reduced gift processing time due to automatic processing and fewer manual tasks.
- Reduced customer service inquiries thanks to gift order transparency in gifting dashboards and automatic tracking status updates.
- Increased repeat purchase rates from gifters who found the experience so easy the first time that they return to gift again.
- Increased team morale as fewer hours are needed for each and every gift order.
These results speak to Zest's effectiveness as more than just a gifting tool for Shopify stores — it's a comprehensive solution that supports your overall business objectives and solidifies gifting as a channel worthy of investment.
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Getting Started with Zest: Implementation Best Practices
Ramping up an entirely new growth channel, or investing in an outdated or forgotten channel, can feel overwhelming. Where do you start? How long will it take? Who lends guidance?
Zest's team of gifting-obsessed people is passionate about helping brands grow with this much-needed solution, and is ready to help tackle implementation by your side. But as you get started down this path to serious success, here are few things to keep in mind.
Optimize Your Message Strategy
A ridiculously simple and delightful gifting flow is a relatively new experience in ecommerce. Shoppers are so used to filling out contact forms for personalization, making phone calls, going through the checkout once per recipient, or hitting endless roadblocks that an easy CX might surprise them.
Prepare your customers before launching with Zest by sending emails containing how-to GIFs, screenshots of what to expect, and more. Share the most exciting aspects of Zest gifting, like instant e-gifting or multiship checkouts, and get them hyped to head to your store the next time they need a gift.
And remember: Talk about gifting annoyingly often. You want your brand to be synonymous with “perfect gift,” and touting your new gifting capabilities is a surefire way to stay top of mind.
Integrate Gifting into Your Marketing Calendar
Your Shopify strategy should account for major gifting seasons — not just the obvious ones like Christmas and Valentine's Day, but also graduations, Mother's Day, Father's Day, and back-to-school periods. Zest's scheduling features make it easy to create marketing campaigns around these events and capture gift purchases well in advance.
Beyond seasonal opportunities, consider how gifting can support other business initiatives. For instance, influencer gifting can be a powerful way to build relationships and generate authentic content, while corporate gifting opens entirely new revenue streams.
Train Your Team on Gifting Best Practices
Ensure your customer service team understands Zest's features so they can help customers maximize their gifting experience. This knowledge becomes particularly valuable during peak seasons when gifting inquiries spike. Luckily, the Zest platform ensures your gifting processes are highly teachable and the knowledge is easily transferred across your team and new hires. So, no need to worry about outsiders getting your very specific ad hoc process right.
The Future of Gifting in Ecommerce
As online shopping continues to evolve, the brands that succeed will be those that create emotional connections with their customers. Gifting represents one of the most powerful ways to build these connections, and having the right technology platform is crucial for happy customers and a happy bottom line.
Zest firmly plants your Shopify store at the forefront of this trend, providing the tools and insights needed to build a profitable, scalable gifting channel that enhances rather than complicates your operations.
The question now isn't whether gifting will become more important to ecommerce success — it's whether your Shopify store will be ready to capitalize on this opportunity. Zest provides everything you need to offer a comprehensive gifting experience that drives sales, builds customer loyalty, and differentiates your brand in a crowded market.
From seamless integration with your existing Shopify strategy to advanced personalization features that delight customers, Zest offers the complete solution that ecommerce brand founders need to succeed in the evolving digital landscape.
Ready to see how Zest can transform your Shopify store's gifting capabilities? The future of ecommerce gifting is here, and it's more powerful than you ever imagined.
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