While discounts can be a powerful tool for driving sales, there are limitations to what they can do. Our general advice is to keep your discount arrangements relatively simple. If it's hard for you and your hosts to understand, think of your customers! Your customers want to know they got a good deal - they aren't going to respond significantly to an overly complex setup.
Automatic Discounts
Automatic Discounts are applied to a cart when all conditions you've set up are met, without the user having to enter a discount code. While this is a convenient way to make sure most eligible customers are getting the discounts they deserve, you may run into some snags. Class/Camp transfers and reversals can sometimes get tricky when automatic discounts are involved - the conditions required for the discount to apply might not be maintained across the transaction. For better control, we suggest using Codes. It simply gives you more control. Also, many customers may not be aware of the existence of special discounts without having a code to enter. If you hand out a code, you raise awareness of your offerings.
Universal Discounts
Like Automatic Discounts, Universal Discounts are convenient, but ultimately may cause you some headaches. If you use the Universal option, you don't have to assign your discount to the specific products you're targeting. However, you leave open the possibility that your discount will apply to products you weren't anticipating. In practice, we've found that Universal Discounts are not often used. Our preference is to assign discounts to targeted products. NOTE: If you choose to use the Universal Discount, you will need to contact [email protected], for us to assign this for you.
Discounts work for only one cart session
Some of our clients have noticed that their customers are missing out on discounts because they break up a transaction into multiple shopping cart sessions. For example, someone signs up one child for camp, checks out their shopping cart, and then signs up their other kid for the same season and checks out in another cart session. There currently is no way for our discount system to check against previously completed transactions. Another example of this limitation would be if you had a discount for signing up for five weeks and someone signed up for three, and then came back later and signed up for two more weeks. The discount would not be applied.
Discounts work for only one product at a time
Some people have dreamed up combination discounts, where a customer would get a discount if they bought two or more linked products. An example might be $5.00 off a T-shirt if you've signed up for a certain season. While this is a compelling idea, the software does not support it at this time.
Sequential Discounts work only within one season
Some DaySmart Recreation admin users have their camps set up as separate seasons for each week. The sequential discount option cannot span seasons, and so these users cannot take advantage of this option.
Progressive Weekly Discounts
Some DaySmart Recreation users offer discounts that become progressively more generous as the user adds more weeks to their cart. For instance, 5% off three weeks, 7% off four, 10% off five and so on. This type of discount is a challenge to setup - you have to make each progressing discount stack on top of the earlier ones, and so you have to calculate each additional discount as combined with the earlier discounts. The math to accomplish this is tricky if you're using percentages.