How To Run a Sale on Shopify: Everything You Need to Know

Running a sale on Shopify is a great way to attract new customers and keep your regulars coming back for more. After all, who doesn’t love a good deal?

The key to getting the best returns from running a sale is to set it up correctly and promote it across your store.

Don’t know where to start? I’ve got you covered.

In this step-by-step guide, I’ll explain the exact steps to run a sale on Shopify and share three common sale scenarios with tips to handle them.

Let’s get straight to it!

Steps to run a sale on Shopify

Follow these steps to set up a sale on Shopify.

1. Define the goals of your sale

First, decide why you want to run a sale on your Shopify store. This step is important because it helps you identify the type of sale you need to run on your Shopify store.

Some common reasons to run a sale on your store include:

• Clear surplus inventory: A sale is a perfect way to move extra stock quickly, especially seasonal items that need to go before they become outdated.
• Launch a new product: Highlight new items or product lines with a sale. This attracts customers eager to try something new at a lower cost.
• Increase average order value: Discounted prices encourage customers to buy more, increasing the average order value. Even customers who don’t need an item may buy it just because it’s available for a discounted price.
• Meet sales targets: If you have specific sales goals for your month, quarter, or year, a well-timed sale can help you reach these targets more effectively.
• Attract new customers: A discounted rate might convince potential customers to purchase your products and even return for more with the right discounts in place.

Once you’ve identified why you want to run a sale, it’s time to decide the type of sale you should run.

2. Choose the type of sale

Shopify allows you to set up a sale in four different ways, each suited for different goals:

• Amount off products (or collections): Apply a percentage or fixed amount discount on specific products or collections.
• Buy X get Y: Offer a free or discounted product when customers buy a minimum quantity of items or reach a minimum purchase amount.
• Amount off order: Provide a fixed amount or percentage off the total purchase price, applicable to all products.
• Free shipping: Offer free shipping based on the number of items purchased, a minimum purchase amount, or with no requirements.

Depending on your business goals, you can use one or more of those discount types to set up a sale.

Here are some examples to help you decide which discount type to use based on your goals:

3. Set up the sale

Now, let’s create a sale in the Shopify backend.

Go to Discounts in your Shopify dashboard and click Create discount.

Select the discount type you want to use:

• Amount off products
• Buy X get Y
• Amount off order
• Free shipping

For this tutorial, I’ll show you how to run a sale to clear out inventory. And since I’m running a clearance sale, I’ve created a collection of products I want to discount.

You don’t have to create a separate collection if you don’t want to. You can apply the discount to an existing collection.

I’ve created a new collection to group all the clearance products because I want to clear out dead stock across different collections. You can follow my guide on creating product collections in Shopify to set up a collection on your store.

Once you’ve set up your collection, select Amount off products.

Next, choose the discount method:

• Discount code: Customers manually enter the discount code at checkout.
• Automatic discount: The discount is applied automatically, and the customer sees it in their cart and at checkout.

Here’s what a discount sale looks like when the customer applies a coupon code during checkout:

On the other hand, here’s what an automatic discount looks like on the cart page:

In my experience, automatic discounts work best for site-wide sales. They lead to higher redemption rates and lower cart abandonments than discount codes.

Now, whichever discount method you choose, you’ll see some differences in the setup fields.

For example, if you choose “Discount code,” you’ll see a field to enter a code or ask Shopify to generate a random one that customers will use at checkout.

When you select “Automatic discount,” like I have. You’ll see a field called “Title,” where you enter a name for the discount that customers will see in their cart and at checkout.

Next, under “Discount Value,” select Percentage or Fixed amount from the dropdown, and enter a value based on your selection.

Then, choose whether to apply the discount to Specific products or Specific collections and select the items by clicking the Browse button.

If you have multiple sales channels, like Online Store and Point of Sale, you’ll see an option to apply the discount across one or more channels.

Next, set the conditions. You can choose a minimum purchase amount or a minimum quantity of items.

If you don’t want to set any minimum purchase requirements, select Minimum purchase amount and set it to $1.

You can also decide whether to allow combining this discount with other discounts, like product discounts with free shipping discounts.

Finally, set the start date for the sale and check the Set end date box to access the calendar and time options to set the end date and time.

Click Save discount to finalize your sale.

That’s it! You’ve successfully created a sale on Shopify!

Make sure you test the discount on the frontend of your store a couple of times to make sure it’s working correctly.

Here’s the how the automatic discount applies on the cart page of my store:

4. Promote the sale

Now that your sale is set up, spread the word and attract customers.

Here are some effective ways to draw in customers and drive traffic to your store:

1. On site promotion

The simplest way to let your customers know about your sale is by adding a site-wide announcement bar at the top of your store. 

From your Shopify admin, go to Online Store > Themes. Click Customize next to the theme that you want to modify.

Find the Announcement bar section in the list of sections or within the “Header” settings.

Enter your announcement text in the Text field. You can optionally add a link to the sales collection page.

You can also add a banner on your homepage with a prominent display like “End of Season Clearance Sale! Up to 30% off. Shop Now!.”

Go to your theme and search for “Image banner” in the “Header” or “Template” section. Then add images and customize the layout from the right-hand side panel.

If your theme doesn’t have a banner feature or the built-in feature doesn’t meet your needs, then you can download a banner app from the Shopify App Store.

2. Email Marketing

If you have an email list, send a promotional email with your discount code or a banner promoting your sale.

Make sure the email includes sale details, featured products, and a strong call to action. You can also send follow-up reminder emails throughout the sale period to keep the momentum going.

