Boosting your sales

A discount rewards a loyal customer or persuades a new one to take the plunge. Its strength lies in one difference with a sale: sales apply to everyone, a discount gives the feeling of a privilege. That feeling is what turns a prospect into a customer.

What we're talking about here is financial reductions, in the form of a fixed amount or a percentage.

Attracting traffic. That's the most common objective. Consumers are looking for a good deal, and can buy without having needed anything, simply because they received a promo code. So the idea is to communicate widely:

• on your social networks
• by email to your customer and prospect base
• through partnerships or influencers

This kind of campaign grows your community along the way, a community you'll then talk to in later campaigns. It's a virtuous circle.

Triggering a purchase. A deal that's perceived as good generally leads to an impulse purchase, one that answers no previously identified need. The customer skims your shop quickly to make the most of the offer.

The format of the reduction changes the outcome, and it's chosen according to your prices:

• As a percentage, for businesses with high prices.
• As an amount, for cheaper products, where a concrete sum looks more attractive than a percentage.

Increasing loyalty. Promo codes reward your customers, increase their purchase frequency and their average basket.

One caveat though: don't use them all year round. You'd damage both their credibility and that of your prices, on top of permanently eating into your margins.

Discount codes are an extension: add it from the Extensions Store, where its listing shows the price that applies to your app.

Once it's in place, the screen is waiting for you in Marketing › Discounts › Discount list, and the form holds seven blocks, each answering one of the questions raised above.

The code is either typed by you or generated at random, and it's unique within the shop. The Name field goes with it, visible only to you: that's what will let you recognize the campaign six months later.

The type of discount is your choice:

• Fixed amount. You decide the amount to deduct. A 5-dollar reduction takes 5 dollars off the price to pay.
• Percentage. The amount is calculated on the total. A 10% reduction on a 200-dollar basket takes off 20 dollars.

What it applies to decides what the reduction touches, and offers four scopes:

• The whole order: the reduction covers the entire basket.
• One specific product: it only applies to a product, selected from the dedicated dropdown.
• One or more collections: it only concerns the products in those collections.
• One or more tags: it only concerns the products carrying those tags.

That's what makes all the difference between a discount you submit to and one you steer: you target exactly the stock you want to move.

Validity date opens and closes the campaign to the hour, with a local time checkbox so that everyone gets it at the same time where they are. The end date is optional, the screen also offering None, and yet it's what applies the caveat written above: a discount with no announced end becomes a price.

Limitations of use decides who can use it, and how many times. You choose the audience between Everyone, Customers and prospects, and specific customers and prospects, named one by one. You set the maximum number of times the discount can be used, unlimited by default, and you can tick single use per user. This is where the feeling of privilege a discount lives on is manufactured: a code anyone can use as often as they like is a price cut, a named code is a gift.

Conditions of use finally carries the threshold, and it comes in two kinds: an order value, with its minimum and maximum price, or a minimum quantity of products. That's the average-basket lever, the one that makes people add an item to reach the bar.

Two points about that threshold, which save you a complaint. It's calculated on sales alone, shipping costs stay out of the count. And it's assessed in your shop's display mode: a shop displaying prices excluding tax compares the threshold with the pre-tax amount, which can reject a basket whose tax-inclusive total does clear the bar.

On top of transactional notifications, sent automatically at each stage of an order's handling, you can send push notifications to your customers and prospects at any time.

Email is still relevant, but push has become more practical for reaching an audience, for three reasons.

They're instant. Announcing a price cut, opening a flash sale, reacting to a competitor: delivery is immediate, and so is reading.

They're built for mobile. The format matches how people use their phone. Not opened right away, the notification stays stored in the notification center and visible on the app icon. Hard to miss.

They suit e-commerce. Your customers are mobile and want to receive information where they are. Push also lets you personalize the message, which is in step with the times. With an almost zero sending cost, it's a good way to make your traffic pay in a competitive environment.

From your back office, in Marketing › Push › Send push. The screen holds three blocks:

• Audience: all your users, or some of them, chosen among your customers and prospects.
• Content: the message, with its character counter under the field, then the action on opening. You open the application, a product, an external link, or any section of your app, chosen from a list that mirrors your structure.
• Send date: now, sent instantly, or at the date and time you set.

One condition to know before targeting a section: it must have been published for a push to be able to open it. If your app has a pending update, go through the publication page first.

Three examples show what these settings allow.

