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Discounts - better User understanding

Nuno Aguiar Dynamicweb Employee
Nuno Aguiar
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Hi,

 

Comparing our discount engine with other competitors, it would be great if users could get a bit more control over discounts. One concept if their ability to assign a priority + a "Stop processing further discounts" flag. So in theory you can have 100 active discounts setup, but if the first discounts (assuming a priority/sorting) has "Stop processing further discounts" set to "True", the system only considers and calculates 1.

 

This could also be a performance enhancement in the checkout, avoiding the system to calculate all discounts to determine the highest/lowest discount.

 

This makes the most sense for "Aggregated" behaviour discount type.

 

 

In other words:

  • We would set a priority/order in the backend
    Which would simply determine the order the discount engine goes throught the individual discounts - inactive and outside of date range would be ignored
     
  • A flag on each discount (i.e. "Stop further discounts from processing") would tell the system to not calculate any further discounts.

 

Best Regards,

Nuno


Replies

 
Adrian Ursu Dynamicweb Employee
Adrian Ursu
Reply

+1 (I would actually add more than one to this request)

 
Scott Forsyth Dynamicweb Employee
Scott Forsyth
Reply

We're teaming up on our votes for this, but I'll add one too. smiley

We have a particular project right now where the customer has a pretty valid reason to have two discounts applied at the same time. However, they don't want all discounts to be applied simultaneously. This solution would give them the tools necessary to achieve what they want.

 
Scott Forsyth Dynamicweb Employee
Scott Forsyth
Reply

We're teaming up on our votes for this, but I'll add one too. smiley

We have a particular project right now where the customer has a pretty valid reason to have two discounts applied at the same time. However, they don't want all discounts to be applied simultaneously. This solution would give them the tools necessary to achieve what they want.

 
Nicolai Pedersen
Reply

Hi Scott

Ok, I understand the request. Should be fairly simple to implement - not for the user to understand the price of the products though :-).

Just to verify - I do not think it makes sense to distingues between order and orderline discounts, but simply add this to the entire stack of discounts (Discount matrix - not sales discounts)

Disagree?

BR Nicolai

 
Scott Forsyth Dynamicweb Employee
Scott Forsyth
Reply

That makes good sense to me.

Scott

 
Nuno Aguiar Dynamicweb Employee
Nuno Aguiar
Reply

Hi Nicolai,

 

I agree too. Good to know it should be fairly simple to implement :)

 

Best Regards,

Nuno Aguiar

 
Nuno Aguiar Dynamicweb Employee
Nuno Aguiar
Reply

Hi Nicolai,

 

Any news on this feature? If it could be in 9.5 would be great. It keeps coming up for us.

 

Best Regards,

Nuno Aguiar

 
Nicolai Pedersen
Reply

It will not...

 
Nuno Aguiar Dynamicweb Employee
Nuno Aguiar
Reply

Hi Nicolai,

 

Are there any plans for this feature? It has come up again.

 

Nuno Aguiar

 
Nicolai Pedersen
Reply

Hi Nuno

We have "discount improvements" in this release working on it right now.

There are a number of things related to that

  1. Voucher: Only for items in cart that does not already have a discount (orderline discount). If 3 products in cart, 2 already have 10%, apply voucher that will give 20% - only third orderline will get the 20% discount.
  2. Categorize discounts: Order and orderline discounts; Cart discounts - catalog/product discounts. Much easier to understand.
  3. Voucher usage per customer (email or userid) - could be discount usage per customer. Ensure a given discount can only be used once for a user (Userid if logged in, email address if not)
  4. Add created date for voucher list
  5. Add revenue and discount on voucher list (and maybe discount list) - how much is given in discount for each of them.
  6. Allow free shipping - new checkbox on all discounts that will ensure free shipping on that order together with the discount specified. So add 20% and free shipping for shipping methods marked for 'allow free shipping discounts' when a voucher is applied.

Other possible options

  • Stop further discounts from processing
  • Discount priority
  • Other useful ideas?

Any oher input - go ahead and place it here - prioritized would be best.

Thanks, Nicolai

 
Nuno Aguiar Dynamicweb Employee
Nuno Aguiar
Reply

Hi Nicolai,

 

Sure. Here's the list of commonly requested features from our customers (some you already have in your list):
 

  1. Stop further discounts from processing
    I believe you cannot have this without having the Discount priority - it only makes sense when the customer has some sort of control over the order of the discounts
     
  2. Free shipping on Products
    For scenarions like "Free Shipping on Outlet Apparel"
    This is a hard one but we managed to get it working in 2 ways for seperate customers
    • Flag on the Product called "Eligeble for Free Shipping" + on the Shipping method have a flag saying "Allow for free shipping products"
      This basically set the orderline weight to 0 for that shipping method (requires provider updates)
    • Flag on the Product called "Free shipping"
      Set the orderline wiegh to 0 - just because it's easier for the customer to relate to it, rather than setting weight to 0, and then reverting the original weight and/or it was easier because of the integration jobs

If we could make this work on the orderline level would make it a more Dynamicweb approach, in other words
 - If Type = Order discount; then it would be free shipping for the entire order