3. Social Media

Create social media posts for platforms like Instagram and Facebook or run targeted ads to reach a wider audience.

You can also collaborate with influencers as audiences trust the judgment and opinions of the influencers they follow, so they’re likely to drive a sale.

The influencers you partner with can share unique discount codes or affiliate links to give their followers special deals.

4. SMS Marketing

Did you know that SMS messages have an open rate of more than 90%? In contrast, email open rates average around 20% to 30% for most businesses. 

So consider sending text messages to customers who have opted in for SMS notifications, informing them about your sale. Use Shopify apps like Postscript, Klaviyo, or Yotpo to easily manage and send these messages.

Common Shopify sale scenarios

It’s possible that you might want to run different types of sales depending on your goals. Here’s how to set up a few common sale scenarios:

1. Run a sale on the whole store

Let’s say Black Friday is coming up and you want to run a limited-time discount on all your products. Follow this step-by-step process to set it up.

Go to Discounts from the left side menu, choose Amount off order discount type, and select Automatic discount as your method type.

Add a title like “BLACKFRIDAY20OFF.” Make sure to include the percentage off in the title so customers know the discount value from the coupon code.

Set the discount value to Percentage and add your discount percentage value in the field next to it. Then select Minimum purchase amount and add $1 in the field.

Next, set the start date, start time, end date, and end time for your sale. 

Finally, click Save discount to activate your sitewide sale.

That’s it! You’ve now set up a sitewide sale on your Shopify store.

2. Set sale prices for products

When you run a sale on one of your products, it helps to advertise the discount on collection pages and on the product page itself.

The easiest way to do that is to add a Sale label to the products and show the original amount with a strike-through and the discounted amount next to it. Like this:

Shopify’s built-in discount feature only shows the discount at the cart and/or checkout, depending on the discount type. This means the listing price won’t be struck out on the collection or product page. 

To achieve this, you’ll need to set the compare-at-price for the products. Here’s how:

Individual product

Edit the price of an individual product by following these steps:

Go to Products in the Shopify admin and click the product you want to edit.

Scroll down to the “Pricing” section. In the Compare-at price field, enter the product’s original price. In the Price field, enter the product’s new price.

Click Save to save your changes.

This is how the product will appear on the product page, showing the original price with a strike-through alongside the new price and a small Sale label next to it.

Individual product with variants

If your product has variants, you won’t see a “Compare-at price” field in the main product section. You’ll need to set those up individually for each variant.

Here’s how to do it:

Go to Products in the Shopify admin and click the product you want to edit. Scroll down to the “Variants” section and select the variant you want to promote your offer for. 

For example, my store has a t-shirt in Black, Red, and White colors and three sizes (S, M, and L). I’ve selected the Black/Small variant.

In the “Pricing” section, enter the original price in the Compare-at price field and the new price in the Price field.

Then click on other variants individually from the menu on the left and repeat the same steps.

Once you’re done, click the back arrow to return to the main product and click Save to save the changes.

This is how the product will look on the product page:

And here’s how it looks like on the catalog page:

As you can see, the lowest price of the variant is displayed on the catalog page.

Multiple products

You can edit products with and without variants in bulk.

Go to Products, select the checkboxes of the products you want to edit. Then, click Bulk edit on the top right-hand side.

You’ll have multiple columns with product properties like status, vendor, and available quantity.

If the Compare-at price column isn’t visible, click Columns at the top and select Compare-at price under the “Pricing” options.

Then, add the prices and click Save.

If you have hundreds of products with variants in your Shopify store, I recommend using bulk edit with a CSV sheet to update their pricing.

Go to Products and click on the Export button on the top right corner to export the respective products.

You’ll receive the CSV file in your email. Open it and edit the “Variant Compare At Price” column with the original prices and the “Variant Price” column with the new prices.

Save the file and import it back into your Shopify store.

3. Create a sale collection on Shopify

Want to make it easy for your customers to find all your sale items in one place? That’s where Shopify collections come in handy. 

They let you group similar products together so shoppers can find what they want quickly.

Here’s how you can create a sale collection on Shopify:

Go to Products > Collections in your Shopify admin and click the Create collection button on the top right side.

Enter a title and description for your sales collection. Then, add an image that represents your sales collection.

Scroll down to the “Collection type” section and select Automated.

This way, existing and future products matching the conditions will automatically be added to the collection. You’ll save a lot of time and effort not having to set it up manually.

Then, for the “Products must match” setting, select all conditions.

Next, choose the Compare-at price condition, set the rule to is greater than, and enter $1 in the text field. This is assuming you have set a compare-at price for all the sales products.

You can also add more conditions if you want to set more rules. 

For example, let’s say you want to create multiple sales pages for sub-collections like Men’s wear, Women’s wear, and Kids’ wear.

Then you can add one more of the following conditions:

1. “Product category” with the rule “is equal to” “Kids’ Wear.”
2. “Product title” with the rule “Kid’s T-shirt.”

Click Save to save your new sale collection.

Running a sale on Shopify: Final thoughts + next steps

Running a sale on Shopify doesn’t have to be complicated. With the right approach, it can help you boost sales and increase customer retention at the same time. 

The key to making the most of your sale is to plan it carefully, choose the right products to discount, and promote it effectively.

Don’t be afraid to experiment with different types of sales to see what works best for your store. And make sure you promote your sale across your site, especially on your product pages by adding “Clearance” or “Sale” labels with metafields.

Want to learn how to set up custom metafields on product pages? Read my article explaining the steps to add custom fields to product pages in Shopify using metafields.

If you have any questions, drop us a message using our contact form. We’re here to help!

FAQs about running a Shopify sale