Collecting customer feedback. For our restaurant app, we want to improve the service and display positive reviews on the home screen. For a week, a push goes out every day at 3pm, once lunches are over, to customers who ordered that day.

Opening it leads to a form asking how the order went. The answers are analyzed, and some are republished as proof of the quality of service.

Rewarding your customers. The shop is celebrating its first year. The push goes out to all users who ordered during the year, with a promotional code for their next order.

Increasing traffic. The new collection has arrived, and the push goes out to the whole user base to announce it.

Notice the progression: the first push is targeted and timed to the hour, the second is segmented on purchase behavior, the third is general. Targeting isn't a question of audience size, it's a question of what you want to obtain.

The three tools in this chapter are extensions, to be added to your app before you can set them up. That's good news by design, since your purchase journey only carries what your business calls for, but it's also a step worth knowing: as long as the extension hasn't been added, the matching setting isn't waiting for you anywhere. Their listing, in the Extensions Store, shows the price that applies to your app.

Smooth navigation and a fast checkout are the two conditions for a Shopping App's success. Rather than forcing your customers to open every product page, let them buy straight from a list.

Your customers select faster, buy more often, and your conversion rate goes up.

The feature is particularly suited to cheap or everyday products. In a grocery store, your customers know what they want: going into each product's detail before adding it to the basket is of no interest to them.

In cosmetics, your customers often come back to buy items they already know, and don't need to read the page again. A buy button placed directly on the home screen can also trigger an impulse on a featured product.

The underlying value is there: the customer never leaves the page they're on, so they see more products, and their basket grows.

Once the extension is added, the button is applied as a display option of your catalog: it appears in each product's cell in the list, and you decide it at the section design level.

When a customer comes back to your app and their basket contains items from a previous visit, a pop-up lets them go straight to checkout. It's the simplest way to bring an already-started purchase to a conclusion.

The feature exists on desktop too. There the customer sees their basket simply by hovering the mouse, and the pop-up opens automatically on their return if the basket contains items.

It adds all the products from an existing order to the basket in one click. Your customers repeat an order without rebuilding it.

It's particularly suited to food businesses and restaurants, where the same order comes back often, and it raises your rate of repeat purchases.

One detail that matters for steering: the button is identified as an acquisition channel in the order history. So you can track repeat purchases and analyze your loyal customers' behavior, instead of simply noting that they come back.

The three previous levers act on one visit. The loyalty program acts on the next one: your customers accumulate points by buying, and those points turn into a discount. It's the only tool in this guide that works over time.

It's an extension, and its listing shows the price that applies to your app. Once added, it's waiting for you in Marketing › Loyalty › Loyalty program, in two tabs, rules and reward.

The rules tab comes down to one sentence to complete: your customers receive a certain number of points after spending a certain amount. You set both, and you name your points whatever you like. Points, stars, beans: the word belongs to your brand.

The ratio between the two decides the effect produced. One point per euro reads effortlessly. Ten points per euro gives bigger numbers, so an impression of faster progress for exactly the same value. Choose according to what you're after, but keep the maths simple: a customer who has to reach for a calculator doesn't play.

The same tab sets point expiry. You choose between no expiry, three months, six months, one year and two years, with a reminder email sent one week, two weeks, one month or two months before the deadline.

An expiry isn't a punishment, it's what gives a reason to come back now. In an everyday business, a short deadline keeps the rhythm going. On rare purchases, the same deadline wipes out the program before it has served any purpose: set it against your real purchase frequency, not against a duration that feels reasonable. And if you do set one, keep the reminder email, that's what turns a deadline into a visit.

The reward tab decides what the customer gets. You first set the number of points needed to generate a coupon, then you describe the reduction exactly as you would a discount code: type of discount, fixed amount or percentage, and what it applies to, the whole order, one specific product, one or more collections, one or more tags.

Two fields serve your administration rather than your customer: a code prefix, which lets you recognize loyalty coupons at a glance, and a name visible only to you.

That's where this chapter meets the first one: the reward is a discount coupon. Everything said above therefore applies here, starting with the trade-off between a percentage and an amount according to your prices.

Three numbers answer each other: what a euro spent is worth, how many points are needed, and what the reward is worth. It's their ratio that makes the mechanism, never their value taken in isolation.

The useful marker fits in one question: after how many orders does a regular customer collect their first reward? Too early, and you're giving a discount to someone who would have come back anyway. Too late, and nobody reaches the threshold and the program produces nothing. Start from your real purchase frequency and set the first reward against a customer who already comes back: they're the one you're trying to keep.