Feature Talk: Discounts in the Smartstore Shop-System

Setting an incentive to buy with targeted price discounts: this is an issue for many online retailers. On the one hand, because their customers are used to it. On the other hand, because it can be an effective tool in online advertising to use price discounts in a very targeted way. Even in the standard edition, Smartstore offers a wide range of control options.

For example, discounts can be used to offer seasonal sales or to highlight poorly selling products. Discounts can also be used to promote new product ranges and brands.

Any number of discounts can be created in the store administration area under Marketing -> Discounts.

Discount types

The smartstore store owner can set the “discount type” the way he wants.

The simplest is the global discount on the total amount of the order, along the lines of “20 percent off everything”.

Another option is to apply the discount to individually selected products, to all items in selected product groups or even manufacturers.

• 10% discount on the individual item “iPhone 12 Max”
• 5% discount on all items in the merchandise group menswear
• 20 Euro discount on all products of the brand “Adidas”.

Discounts may also appear in the shopping cart:

• discount related to the subtotal, which is the pure purchase total without shipping costs and payment fees.
• discount related to the shipping costs, very popular for attracting new customers *Discount on the total (including all fees), in a seasonal sale promotion or similar.

After the fact, all these discounts can be further restricted. This works from Smartstore 4 onwards, by creating a rule in the Rule Builder and entering it in “Prerequisite”. Here are some examples:

• only for customers with more than one order
• only for customers from the “Reseller” customer group
• only if the total amount is greater than 100 Euro

Rule Builder is a standard tool and is used to easily build rules directly in the Smartstore store system. Rule Builder allows intelligent customer marketing without programming.

Percentage discount

The discount can be applied as a percentage value. Like the famous “20 percent”.

Discount as a fixed amount

The discount is a fixed amount, for example, 5 euros is simply deducted. Often used with coupons.

Discount can be limited in time

By default, each discount is valid from now and forever. With a set start and/or end date, it changes.

Discount by voucher code

The discount is only given when the store customer enters a coupon code when placing an order.

Limitation of the use of the voucher code

Store owners are free to choose how often the coupon code may be used.

• Unlimited: Unlimited use of a coupon code.
• Only N times: The voucher code may be used shop-wide only N times. Example: Discount for the first 100 customers.
• N times per user: The coupon code may only be used N times per customer. Example: one-time free shipping

Rule Builder requirements

Further, discounts can be restricted even more extensively via the Rule Builder. A discount is then only given if a prerequisite from the Rule Builder is met.