 - If Type = Orderline discount; then it would be weight = 0 on the orderline. Obviously other conditions would have to apply, such as specific Shipping method
 

  1. Discount limited to 'X' orders
    For scenarios like "20% off for the first 100 orders"
     
  2. Apply discount 'X' times per order
    Instead of just a checkbox for "once"
    For scenarios like "20% off for the first 3 products of the 'Winter 2018 collection'"
     
  3. Max amount discount (for percentage amounts)
    For scenarios of "Discount of 40% up until $200"
     
  4. Calculation type
    Instead of calling it "Inclusive/Exclusive", how about proviting a more verbose calculation type selector/configurator?
    We have requests to set up discounts of "before taxes and before shipping"  and "before taxes after shipping"
    Maybe if we could have a dropdown of the combinations instead of determining inclusive/exclusive would be easier to understand, considering the 4 order fees (VAT / Taxes / Shipping / Payment).
     
  5. Product (offer)
    Buy X items from this group, get 1 product from Y category free
    Let's say there's a group of products (with specific stock for each product) and they want to give away those. There's a controlled amount. One can argue we can custom develop this in templates by assigning a dummy product, but it's always involves some more manual steps to the customer to step up, rather than just pointing to a group/ query.
     
  6. Multiple selection on Shipping providers and countries
    1. If you have a discount that is applicable to 2 or 3 shipping methods or countries, we need to duplicate discounts

 

I know the list is extensive, but it's a compilation over the last few year for one of the hardest conversations we have with customers and where usually their "current ecommerce solution" behaves better over ours and it becomes an issue with their Marketing team.

 

Thanks,

Nuno Aguiar

 
Nicolai Pedersen
Reply

Hi Nuno

Thank you for the feedback. Much appreciated

When you say "commonly requested features" - out of 100 customers (or just 10) how many of them asked for each of these? Asking, because some people have a tendency to elevate a request made once in history to "commonly" :-).

@2: If you create an orderdiscount of type free shipping and add the group of apparel, this should work today?

I cannot see how free shipping in any way or form makes any kind of sense for orderline discounts... You either have free shipping or not. Unless you have it cost 6.98 in weight for the entire order, but the 100 gram of the discounted item makes it 6.48 - so you save the extra weight amount but have to pay for the rest? If that is the case, that is too advanced for anyone to understand anyways and fall in custom category.

I'll have a look at each of them and pull them in if we can with the ressources available - and if we find them to make sense for enough customers :-).

BR Nicolai

 
Nuno Aguiar Dynamicweb Employee
Nuno Aguiar
Reply

Hi Nicolai,

 

I'd say that 2 out of 3 customers ask about one of those features on the list (some of them ask for more than 1 thing). I don't have stats on each of these, but I ranked them by the internal + customer feedback.

  • @1 and @2 is asked by 2 out of 3
  • @2 through @6 is asked 1 out of 3
  • @7 and @8 is asked every now and again

 

@2 - This applies free shipping for the entire order. What we need is Free Shipping for a particular orderline. Your scenario about the 100gram is exactly what customers come to us with. Another way to look at it, is as if those orderlines were "Services" (instead of Stock items), when DW is estimating the shipping fees.
I am perfectly fine having this fall into the "Custom category".

 

Hope this helps,

Nuno

 
Nicolai Pedersen
Reply

Hi Again

Questions...:

@4 Apply discount 'X' times per order

Will that ever make sense - who would not order 2 orders instead of one? Same with 5. Also that kind of discounting is against the Danish rules in this area, but that is another topic...

@7: Product (offer)

Would you get a random product that is in stock from the Y-group - or will the customer need to select this?

 
Nicolai Pedersen
Reply

@2: Thanks for clarifying. Pretty sure that will not be made standard for orderlines. You would have to make that custom. Can that even be made in a way that the customer buying understands it? Have an example of this? Curious.

Well - americans and their discounts. It does not make sense :-). Make them buy using confusion!

 
Nuno Aguiar Dynamicweb Employee
Nuno Aguiar
Reply

Hi Nicolai,

 

@2 We do have examples of these. Here's the one I could quickly find https://access.emssafety.com/products/manikins/cpr-manikins/prestan-products/prestan-manikins. This type of feature is pretty common in the USA.

 

@4 This came from Magpul very recently, at the same time they wanted to limit a percentage discount to a max amount. It's essentially setting a limit to the amount of times a discount is applied on the same order. This is also common in Portugal currently.

 

@7 We'd get a random product. I've only been in 2 or 3 customer conversations in my entire DW life-span where the user would have to select it, so as far as I am concerned, that would be a nice to have, not a need.
We developed a BXGY Sales Discount provider that handles item 7. It worked so well, we had to disable it and only use it when customers really needed it, as a way to force them to use Order Discounts instead. I'd be happy to show you how it works or feel free to take a look at www.lorenz.com. This customer uses it intensively, but the most exquisit scenario (hard to find there) is when they ask for "Buy Product ABC, and get 20% off Product XYZ" - I do agree with you it's pretty custom as far as Dynamicweb is concerned, but it comes off times enough for us to do it in Rizzo - I am fine if we can do it custom. My biggest goal is to stop using the Sales Discount.