Selling digital products on Shopify

Shopify doesn’t natively offer features to add a download button for digital products or automated emails for such orders. Without the right setup, customers may not automatically receive their items, which can create a poor user experience.

Luckily, Shopify offers digital downloads apps that automate the process, help ensure a smooth and automatic order and delivery process, and more.

In this guide, I’ll break down how you can sell digital products on Shopify to successfully enable downloads and protect your products from unauthorized distribution.

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Why sell digital products?

Selling digital products on Shopify is excellent even for beginner merchants, since the platform makes it easy to sell without prior experience.

Digital products allow you to sell without inventory, giving you a higher profit margin. There are also no manufacturing or storage facility costs, letting you save even more.

With digital items, you don’t have to ship products, which means that customer satisfaction only depends on you. You’re not held responsible for shipping carrier delays, while your customers don’t need to wait for orders or pay shipping fees.

How to sell digital products on Shopify: step-by-step

To sell digital products, you need to remove shipping options from each digital product, add a download function, customize email templates, and promote your products.

Remove shipping options

When customers buy digital products, shipping options shouldn’t be available at checkout. For existing products, you can change shipping settings in the product page:

1. Go to Products and open the digital product.
2. Scroll down to the Shipping section and toggle off the “Physical product” tab.
3. You can also turn off “Inventory tracked” under the Inventory section.
4. Save the changes.

Add a download function

Shopify doesn’t have a native download functionality for digital products, but it offers a free app for it. The Digital Downloads app lets you upload digital JPEG, PDF and ZIP files as products, and customers receive the link as soon as they purchase the item.

Here’s how to use it:

1. Install Digital Downloads from the Shopify App Store.
2. Click Upload file to add your digital product.
3. Name the product and select the fulfillment type and download limit. Then, click “Next: Set up product.”
4. You’ll be redirected to the product page. Add a product description, media, pricing, and other details. Click Save.

Digital Downloads is free to use, but it’s also limited in terms of features. Here are a few alternative apps I tested that you can try out:

• EDP - Easy Digital Products – free app for up to 30 orders per month (3 products), paid plans with unlimited products starting from $14.99/month. License keys to protect your digital products, customizable emails and download buttons are all available. The UI isn't the most slick, but otherwise it’s a great, affordable app.
• BIG Digital Downloads – supports many file formats, like PDF, JPEG, MP4, ZIP, and RAR and allows bulk importing. It comes with a free plan to try out 3 products, while paid plans start from $12.49/month for unlimited products and 10GB storage.
• Pendora Digital Downloads – free app for digital downloads with 2GB storage that supports formats like PDF, ZIP, MP4, and others. I’d recommend it for beginners, since it’s very intuitive and guides you through the whole process step by step.

Create email templates

Digital product fulfillment usually happens through email delivery. Once customers buy an item, they expect immediate delivery. The Shopify Digital Downloads app lets you easily customize emails. Here’s how:

1. Open Digital Downloads > Settings > Download ready email.
2. The app offers a pre-made email template for digital downloads. However, you can customize it or add variables.
3. Click Save once done.

You can use delivery emails as an opportunity to create original email copy and encourage further sales. For example, adding additional product recommendations, providing easy access to customer support, and asking customers to leave reviews can help encourage more sales in the long run.

For example, here’s order confirmation page offered by the EDP app your customers would see post-purchase:

Since the download button is already available, post-purchase emails may be less important.

Optimize product page SEO

Although your products are digital, they still have product pages that need to be customized. For a product page to rank on search engines, you need to follow the best SEO practices:

• SEO metadata – meta titles and meta descriptions tells search engines what your page is about. Meta titles should be no longer than 60 characters, while meta descriptions shouldn’t be longer than 160 characters to avoid cut off.
• Product descriptions – write product descriptions that clearly explain what your digital Shopify product is and how it would benefit the customer. Instead of writing “A 20-page PDF guide on how to grow your own garden,” you can craft something like “Grow a thriving home garden with this step-by-step guide.”
• Images – add unique images to your product pages and include alt texts so search engines can understand the context of images. It increases your chances to rank in image search.

Promote your products

Organic search traffic is the long-term goal, but you can also promote your digital products through other channels.

For example, email campaigns can help get sales faster because you’re reaching out to people who have already shown an interest in your brand. Use it to announce your new digital products or share email-exclusive discounts or early access. 

