Setting up sales with PrestaShop

Posted on1 Year ago by

Twice a year it's the high mass of sales. Winter sales in January, summer sales in July, it's the label waltz.

Your store is built with PrestaShop and you may be wondering what's the best way to set them up, but also to be flexible and how to quickly change rates overnight, adapt your sales strategy according to sales results.

And also, for those who also have a physical store selling the same products as in the online store, how to print discounted or crossed-out price tags.

We also explain how to display "on sale" banners, organize the store, manage margins and round off prices...

How to create discounts in PrestaShop

Prestashop is particularly rich in methods for offering discounts to customers, but not all of them are suitable for sales.

Unsuitable methods for sales

Basket rules

Also known as coupons, this discount tool is very handy for offering individual discounts (to one or certain customers) or for running a discount campaign on a restricted selection of products.

Can be used for sales only when the whole site is sold out with the same rate, without exception. In this case, the discount code will be prominently displayed on the site's home page and communicated in a newsletter.

But if certain products are discounted at the same rate, the discount code will not be used.

But if some products aren't on sale or have a different discount rate, really forget about this approach.

Discount rates by customer group

Designed primarily for retailers with distinct customer families, with different pricing structures for each group. This is typically the case for sites selling to both individuals (BtoC) and professionals (BtoB).
Each group sees different prices from the others, but the prices are not crossed out, and we're not talking about discounts, but adapted prices.

As you can see, this type of discount is not at all suitable for the sales period.

Well-adapted methods for setting up sales

Catalog price rules

Practical for programming discounts that encourage buyers to purchase other products in addition to those already chosen (overselling).

Also enable you to define a common discount for all products in a specific category, or of a specific brand for example.

So if you want to sell off your catalog with a grouped approach by category or brand, with the same rate without exception on all items in the group, this is probably a good method.

Its big advantage is that it's quick to install.
Its two major shortcomings are the complexity of the programming interface for this type of rule in PS and its lack of flexibility.
Not flexible, because you can't use this approach to exclude a product from the group or apply discount rates more precisely. 

Note: a catalog price rule only creates a specific identical price, on all products meeting the conditions defined by the rule.

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Special prices

This is a percentage or value reduction, creating a crossed-out price and a discounted price, which applies only to a single product, or to a single variation of a product.
What's more, each specific price can be fine-tuned, with filters for countries where it does or doesn't apply, currencies, customer groups or customers, stores (in multi-shop mode) and, above all, with a start and end date.

A specific price can therefore be created before its effective activation date and activate itself. Similarly, once its end date has passed, it will deactivate itself.

This is therefore the most suitable and flexible method for creating sales in PrestaShop.

But... specific prices have two very big flaws that can make their use a nightmare if you don't have the right tool to set them up:

They can't be modified from the PS back office (or admin). You want to change the rate? : you have to delete and redo the specific price entirely.

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It cannot be created or administered en masse in PS. They are, as their name implies, specific to a single product at a time and would therefore take an inordinate amount of time to create on a large store.

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THE SOLUTION! :use a mass catalog manager to create and modify specific prices in a single operation, at the click of a button! And our Merlin Backoffice ® Flex batch processing tool does just that.

Sales with psychological prices

Either you create percentage discounts, in which case it's the percentage displayed in the store that's psychological (it's very salesy to have -70% written in big letters), or you define specific prices in value, indicating on the site the old crossed-out price and the new one in bigger letters. In the latter case, the new prices have to sell, and for this reason it's best if they're rounded or psychological prices.

Did you know?

Did you know? Did you know: Merlin Backoffice Flex is also a tool for mass rounding, in a matter of seconds, all prices discounted as psychological prices.

10€, 9€90, 9€99, 9€50 ? You choose the calculation format.

Managing margins and avoiding loss-making sales

Selling at a loss is forbidden by law.
Beyond that, even if sales are often primarily an opportunity to rebuild cash flow, it's also important to have visibility over the margins that will be achieved on the products on sale, and to monitor the effectiveness of your sales campaign.

Merlin Backoffice ® Flex is an invaluable ally for managing balances, allowing, for example :

-When setting up specific prices, automatically calculate the discount to respect the desired margin rate (in relation to purchase prices).

-Show you items with too low a selling price (negative margin).

-To track sales volume, remaining stock and turnover for each reference throughout the sales period, in a table that also gives an overall view.

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-Calculate and inform you of the stock coverage for each item, i.e. the number of days before out-of-stock, based on sales made on previous days. This enables you to reduce the discount rate on products that are almost out of stock.

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Display the PrestaShop "On Sale" banner on all sale products in the store

Here again, PrestaShop's admin is not adapted, as requesting the display of this essential banner will require hours of work. Product by product, patiently.

There's a much faster way, with Merlin Backoffice ® Flex, activating the display of this indicator on the page of all products on sale takes just a few seconds.

Create "On Sale" categories, or by discount rate, and arrange products in them

Sometimes it's a good idea to create categories specifically for sales.

When the number of products on sale is low, only one "On Sale" category is relevant.
When several discount rates are offered, a category by rate is often a profitable solution.

For implementation purposes, and especially when discount rates vary during the sales period, it's best to have a tool that not only allows you to create these categories quickly, but also to quickly put the right products in the right families.

Doing so in PS's back office means opening each product file one by one once again, to move (or associate) each item in the right category. This approach is totally unsuitable for more than a few dozen products.

Use Merlin Backoffice ® Flex's mass cross-association instead, to associate a selection of products to one or more categories with a single click..

Print price tags

Merlin Backoffice includes a price label generator as standard, with a label template adapted to general use.

It can also be enhanced with our pro price tag generator, completely customizable to create all kinds of tags, of any shape, color and content.

Very practical for making sale labels where the discount rate is prominently displayed.

Did you know that Merlin Backoffice Flex is totally free for 15 days, with no obligation? That's plenty of time to test out all these features. Give it a try and start saving time and money today.

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