Offering a discount sounds good for businesses looking to boost sales and revenue in Shopify. But what are the best practices for offering discounts in e-commerce, and what is the right way to do so?
Offering discounts significantly impacts customers’ purchasing decisions. According to research by Statista, almost 68% of Americans won’t buy anything until they get a discount. That’s why businesses follow so many discount strategies these days. But which one do you think is the foolproof one for your Shopify store? Price discounts, quantity discounts, or how about using promo codes? Remember, poorly implemented strategies may ruin your business in the long run.
Research by ‘The Economist’ has shown that customers are happy to receive quantity increases instead of price discounts. For example, a 50 percent quantity increase is a better deal for them than 33% off the regular price.
So, find out the most suitable strategy for your Shopify e-commerce store. To find out, you must learn the e-commerce discount strategy, how pricing psychology works, and why it won’t even hurt your revenue.
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Discounting is one of the trickier ways for businesses to boost sales and increase revenue. Shopify’s discount pricing strategy is a campaign for businesses to generate more leads by selling their products in high volumes using discounts.
It is also an excellent way to launch new products, maintain loyal customers, and connect new customers in bulk. Without a proper strategy, you’ll do major damage to your business or brand. People usually judge your brand by the discounts you offer on products.
Too many or too often discount offers may be harmful and show a lack of confidence in your product. Customers will lose faith in getting quality products and avoid your store. It’s like you darned if you offer a discount, you darned if you don’t.
If you do it correctly, your discount pricing strategy will help you grow your business and increase sales and profits. Pricing significantly influences the consumer buying method.
That’s why it’s crucial to learn the essentials of discount pricing strategy.
First of all, discounts help increase engagement in your Shopify Store. It’s also an effective Shopify sales strategy.
Moreover, it’s important to offer discounts to your customers when you’re just starting your Shopify store. It’ll create a positive impression and will encourage them to buy from you again and again, as well as attract new customers and increase sales.
You can offer discounts differently to attract your customers. Like using discount coupon codes or setting the sale price using an automatic discount app.
Let’s look at the first scenario. By using discount coupon codes, you can create unique codes for your store’s products. Implementing it on special occasions will have a positive impact.
Secondly, by using an automated discount app, you can set the sale price for selected products. It’ll help you manage your inventory properly and stock new products in your store. Its automatic feature will adjust the price for specific products on special occasions. Also, it makes it easier to manage promotions and attract customers.
Finally, offering bulk discounts to customers who buy multiple items of a single product.
Whatever method you use, the best practices for offering discounts in e-commerce like Shopify are ensuring they are easy to redeem, encouraging more customers to buy from your Shopify store, and increasing sales.
Offering discounts is the ultimate way for businesses to increase sales, attain new customers, introduce new products, and deploy unsold inventories. That’s why using the proper discount strategy is essential.
Here, we have discussed the most effective Shopify discount pricing strategies. You should practice and apply them to maintain a high conversion rate and keep the revenue stream within tolerable margins.
People tend to buy more quantities of products if they can get them at low prices. For example, when purchasing, one will buy several shirts at a time. This is an ideal category for offering an attractive discount on products purchased in large volumes or quantities.
Let’s explore examples to define this strategy:
Example #1: As an e-commerce business owner, you can run a promotion of a 20% discount on the purchase of 3 items of the same product. This strategy can make the customer order more to get the discount.
Example #2: Suppose you sell a pack of chocolate bars at $10 per bar. When the customer buys a single bar, you can offer to buy five bars for 40 dollars. This would be a very large discount, and the buyer might end up purchasing other items in the cart.
These examples show that different pricing models are based on a certain set price for buyers who make large orders. It can be very effective in increasing conversions.
Offering flash sale discounts is an effective method of increasing sales. Using this short-term discount strategy, you can make your customers buy items they aren’t even planning to buy at all.
Flash sales are exclusive, and most of them are time-sensitive. You can make this more impactful with a countdown timer on the customer to make his decisions faster.
