Spend more, save more on Black Friday: building a tiered order discount

Why a ladder instead of one flat discount

A flat 20% off everything gives the same discount to a $30 order and a $300 one. A spend ladder asks for something back: the shopper who wants 15% has to reach $200 first. On Black Friday, when many shoppers are buying gifts for several people, that request lands well, because the extra item is often one they were going to buy somewhere anyway.

A ladder also lets you keep the small orders, which make up most of the count in many stores, at a lower cost. Here is one ladder used throughout this article, for a store with a median order of about $70, products at a 60% gross margin (each $100 of products costs you $40) and shipping that costs you $8 per order:

• Free shipping from $75
• 10% off the order from $120
• 15% off the order from $200

Which reward the shopper actually gets

Ladders are easy to misread, by merchants and shoppers alike. In Discount Easy the rules are these:

• Order rewards do not add up. A cart at $210 gets 15% off. Only the highest order goal the cart has reached applies, and the percentages are never added together.
• Shipping rewards are counted separately. The same $210 cart keeps the free shipping it reached at $75. That is what lets one bar walk the shopper from free shipping to a percentage off.
• Progress is measured on the cart subtotal before discounts and shipping. A shopper paying in another currency sees the thresholds converted into it.

Write the offer the same way on your banner: “Free shipping from $75, 10% off from $120, 15% off from $200” says clearly that each step replaces the one before.

The ladder against a flat 20%

The ladder costs less on both, but it also advertises a smaller headline number. If your shoppers compare stores by the biggest percentage on the banner, a ladder that tops out at 15% can look weaker than a competitor's flat 20%. One way round that is to put the top rung at the number you would have used for the flat discount and set its threshold high.

The zone just below each step

Every rung has a narrow band beneath it where reaching the next goal makes the shopper pay you less, not more. It is worth knowing how wide that band is before you pick the numbers.

The band is where 90% of the cart is more than 85% of $200, which means any cart from about $189 up to $200. You can work it out for any step: divide the next threshold's price after discount by the current rung's price factor. For 15% at $200 above 10%: $170 ÷ 0.90 ≈ $189.

The band grows with the jump in percentage. Moving from 10% to 20% at $200 instead would widen it to anything above about $178. Small jumps between rungs and thresholds set well apart keep it a thin slice of your orders.

Setting the thresholds for Black Friday

Start from your own order export, ideally from a period without a big sale. The first rung should sit just above the median order, close enough that one typical add-on gets a shopper there. Each next rung should be roughly one or two more items away from the one before.

Black Friday baskets are often larger than an ordinary week's, so a ladder copied from your everyday free shipping threshold may sit too low. If last year's Black Friday orders are in Shopify, look at those as well and put the top rung above where most of them landed.

Two settings help keep the top rung under control:

• Maximum discount caps a percentage reward at an amount. With a $50 cap, 15% off stops growing at about $333, so a $600 order gets $50 off rather than $90.
• Combine with product discounts decides what happens when a product discount is already in the cart. Left on, a $200 cart from a 25%-off collection is discounted to $150, and 15% off the order then brings it to $127.50, which is 36% off in total. Switched off, that cart keeps its product discount and the order reward is not added on top.

If you are running a storewide product sale at the same time, run the sums for a cart with both discounts before deciding on the second setting.

Setting it up in Discount Easy

1. In Discounts, click Create discount and choose Cart goals.
2. Under Measure progress by, choose Cart value. (Number of items works the same way for “3 items, 10% off” ladders.)
3. For Goal 1, enter 75 under Cart value, at least and pick Free shipping as the reward. Click Add goal for $120 with 10% off the order, and again for $200 with 15%. Each goal has to be higher than the one before.
4. Set a Maximum discount if you want one, and decide on Combine with product discounts.
5. Keep it as an Automatic discount, so the reward appears as soon as the cart qualifies, and set the start and end date and time for November 27–30, or only the Friday.

Under Design, the Cart progress bar tab sets where the bar shows (cart page, cart drawer or both), its colours and wording, and whether each reward is listed under the bar.

The Free plan allows one goal per campaign, which is enough for free shipping alone. A three-step ladder like the one above needs Basic, which allows up to five.

Black Friday into Cyber Monday

An order gets only one cart goals discount. If two of them run at the same time, the shopper gets the one worth most and the cart bar shows only one, and the editor warns you about the overlap. So if you want a different ladder for Cyber Monday, end the Black Friday campaign before the Cyber Monday one starts, rather than letting them overlap through the weekend.

Before the sale goes live, put three test carts through checkout: one just under $75, one at $130 and one above the point where your maximum discount kicks in. If the totals match your sums, the ladder is ready.