ECommerce on Shopify: How to use automatic discounts

The promotional price strategy is a marketing strategy that encourages sales of your products or services, attracting customers quickly by the feeling of lack that causes a discounted price.

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A coupon or discount can be the perfect excuse for your customers to buy a product in your eCommerce that they have been seeking for a long time, when they see the reduced price they are inclined to think that this offer has a limited duration and they buy it immediately for afraid of "losing" that offer, which will increase the sales of your eCommerce considerably. Of course, before implementing a promotion we must take into account the profitability that it generates in order to offer an adequate profit margin and not cause losses to the business. In addition, we cannot exceed in the amount and duration of promotions because our brand can lose value.

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There are different types of promotional prices, such as flash sales, offers (2x1, 70% on second units, etc.), loyalty programs, seasonal sales or free shipping coupons, among many others, the most important thing is to know what type of promotion is more profitable in your eCommerce and is more adapted to your products and customers.

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How can you use this strategy on Shopify?

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Shopify's eCommerce platform allows you to implement cart discounts in your eCommerce and add coupons from the "Discounts" page of the dashboard.

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The automatic discounts that Shopify offers are applied directly in the payment page, and can be of the percentage, fixed amount or buy X get Y type. Although, by using our Planet tool, you can apply discounts to the products of your eCommerce that you want automatically, showing to your client directly what is the final price of the product before adding it to the shopping cart. Also, in Shopify discounts, you can only have one active automatic discount, so you cannot apply multiple discounts on the same order, either through automatic discounts or coupons.

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For discount codes or coupons, there are also three different types: fixed amount, percentage or free shipping, allowing you to specify the validity date, the number of available uses, the minimum quantity and with which products of your eCommerce it works.

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Now, in order to use Shopify discounts properly we must take into account some issues:

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• Not all users know how to apply discount codes or understand the terms and conditions in which an automatic discount is applied, so it can give them error or may not work, and generate a bad shopping experience for the user.
• It is not possible to apply two discounts simultaneously, either by code or automatic discounts, which limits us from offering our users, for example, a free shipping coupon and a discount coupon, which restricts our possibilities.
• The customer sees the original price of the products, as, until they are making the purchase process, they do not see the discount applied, so in addition to being less attractive to customers, it can also be confusing.
• If a coupon is not valid anymore, the customer convinced that it is still valid has to start the checkout process to realize that this coupon has been cancelled, while in the case of in-store discounts, the price would be shown directly before adding it to the cart.

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For example, if a customer has a coupon of 30% of discount on swimwear and free shipping, instead of seeing the price of the discounted item before adding the product to the cart, the discount is applied before making the payment by adding the 30% discount coupon, in addition, this avoids the customer to use the free shipping coupon and to know the real price he will pay for the product before starting to order it.

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Consequently, by using automated discounts, with tools such as Planet, you will improve your users shopping experience and increase your eCommerce sales.

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