You can also use social media to reach new audiences through ads. It’s a great way to create short-form content that highlights product benefits or show real use cases.

If you’re struggling to gain attention, one of the most effective ways to reach customers is to organize a giveaway. For example, you can request people to follow your brand on social media or like a post to increase engagement and you will choose a winner who gets a free product.

Practical tips for selling digital products

Whether your digital product will sell depends on how you position and market your product. Aside from SEO, there are other important tasks you should consider, like building an email list early, safeguarding your products, and analyzing performance to optimize for sales.

Build an email list in advance

To launch your digital products on Shopify successfully, start building your subscriber list as early as possible, even if the product isn’t out yet.

A couple tested strategies can help:

• Build a landing page with your digital product preview and countdown until launch. Give people an opportunity to sign up with their email to get notified when the product becomes available.
• Promise an early bird discount. Inform users that email subscribers will get access to the product earlier than everyone else and with a discount.
• Make the opt-in form super accessible. Promote your product perks and invite people to sign up everywhere you can.
• Use pop ups. Pop ups can be very effective if you already have a website and a decent offer, but don’t overuse them to prevent annoying site visitors.

Protect your product

Digital products are a lot more susceptible to illegal redistribution and piracy, so it’s important to protect them. Here are a few strategies to safeguard your products:

• Use unique download links with a limit to prevent link sharing.
• Create a licensing agreement that users have to agree with before purchase, which defines how customers can use your product.
• Use license keys to grant access to downloads.
• Disable right click from your website.
• PDF-stamp customer’s personal details on their downloadable and discourage them from sharing.

You can add license keys and PDF stamps using many of the digital download apps that Shopify offers. Meanwhile, creating licensing agreements can take some research, but it will provide you with legal protection in case someone will try to profit off your work.

Analyze product performance

Use Shopify Reports to track how your digital products perform. Some Shopify apps for selling digital products, like Pendora, also give you analytics tools for this.

For example, track your traffic sources to understand which channels bring you most potential customers. Then, track the conversion rates to see what your customers buy and how much.

Even tracking top-performing products can give you insights into your audience. It can help understand what they’re looking for, giving you ideas for how to optimize other digital products.

How to test digital product orders on Shopify

Before launching a digital product, you should test the ordering process to ensure no issues post-release. You can activate test mode by following these steps:

1. Go to Shopify Settings > Payments.
2. Click Manage by Shopify Payments.
3. Select Enable test mode > Save.
4. Then, add the digital product to the cart the way a customer would.
5. Complete the checkout using the payment details provided by your gateway.
6. Check if the order was completed successfully.

Don’t forget to deactivate the test mode after you complete the digital product order test. You can learn more tips for successful test orders from Shopify.

Trending digital products to sell on Shopify

If you don’t have ideas for digital products yet, but want to sell items that don’t require shipping, then take a look at a few ideas on how to expand your inventory:

• Online courses – share your knowledge about specific topics by turning them into online courses, whether it’s fitness, finance, design, or other areas.
• Templates – create Canva, Notion, Excel templates that save time, give immediate value, and have no learning curve.
• AI resources – craft AI workflow templates that help businesses save time and adopt AI tools easier.
• Productivity tools – students or generally productive people who enjoy planning their work enjoy digital planners, habit trackers, and similar tools. Depending on what you create, sales can peak during the New Year or the start of the academic year.
• Digital artwork – create printable wall art, visuals, fonts, icons, or any other digital assets you can think of. Businesses are willing to pay for files that make their websites stand out.
• eBooks – if you’re a writer, you can craft fiction or non-fiction books. However, the competition is high in this area, so generic content isn’t likely to sell. 

If none of these work for you, think of what you can create when taking into consideration your skills, hobbies, and interests and create something unique.

Final thoughts

Selling digital products is a great way to earn, especially since they don’t need inventory, storage, and shipping costs. To set up digital products on Shopify, you need the Shopify Digital Downloads app or a third-party alternative. They help you set up a download button to your order or thank you pages and send automated email templates.

Once your products are created, make sure you put focus on how you’ll promote them. Start growing an email list, use social media ads, and prioritize SEO to get higher rankings and organic traffic.

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About the author

Kristina Jaruseviciute

Kristina is a Content Lead at TinyIMG responsible for informing and educating readers on all things Shopify-related. She covers a broad range of topics around SEO, AI visibility, website performance, and conversion rates to help merchants stand out in a competitive landscape.