Published on September 21, 2012 Multi-category specials can increase online shop spend
Running promotions across different but specific categories in your store can encourage the right type of buying behaviour to increase your profits.
Promotions increase urgency in the minds of customers and encourage them to take action before the sale ends – increasing store conversion rates. If you have new stock coming in a particular category, or overstocks of a particular line, one way of selling it off is to put those items on a sale. You might want to incentivise customers with a 2 for 1 special or category sale of 20% off. But what about a category special across multiple categories or sub-categories? For example, you could offer a special buy any two shirts or pants for $30.
Why can multi-category specials can increase conversion rates?
Multi category specials appeal to customers because they can give them a sense of control and choice. By allowing customers to choose items from a specified set of product categories for an overall discount, they are more likely to feel that they are in control of what they buy and are able to choose from a wider range of products. If a customer wants one shirt and one pair of pants, then a promotion for a discount off a second pair of pants would not be as appealing as one where they were free to choose something that they were looking to buy.
Planning promotions
As with many things in running an online store, planning before implementing can make a huge difference to whether a promotion is a success, and whether it makes you enough money to cover the costs of running it.
It can make sense to set up a promotional calendar, where your promotions for the year are planned in advance. In choosing your products to promote, things to consider can include:
- Seasonal products: Certain products sell better at particular times of year. For example, school stationery will sell in the lead up to and just after the start of a school year. BBQ products will sell well in summer. What works best for yours?
- Events: What events can you arrange promotions around? The AFL and NRL grand finals, and local show days are major merchandising opportunities each year to create complimentary promotions, but there are many other events at a local or industry level that you could create promotions around – like fairs, seminars, concerts, openings, street parades.
- Complimentary products: Consider categories of products that are normally purchased together like shirts and ties, printers and toner cartridges (or paper), colouring books and stickers, mp3 player and car chargers.
How much should an item be discounted?
When deciding on the level of discount to encourage sales, it’s important to think about the cost of the promotion versus the additional sales that it will generate. The level to which a product’s sales will increase relative to a price drop is called “price elasticity” in economics, and it’s worthwhile considering. Some products – like low value, everyday items that do not involve much thinking or shopping around in order to buy – will not increase significantly in sales when the price is reduced, whereas other products – like ones that are fiercely competitive, rarely discounted, or luxury items may be much more sensitive to price drops, and therefore category promotions.
How can you set up a multi-category sales promotion using Ozcart?
Buy 3 items from categories A, B or C for a discount
Setting up a “buy x items from categories A, B or C” type promotion can be set up using Ozcart’s promotional rules editor.
The promotional rules editor has two main types of promotions that it allows you to create. The first type changes the prices that are shown on the product and category listing pages, and the second type allows you to create promotions that are shown as line items on the checkout. How you set up a promotion is very flexible and allows you to position the promotion in the way you want.
Let’s consider an example from our demo shop department store. Let’s say that the store wanted to run a promotion offering any 3 items from the men’s pants, shorts and footwear categories for $250.
To set up this type of promotion, you would just go into the promotional rules editor, and create a new cart promotion. You’d need a cart promotion because the special is calculated at the time the products are added to the cart and depends on the other items in the cart, it’s not a special that can be calculated at the time that products are displayed in the categories list.
In the promotional set up screen you would give the promotion a name so you can refer to it in your admin, write a description and set up when it would run.
For the promotional rules themselves you would need only three sets of rules:
- A rule to define the categories that the special applied to (men’s pants, shorts and footwear would be selected)
- A rule to exclude all other categories
- A rule to define how many qualifying products you needed 3.
You would then define the special price as a fixed price of $250 and save. And that’s it!
Flexible Promotions
Promotions in Ozcart are flexible and can be set to run for just a specified period of time. They can also be scheduled for the future, so you can set up whether the promotion runs for a limited time between specified dates or until further notice. You could also use a method like this to define a set of daily deals which you could name by day, and then you could create a promotional landing page to promote the special that applied.
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