Before applying this strategy, you must set sales goals. Your sale goals may vary; if you wish to introduce new customers, increase customers’ liking, or display popular items, make sure that your sale plan reflects them. Remember, the shorter the sale period, the more pressure the customer feels to take action.
Seasonal discounts are one of the best discount strategies that works well both for businesses and buyers. All kinds of businesses make the most of it by offering seasonal discounts.
But to get the ultimate result, you must follow a strong marketing strategy. You can also create an attractive landing page by showcasing all the amazing deals. It’ll enhance the user experience and boost sales.
Tiered pricing is also known as volume-based pricing, a Shopify discount strategy. By applying a tiered pricing strategy to your Shopify store, customers will receive discounts as they continue to shop for higher quantities of that specific product. This Shopify discount strategy encourages customers to buy more until they hit the minimum order value.
Let me give you an example. If a customer buys a single T-shirt, he’ll have to pay the regular price. But if he buys a higher quantity, like 5-10 T-shirts in a single purchase, will get a discount as the quantity increases.
It not only increases the average order value but also increases the customer satisfaction. That’s why it’s considered an effective Shopify discount strategy.
Pre-order discounts can be an effective strategy for generating leads and boosting sales for new product launches. By offering limited-time pre-order discounts, you can gain organic traffic and cancel initial costs.
But always remember to keep a balance between offering attractive discounts and maintaining profitability. Consider offering smaller discounts that still provide value to customers while preserving your sales goals.
Free shipping is a highly effective strategy to reduce cart abandonment and encourage higher purchases. By eliminating shipping costs, you can differentiate your business from competitors and motivate customers to buy more. Many online stores implement minimum order points to qualify for free shipping.
There are many ways to provide discounts in a Shopify store but the main two methods is Shopify’s built-in feature and by using a third-party app.
For the first scenario,
Shopify’s built-in discount feature enables you to apply discounts on specific collections, products, or variants. You can also set percentage-based or fixed-amount discounts, which are applied automatically at checkout. Additionally, Shopify lets you create sale collections, which gather all discounted items in one place, making it easier for customers to browse special offers.
Using a third-party discount app for your Shopify store unlocks more strategies. Moreover, these third-party apps allow to setting up of various discount types such as quantity discounts, discount schedules, tiered pricing, variants fixed prices, discount value types, display styles, etc. Those apps are ideal if you want to implement upselling, cross-selling, or wholesale pricing options to boost your (AOV) average order value.
Shopify’s integrated discount feature and numerous third-party apps offer flexible tools for implementing different discount strategies, increasing customer engagement and sales.
Shopify’s native discount function offers a specific approach to creating and managing discounts.
For more sophisticated discount strategies and advanced features, consider Shopify apps such as DiscountRay. You’ll be able to set bulk discount rules, dynamic pricing, or any kind of personalized discount offer.
You have to be very selective about offering discounts in e-commerce. Because there are always some products in store that rarely go on sale. Businesses or brands consider it their core product.
To keep their brand special, they don’t discount their core product line. They are more likely to run a savings campaign that offers a percentage off of a minimum purchase to give customers a break.
Because it can excite customers, this kind of e-commerce discount promotion works well. A promotion like this can persuade someone who has been eyeing a pricey product for some time to finally buy it.
Additionally, it reaffirms that your brand is unique and that some products are always the original price. Which also shows their confidence in their product.
Discounts release the happy hormone oxytocin, which immediately affects customers’ buying behavior. You can generate sales and increase customer trust by offering incremental discounts.
But another scenario you have to think about as well. You can’t hurt your sales by giving discounts too often. That also changes their buying behavior and distrust of the product. People find massive discounts suspicious and start recognizing your products as low-quality.
Moreover, sales promotions also impact customer’s mindsets, and they end up buying more. For example, ‘Get $ Off’ highlights a gain, and ‘Save $, highlights avoiding a loss, which is compatible with the promotion focus. Such as, getting money off works well for chocolates.
Make sure that the customer is seeking emotional comfort when making a purchase. They rationalize their actions with discounts. If you want to encourage brand-positive customer behaviors, you should be selective with your discounts.
