Promotions vs sitewide discounts
Attach the offer to specific products when you have a specific job to do, and reduce everything only when the whole store needs to move at once. A targeted promotion lets you choose which lines carry the cost, so the bestseller that sells at full price all year keeps its margin, while the slow line gets the push it needs.
A store wide reduction is a blunt instrument with one real advantage: it is simple to communicate and it creates an event people will act on. The cost is that every order you were going to receive anyway arrives smaller. On a busy trading week that is a large amount of margin given to customers who had already decided.
The practical rule: if you can name the products that need help, promote those. If the goal is a dated event that the whole customer base should notice, go store wide and put a firm end date on it.
Choose
Targeted promotions
when
- Specific lines are overstocked while the rest of the range sells at full price
- You want an offer visible in shopping listings against particular items
- Margin differs across the catalogue and a single reduction would not be affordable on all of it
- The offer is for a segment, such as first time buyers or a lapsed list
- You are testing whether price is actually the objection on a slow product
Choose
Sitewide discounts
when
- You need a dated event customers will remember and act on
- End of season stock has to clear across many categories at once
- The store is closing a range, moving warehouse or changing pricing structure
- Your margins are even enough across the catalogue to survive one rate
- Communicating dozens of separate offers would confuse more than it sells
| Criterion | Targeted promotions | Sitewide discounts |
|---|---|---|
| Cost | Margin is given up only on the products you chose | Every order in the window costs margin, including ones already coming |
| Setup effort | Per product rules, feed updates, and clear labelling on those pages | One rule, one banner, minutes to launch |
| Time to signal | One to two weeks to see whether the chosen lines moved | Immediate, response arrives within the first day |
| Control | Tight: you pick items, depth and duration separately | Blunt: one depth applies to everything included |
| Best for | Overstock, slow lines, segment offers, protecting bestsellers | Seasonal clearance, trading events, range closures |
| What can go wrong | Offers spread across too many products and nobody notices any of them | Bestsellers are discounted to people who would have paid full price |
| How we measure it | Units moved on the promoted lines and margin per order across the store | Revenue and margin against the equivalent weeks before and after the event |
When both apply
A common structure is a store wide event with exclusions, which is really both at once. Set the headline offer for the announcement, then exclude the products whose margin cannot carry it, and keep a small number of deeper cuts on the stock you actually need gone.
Write the exclusions before the campaign goes live, not after the first day, and make them visible on the product pages so customer service is not explaining them all week. Check any listing feeds and promotion settings too, since an offer shown in a shopping result that is not honoured at checkout causes both complaints and listing problems.
Questions
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