There are many different ways to discount products on the Shopify platform, and all of them have advantages and disadvantages. Unfortunately, there is no perfect way to do it, and the best thing to do is pick the approach that best fits your promotion and the item you are discounting. Let’s take a look at them!
Shopify automatic discounts are our preferred method to discount products in the cart. You set them up within Shopify Admin, under the Discounts section on the left menu. A full guide is available here.
The main benefit of this approach is discounts are visible in the cart, so the customer can see the saving they are getting. They are also applied automatically, so no action is required by the customer. You can apply a number of settings to limit the number of uses per customer, schedule them, along with many other granular settings.
The main downside with this approach is you can only have one automatic discount live at any one time. In addition, you cannot use a promo code at checkout either. This is due to limitations imposed by Shopify.
+ Discounts shown immediately in cart
+ Lots of granular controls
+ Customers cannot “cheat” the offer and purchase items for free
- Cannot combine with other discounts
- Can only run one at a time
Automatic discounts remain our preferred method, as the discount is visible to the customer in the cart, maximizing conversion, and customers cannot cheat the offer (if set up correctly) and make off with more gifts than they should. We would especially recommend this approach if you have a valuable item you are trying to discount that you don’t want customers to take advantage of.
Shopify promo codes are the cousin of the automatic discount, and are also set up in Shopify Admin in the Discounts section. The official guide is available here. You can have many active promo codes at any point in time, so they are better for store owners running multiple promotions.
The disadvantage with promo codes is they only apply the discount at checkout, so customers cannot see their savings until they reach the checkout page. Like automatic discounts they also cannot be combined, so you can only have one promo code per order.
+ Can have multiple offers running
+ Lots of granular controls
+ Customers cannot “cheat” the offer and purchase items for free
- Discount not shown in cart
- Cannot combine promo codes
Promo codes are our next best option behind automatic discounts, again because they protect your gifted item on your store. If you need to run several promotions using a tiered approach, or are using magic links, promo codes are the way to go. Like their cousin the Automatic Discount, they also work well with valuable gifts, as the item can be listed on your store at the normal price.
Given the limitations mentioned above with combining discounts and the discount not showing in the cart, some merchants are now turning to zero priced products. These are special products set up on your online store with the price set to 0.
Although taking this approach does allow you to continue to use promo codes and automatic discounts, it is very risky, as some customers may attempt to cheat your promotion and order lots of the zero priced gift item.
EasyGift attempts to limit the ways customers can cheat, by using the “Prevent customers purchasing added items outside the rule” setting, however it’s important to know THIS WILL NOT PREVENT ALL FRAUDULENT ORDERS. There are many reasons why, and although we work hard to ensure this setting works well, we almost never recommend this approach.
Furthermore, you need to remember to remove the zero priced gift item from your store after the promotion has ended.
+ Discounts shown immediately in cart
+ You can still use promo codes and automatic discounts elsewhere
+ Discounts can be combined
- Customers can cheat your promotion and make zero priced orders.
- Very hard to control
- Inventory tracking can be troublesome.
Although some customers use this approach, we would only recommend it if you are gifting an item which isn’t valuable. Think about giving away free candies at the counter in a traditional brick-and-mortar store: there will always be someone who sticks their hand in and takes a handful. That’s ok because it’s candies, but this can also happen on your online store, so we don’t recommend it unless you are comfortable with this!
There are now many new discounting apps appearing on the app store. Some work well and some don’t, but there are too many to cover here. Most work by creating a single use promo code immediately at the checkout stage, which can allow you to combine discounts. As we have discussed though, this approach has drawbacks as discounts are not visible in the cart.
For Shopify Plus customers, Shopify Scripts can be a good approach as they allow you to apply discounts to the cart. Shopify provide more details and some examples here.
Beautiful apps that give your Shopify store superpowers.
