With mystery items, you can delight your shoppers with surprise items. Shoppers can place a mystery item in their cart but they won't know which item they've received until they unbox it at home.
It's also a great way for your shop to move old or slow-moving inventory while still delivering a positive and fun shopping experience.
In CommentSold, you can define criteria for your mystery items and CommentSold will choose which item ships to customers based on that criteria.
How Mystery Items Benefit Your Shop
- Talk up mystery items in a live sale or social post and create urgency around the purchase (i.e., We've got some new mystery products in our shop. They're going fast, so don't miss out!)
- Automatically move slow-selling and/or large quantity items.
- Ensure shoppers don't receive a mystery item that they've previously purchased.
- Simultaneously offer an item as both a mystery item and a regularly stocked item.
Before You Get Started
While CommentSold will choose a mystery item based on the criteria you define, there are a few other system requirements necessary for an item to be considered available as a mystery item.
- You will need to have posted the item(s) on Facebook or linked the item(s) to a Facebook post. Learn how to post an item or link a post here.
- Items that meet the selected criteria must be in stock.
Additionally, it's important to understand the following regarding mystery items:
- CommentSold will not offer a mystery item as an upsell item during checkout. While a shopper might be offered the actual item (e.g., leggings, placemats, patterns, etc.), they will not be offered that item as a "Mystery Item" at check out.
- If you wish for a "final sale" product to be pulled as a mystery item, then your mystery item must also be set up as a "final sale" product. Products can only be marked "final sale" after you have created them, so create your mystery product first, then edit the product record to mark it as "final sale."
- Mystery items do not have the option to add custom shipping. However, items that meet all mystery item criteria and have a custom shipping price are eligible for mystery item selection. Regular shipping rates apply to mystery item purchases.
- If you have combined duplicate accounts, a customer may receive items they previously purchased as a mystery item.
- Revenue from mystery items is not included in the Live History Total Revenue report amount when featuring mystery items on live sales. Learn more about analyzing live sale performance here.
Create a Mystery Item
- Select Products in the side menu of your CommentSold dashboard.
- Select Add New Mystery Item Product from the Add Product drop-down at the top of the page.
Add Item Details and Media
Creating a mystery item is very similar to creating a regular item in CommentSold: you'll enter item details, upload a product photo, and enter inventory.
When you enter item details for a mystery item, you'll enter basic item details similar to a regular item and define your mystery item criteria so CommentSold can pick from qualifying items.
Remember, the Product Name, Retail Price, and SKU are required fields. These are located on the left side of the page.
Below we walk through the specific mystery item fields, located on the right side of the product page.
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Product Category. Select a category for this product. Selecting a category will help you organize your products and improve SEO.
- Subcategory. Select a subcategory for this product.
- Product Type. Select a product type from the drop-down for this product.
- Size. Enter all sizes you'll offer for your mystery item, if applicable. Values are not case-sensitive (i.e., if you enter Small, CommentSold will also consider sizes in small, S, and s).
- Inventory Days Restriction. Choose how many days an item should be posted for sale before qualifying as a mystery item.
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Min/Max Price (optional).
- For Min Price, enter the retail price you defined for the mystery item. If you leave this field blank, there will be no minimum price for products offered as mystery items meaning a shopper could spend more on an item than its regular price. This could create a negative shopper experience.
- For Max Price, enter the maximum item price you're willing to include as a mystery item. This prevents you from too deeply discounting an item. If you leave this field blank, there will be no limit to the price of products offered at the mystery item's retail price.
- Max Cost (optional). Enter the maximum wholesale cost to consider for a mystery item. This prevents you from offering a mystery item at a price that is below what you paid for it.
- What Collections do you want to pull from? Choose which collection(s) CommentSold can select mystery items from. If you leave this field blank, CommentSold will choose a qualifying mystery item from any of your collections.
- Ignore customer history? Choose whether CommentSold should check a customer's order history to confirm whether they've purchased the chosen mystery item below. We recommend you leave this checkbox unchecked.
- Exclude this product from Automatic Product Videos from Live Sale. Selecting this box will keep automatic product videos from live sales from being used for this product. We recommend you select this checkbox to keep these items a surprise.
- Collections. Select which existing collections you wish to add the mystery item to. Depending on how you advertise this item, you may include it in a special promotions collection to draw more attention to it and increase potential sell-through.
- Online Store. Decide if you wish to publish this item to your webstore.
Once you complete the mystery item criteria field, you'll see the number of Matched Items Per Size. Ensure your criteria generates a number of available options. This will keep shoppers engaged in the mystery sale while still making the experience urgent and desirable.
When you're finished, select Add Product in the top-right corner of the page to proceed to the next step.
On this page, you'll upload a "product photo" for your mystery item. We recommend you create a custom graphic that represents the item in an engaging way that incorporates your branding while still keeping the actual products a secret.
If you have multiple separate mystery items available, tailor the graphics to indicate the different types of items to avoid confusion and promote a unified brand image.
- Select + Upload Images in the upper-right corner of the page.
- Choose the image you wish to upload for your mystery item. You can also drag an image from your desktop or a folder to the Manage Images section.
- Uploaded images display in the Manage Images section. You can manage an image using the buttons that appear over the image (e.g., rotate, delete, download, etc.).
Your last step will be entering the inventory stock for the item. This lets CommentSold (and your shoppers) know how many of the mystery item in a specific size remains available. If there are no qualifying items in a customer's size, CommentSold will show the mystery item as sold out in their size.
- Choose how you wish to add inventory.
- Select the + sign at the top of the Add/Remove Stock column to add a flat stock number to all size variants.
- Select the + sign in the Add/Remove Stock column of a specific variant to add stock to that variant only.
- Enter the Quantity.
- Select Add Quantity.
- Select Update Variants in the top-right corner of the page to save your changes.
Learn More
- Enable Secondary Offer to Upsell Items at Checkout. Learn how to increase a shopper's average order value by offering items during the checkout process.
- Create Retail Price Changes. Learn how to bulk change the price of all products in one or multiple collections.