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Shipping delay message to customers: tell shoppers on your store before they buy
A guide to telling shoppers about a shipping delay on your Shopify store before they order, with a feed message, cart targeting and a clean update when the date moves.
When a carrier falls behind or your warehouse is buried in orders, much of the advice is about the email you send to people who have already bought. That email matters. But a shopper who orders today without knowing about the delay can become tomorrow's "where is my order" ticket.
This guide covers the other half: telling shoppers about a shipping delay on your store, before they buy. You will be able to write a delay notice that answers the questions shoppers actually have, put it in your store's feed, show it on product and cart pages, and change it cleanly when the date moves.
The examples use NotiFeed and NotiPop from Atomato. Both are on every plan, including the free Starter plan.
What a delay notice needs to say
A shopper reading a delay notice wants to decide one thing: order now or not. Give them what they need for that decision and nothing else.
- The new timing. "Orders placed now ship within 5 business days" is useful. "Some orders may be delayed" is not.
- Who it affects. All orders, one warehouse's products, or one shipping method only.
- The reason, in one line. Carrier backlog, weather or a supplier hold. One line is enough.
- What stays the same. Express still ships next day, or gift cards still arrive by email straight away.
- Where to read more. Link a shipping page with the full detail, so the notice itself stays short.
Only promise dates your carrier and warehouse have confirmed. If you don't know the new date yet, say when you will update the notice instead of guessing.
Put the notice in your store's feed
A NotiFeed message sits in the feed that shoppers open from the bell in your header. It waits there until they choose to read it, and the unread badge on the bell tells them something new is posted. That suits a delay notice: shoppers who care about timing can find it on any page, and it doesn't cover the product they are looking at.
In Atomato, create a NotiFeed campaign from the Promote a sale or launch goal. Put the new timing in the Title (up to 120 characters) and the reason and exceptions in the Description (up to 200). To show the headline first, choose an image or emoji, then set Click behavior to Expand details, so a click opens the description and a button to your shipping page. With Expand details, the button text is required.
On Starter (Free), one NotiFeed campaign can be active, with one message. If you are already running a sale message, you will need to choose between them, or move to Scale, where one campaign can hold up to six messages. See the NotiFeed page for what the feed shows on desktop and mobile.
Show it on the pages where shoppers decide
Two good places for a delay notice are the product page and the cart. Targeting rules, included on every plan, let you show a message only there.
- Page URL Contains /products/ shows a message on every product page, including language folders such as /fr/products/.
- Cart items Is greater than 0 shows it once something is in the cart, and hides it if the cart empties.
- Cart products Includes any limits it to carts holding the products that ship from the delayed warehouse.
For the cart moment, a NotiPop works well alongside the feed message. It is a small message over the page that doesn't block it. A NotiPop waiting on a cart rule appears as soon as the cart matches. Keep the text to the new timing and a link, and set Hide after to a longer time, or ∞, so it stays until the shopper closes it. The full rule list is in Show a campaign on certain pages, devices or carts.
Customers who already ordered and come back to check on it are a separate group. On Scale and Enterprise+, you can add a message just for them with Customer Segments, for example a Shopify segment of customers with a recent order. It only reaches them while they are signed in. On Starter (Free), your one NotiFeed and one NotiPop are already in use by the notices above. Shoppers who aren't signed in only see messages set to All customers or Visitors.
A worked example: before and after
A coffee gear store ships grinders from a third-party warehouse and beans from its own roastery. In late November, the warehouse falls a week behind.
Before, the store adds one line to its announcement bar:
Due to high demand, some orders may be delayed.
It doesn't say which orders, how long or whether to order now. Support gets the same question all week.
After, the store runs one NotiFeed message for all shoppers:
Title: Grinders ship in 5 to 7 business days this week
Description: Our warehouse partner is behind on holiday volume. Coffee beans still roast and ship within 2 days. Full details on our shipping page.
Button: See shipping times
It adds a NotiPop with Cart products Includes any of the three grinders:
Grinders in this cart ship in 5 to 7 business days. Beans ship within 2.
A shopper buying beans never sees the cart warning. A shopper buying a grinder learns the timing before checkout, while they can still decide.
Change the date with a new message
Delays move. When yours does, don't just rewrite the old message. Editing a message keeps it the same message, so a shopper who has already seen it won't get a new badge, even if every word changes.
Add a new message or campaign with the new date, then remove the old one, so shoppers never see two versions of the truth. On Starter (Free), pause or end the active NotiFeed campaign first, because Atomato won't save a second one while it is active. Keep your notification feed fresh explains how the badge counts.
When the backlog clears, take the notice down the same day. On Scale and Enterprise+, you can set an end date on the Schedule tab if you know when it will clear. A schedule applies to the whole campaign, not one message, so keep the delay notice in its own campaign if it needs to end separately from your sale messages.
The same habits apply to deadlines. If your delay changes your holiday shipping cutoffs, update those messages too, as covered in Holiday shipping cutoffs: what to tell shoppers on-site, and when.
What this does not do
- It doesn't email or text customers who have already ordered. Use Shopify's order notifications or your email and SMS platform for that.
- It doesn't show on checkout, the thank-you page or the order status page.
- There's no location rule, so you can't show a regional delay to every shopper in that region. Name the region in the message instead.
- It doesn't read carrier tracking. The notice says what you write until you change it.
Next step
Write the five points from the first section for your current delay, even if it is only a possibility, so the notice is ready before you need it. For other store news worth posting the same way, see On-site notification examples for Shopify and Announcing a price increase to customers.
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