5 Types of Discount Offers in Shopify

What are offers?

Offers can be a discount, deal or promotion intended to motivate customers to make a purchase on your store. In this blog we are going to introduce the various mechanisms available to you as a merchant to package your offers in the most creative way to promote your brand, boost conversions, acquire new customers and retain loyal customers.

What are the various types of offers available on a Shopify Store?

• Shopify Coupon Codes – Coupon codes are the old fashioned yet time-tested way to offer discounts to your customers. They offer either a reduction in price, a freebie giveaway or something on the next purchase or free shipping. However, typically they define certain criteria that need to be fulfilled in order to avail the offer. Using discount codes could help you track the success of your marketing efforts by providing valuable metrics. If you’re running multiple campaigns, creating a separate discount code for each goal can make it easier to see the relative impact on sales and gauge its effectiveness. 

• Shopify Sale / Offer Price – Shopify offers the concept of “sale price” where you can define a higher price in the field titled “Compare at Price” and the actual price of the product in the product field called “Variant Price”. If you define a Compare at Price (obviously > the actual price), it is displayed with a strikethrough next to the actual price.
  Example: Rs 2000  Rs 1000 (50% off). The style could change but the idea is to display the higher price with strikethrough and the lower price next to it. This is a simple and effective way to plan seasonal sales or product / category specific promotions.

• Free Gift Offer – Freebies can be a great way to push new launches or a special product or simply to increase average order value of a cart. You can offer BUY X GET Y type discounts right from Shopify’s discount panel without the use of an app such. Example: Free gift for orders over $500 or Buy 3 Shirts and Get the 4^th One Free. You can set a minimum purchase requirement (in terms of currency) or a volume requirement. You could further refine it by specifying certain collections or specific set of products. The BUY X GET Y model can be set up to give the second product free.

• Shopify Automatic Discounts – These discounts apply to every eligible customer’s cart without any additional effort from them. What’s great is customers can see the discount on the cart page before they are taken to checkout. There is statistics to support that customers who start checking out knowing they are eligible for a “discount” are definitely more likely to complete the purchase. Also, it helps expedite the checkout which also leads to better conversion metrics. Finally, automatic discounts facilitate a frictionless checkout process that helps make the customer journey smoother. This is ideal for merchants who wish to run a storewide promotion like an anniversary sale.

• Shopify Discount Scripts – This feature is only available to Shopify Plus stores. Shopify provides a free app called Script Editor that can be added to Shopify Plus stores. Shopify scripts, including Discount Scripts, are pieces of code that can execute in the background and provide rich functionality. The Script Editor comes with some default scripts that you can use out of the box. However, if you have Ruby developers to assist you, you could create personalized experiences or creative offers for your customers at the cart or checkout level.

Need help configuring any of the above? Our team of experts can help you get the most out of Shopify discounts.