A discount pricing strategy is the best short-term strategy for businesses to increase revenue. This short-term strategy works well for stock clearing or seasonal sales. Others, like loyalty offers or new customer welcomes, are long-term programs that benefit over time. It’s important to ensure that customers can easily redeem the discount offer.
There are some facts to consider when giving a discount offer to your customers.
A limited-time discount is a strategy to motivate buyers to buy instantly. The more you promote this discount, the more it creates tension in customers to buy it as early as possible to get the best deals. It’s all about wanting and the ticking clock. But not all products need this limited-time attention.
How you will display the discounts to your potential customers plays an important role. Because some customers are triggered by percentage offers, and some are money off. So the question is how to understand the difference.
It’s easy. You will show the percentage off to new customers. They will be happy to see a percentage-off deal since they aren’t familiar with your product. If they’re a repeat customer who knows what’s going on in your store and are familiar with the product’s quality, they’ll be happy to get some money off.
Discount duration also plays a role in whether your discount deal succeeds or not. Because if you don’t create an urgency to buy your product on time, they won’t feel the craving to get it while on discount.
That’s why highlighting the specific time of the year and offering your best deals motivates customers to make incremental purchases. Otherwise, you’ll lose your potential customers’ trust, undercut your margins, and show a lack of confidence in your product.
What to discount is a way of analyzing a customer’s behavior in buying a product. Store owners need to inspect which product is attracting more attention and how much of that product is being purchased.
For example, if you’re selling socks and your customers usually buy 4 to 5 pairs at a time, they would love to get a discount on that. That’s how you’ll be able to determine what to discount.
A common mistake that all store owners make is not knowing if they should offer a discount on the overall collection or any specific product. It depends on what kind of products you sell in your store. Sometimes, by giving a flash sale on every category, shoppers fall prey to the paradox of choices and end up buying more products.
On the other hand, if you see that your customer is craving a specific product and buying it more often, you should think about offering them a specific discount deal. So, consider these facts and then decide which suits your store better.
To develop an effective discount pricing strategy in e-commerce and ensure profitability, you must question yourself: How do you want to reach your customers with the essence of your product? What’s your goal? Who are your ideal customers? Or the discount strategy you want to follow—does it align with your brand goal?
Remember some key points,
Best practices for offering discounts in e-commerce like Shopify are all about balance. As a store owner, you should research your potential customer base. You can offer discounts without worrying about losing money once you research and understand your customers’ behavior. Moreover, understand their purchasing psychology to leverage the suitable discount offer to get the most out of it and increase sales.
Furthermore, by knowing your goals and matching them with the right type of discounting strategy, you’ll be able to avoid the common challenges that come with a discount instead of bringing more sales.
Discount pricing is a common strategy often used to generate more sales by attracting customers—normally by dropping the prices you ask for your goods or services. However, discounting too much or too often can eat into your bottom-line revenue and do major damage to your brand.\
Discount pricing benefits businesses in several ways. It can improve cash flow by moving goods more quickly, raise sales volume by drawing in price-conscious clients, and enhance consumer loyalty with exclusive deals. In addition to helping businesses stand out in the market and compete more successfully, discounts can also stimulate larger purchases, which raises the average order value. Even though you’re lowering the per-item price, ultimately you get higher revenue.
The percentage-based discount is one of the most widely used discounting techniques. With this discount, the product’s original price drops by a percentage. A 10% discount, for instance, would lower the price of a product that is $100 by $10, making it $90.
Though the discounts are applied for a limited period, encouraging customers to buy more while saving a fixed amount on every purchase. It’s like a principle of urgency; customers then think they’re missing out on saving money. That’s when the anticipation of missing out is exactly why the discounts work like magic for businesses.
Another concerning fact is when to offer discounts. To know the perfect timing, you need to know who your target customers are and what they want. Understanding their demands and offering a reasonable discount pricing for them will help you to accomplish your targeted sales and satisfy customers. Moreover, knowing your competitors and their services is also important when offering a discount.
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