How do I mark all of the products in my Shopify store as requiring pre-order?

You could possibly try to add a sticker saying “Pre-order” to all of your product images before uploading them to your store.

There are multiple ways in which you can list your products on your Shopify store as items for pre-order. You can either make manual changes to your store yourself or download a Shopify app that will help you with your pre-orders.

Apps Method: You can do a search for pre-order apps on the Shopify app store to see which one will work best for your business. A few of the top-rated pre-order apps include 'Pre-order Now - Pre-order', 'Pre-Order Manager 2.0 PreOrder', and 'Advanced Pre-Order'. Each app is different and will have a different method for allowing pre-orders so make sure that you follow the instructions carefully.

Authorize Payments: In this case, all of your products require a pre-order. We would recommend changing the authorization of payments to manual. This is because you want to be sure that the customer knows they will not receive their order until it is ready, meaning you collect payment when the product is ready for dispatch. Follow these steps to change the authorization of payments:

1) Go to 'settings' and click 'payments'.

2) Search for ‘payment authorization’ and then click ‘manually capture payment for orders'. Make sure you click 'save' to secure this change.

Product Page Template: This last method is slightly more complicated as it involves creating an alternate product template to make sure that your customers know that they are placing a pre-order rather than a normal order. Creating a new template will change the product page from saying 'add to cart' to 'pre-order'. Follow these steps to create a new template:

1) After you have logged in to your Shopify dashboard, click on ‘online store’ and then ‘themes’.

2) Find ‘actions’ and then click ‘edit code’.

3) In ‘templates directory’ click ‘add a new template’. Then select the ‘product’ option from the drop-down menu and name the template as ‘pre-order’.

4) Click on the ‘create template’ option. A new template will open with the name 'pre-order.liquidtemplate' in the code editor. Look for the code:

{% section ‘product-template’ %}

Change that code to:

{% section ‘product-pre-order-template’ %}

6) In the same file, look for a <script> tag that contains this line of code:

addToCart: {{ 'products.product.add_to_cart' | t | json }},

Change it to:

addToCart: {{ 'Pre-order' | json }},

7) Click 'save'.

8) In the 'sections directory, click 'add a new section'. Name your new section 'product-pre-order-template'.

9) Click 'create section'. Your new 'product-pre-order-template.liquid' file will open in the code editor. Delete all of the default code, so that the file is blank.

10) In the 'sections directory', click 'product-template.liquid'. Copy all of the content from this file, and paste it into your new 'product-pre-order-template.liquid' file.

11) In your new 'product-pre-order-template.liquid' file, find and replace the 'add to cart' button text.

Look for this code:

<span data-add-to-cart-text>

{% unless current_variant.available %}

{{ 'products.product.sold_out' | t }}

{% else %}

{{ 'products.product.add_to_cart' | t }}

{% endunless %}

</span>

Change it to:

<span data-add-to-cart-text>

{{ 'Pre-order' | json | remove: '"' }}

</span>

12) Click 'save'.

Note: Each theme is different, and the code used for the 'add to cart' button text may vary. If you replace instances of 'products.product.add_to_cart' with 'pre-order' (leaving all other punctuation intact), then your 'add to cart' button text should change to read 'pre-order' instead.

To assign this template to your products, follow these steps:

1) On your Shopify admin, click 'products' then 'all products'.

2) Click the name of the product you want to make available for pre-order.

3) In the 'theme templates' sidebar section, change 'product' to 'product.pre-order'.

4) Click 'save'.

You may also find that you need to change the inventory of your products to allow customers to purchase pre-order products, even if they have an inventory amount of 0. To do this follow these steps:

1) On your Shopify admin, click 'products' then 'all products'.

2) Click the name of the product you want to make available for pre-order.

3) Click 'edit'.

4) Check the box 'allow customers to purchase this product when it's out of stock' and then 'save'.