Offers that do not lose money

An offer is a reason to buy this week. A bad offer is a reason you lose money this week. The difference is whether the number comes from your costs or from a feeling. Open the pricing sheet from Price it right before you touch the Discounts screen: your floor is the price at which you earn nothing, and every offer has to land above it.

Three kinds of offer

• A sale price on a product. You set an original price and the store shows it struck through next to the new one. Best for marking down specific items — last season's colours, the gift box after the festival. Nothing for the customer to type. Free on every plan.
• A coupon code. WELCOME10, typed in the cart. Best for something you share — a story, a status, a card in the parcel. A code can have a minimum order value, a cap on the rupees off, an expiry date and a category. It stays private until you tick Show this code on the store, which puts it on your product pages. Free on every plan.
• Buy X Get Y. Buy 2, get 1 free, applied by itself; the cheapest qualifying item becomes free. Best for things people buy in multiples — soaps, earrings, snacks. A sales booster on the Growth plan; coupons and sale prices are not.

How to run a sale or discount shows each one click by click; Discounts, coupons & offers explains how they combine — one coupon per order, offers first, delivery charges never discounted. To tell people about a code, put it in the announcement bar; on Growth, a welcome popup can also hand it to first-time visitors.

Two settings that make offers safe

Minimum order value. A ₹100-off coupon on a ₹250 order is a gift. Set a minimum on the coupon, under More rules, so it only works on carts worth discounting. There is also a store-wide minimum under Settings → Checkout; see Checkout: order methods & form.

Max discount. On a percentage coupon, cap the rupees off. 10% off, max ₹150 cannot become ₹600 off on a big cart.

The free-shipping bar

The cheapest lift to order size is not a discount at all. Set a delivery charge and a free delivery above amount under Settings → Shipping, and your store shows a sticky bar — Add ₹X more for free shipping. Put the threshold a little above what people usually spend: if most orders are around ₹450, free delivery above ₹599 nudges a second item in. It is free on every plan and has no switch; it appears once both amounts are set. See Set delivery charges.

Check the maths first

Before an offer goes live, put the price, your cost and the discount into the discount calculator. It shows what you keep per order after the markdown. Below your floor? Change the offer — a smaller percentage, a higher minimum, a free add-on instead of money off — not the floor.

Seasons: prepare four weeks out

In the weeks before Diwali, Black Friday, Christmas and Valentine's Day, your dashboard shows a season checklist — a season coupon, an announcement bar with the last order date, and so on — ticked off as you do them. It appears a few weeks out; the work should start earlier. Three to four weeks before: decide the offer and check its maths, photograph the gift version, write the last-order-date line, confirm the courier's cut-off.

Write down

Floor price: ₹___. Offer: ______ (code ______, min order ₹___, expires ___). Free delivery above ₹___. Every number on this line should still clear the floor.