If you’re looking for information about sale price and promotions (for Shopify-integrated users) in Merchant Center Next, click here.
Show a deal on your products by adding a sale price or promotion. Note that promotions in Merchant Center are referred to as discounts in Shopify.
When you set a discount or sale price on your products, Google will feature a “SALE” annotation and strikethrough price, or a promotion annotation like “25% Off” or “$40 Off” that can help your sale stand out to shoppers. You can do this manually by setting a sale price on individual products or by creating a promotion with specific start and end dates for multiple products.
In this article
- Benefits of sale price and promotions
- How sale price and promotions display on Google
- How to activate sale price in Shopify
- How to activate promotions in Shopify
Benefits of sale price and promotions
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Increased Sales: Offering discounts or promotions can entice customers to make purchases they might have otherwise postponed, resulting in increased sales for your business.
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Customer Attraction: Sales and promotions can attract new customers who are looking for a good deal, expanding your customer base.
- Build trust: Sales and promotions help in showcasing your product and business benefits resulting in building customer loyalty.
How sale price and promotions display on Google
Sale price
If the sale price and original base price meet certain conditions, both prices and sale price annotations will appear across different Google platforms like Google Search, Shopping ads, and the Shopping tab. The sale price will show as the current price alongside the original price, which will show with a strikethrough. Your product will also show a badge that highlights your sale. The specific colors used for annotations differ depending on where your product appears.
Promotions
Promotions allow you to distribute online offers across different Google platforms like Google Search, Shopping ads, and the Shopping tab. You can offer your customers an amount off discount on products, collections, or variants in your store.
Promotion types supported
The following promotion types created in Shopify can be connected with Merchant Center:
- Discount codes: Fixed value or percentage discounts code on products and variants.
- Automatic discounts: Discounts that apply automatically at checkout and in the shopping cart. You can create automatic discounts for a percentage or a fixed amount.
Promotion types not supported
At this time, the following types of promotions and conditions can’t be connected to your Merchant Center account:
- Any free shipping promotions
- Buy X get Y promotions
- All types of discounts on collections in your store
- Local in-store discounts
- Only online discounts will be connected with Merchant Center
- Discounts targeted to specific users
- Promotions without an end date
- Promotions with a start date older than 6 months
Additionally, promotions aren’t supported if your account has no active US offers regardless of the promotion target country.
How to activate sale price in Shopify
When your product shows with sale price annotations, your sales stand out and potential customers can view how much they’ll save on that purchase.
You can manually set sale prices for individual products without using discount codes. When you put a product on sale for a lower price, you might want your customers to be able to view the original price to understand the price comparison. To show a sale price in your online store and across Google, your product details need to include a compare-at price which displays both the sale price and the original price.
Steps to set a compare-at price for a product
- In the left navigation menu of your Shopify admin page, click Products.
- Click on the name of the product that you want to edit.
- In the “Pricing” section, do the following:
- In the “Compare-at price” field, enter the product's original price.
- In the “Price” field, enter the product's new sale price.
- Make sure that the value in the “Compare-at price” field is higher than the value in the “Price” field to display the sale price.
- Click Save.
Learn more about setting sale prices for products in Shopify.
Sale price best practices
Turn on the Automatic Product Sync setting in your Google & YouTube app so that when you set a compare-at price in Shopify, the new pricing is automatically shared with Google Merchant Center. For more information on how compare-at price will display on Google, read sale_price specifications. On your online store, the product listing should update with the sale price within a few hours.
How to activate promotions in Shopify
Promotions are referred to as discounts in Shopify.
You can create discount codes and automatic discounts directly in your Shopify admin and then sync them to the Google & YouTube app.
- In the left navigation menu of your Shopify admin page, click Discounts.
- Click on the name of the discount that you want to publish on Google & YouTube channel.
- In the “Sales channels” section, click Manage.
- Select Google & YouTube channel where you want this discount to be visible and promoted.
- Click Done.
Learn how to Create and manage promotions within Shopify.
You can manage your promotions in your Merchant Center account. Learn how to Edit a promotion or change promotion status.
Promotions best practices
- Optimize Visibility: For effective promotion of your products on Google, make sure to fill out the Discounts section in Shopify correctly.
- Check your promotion status: You can check the status of all your active promotions in the Shopify admin by navigating to the “Discounts” tab and reviewing the “Status” column. If one of your promotions is disapproved, the disapproval reason will be listed on the page. You’ll also receive an email notification with instructions for how to fix the issue.
- Maintain Approval Rate: Keep your historical promotions approval rate high and stay updated with the latest promotion policies.
- Collections: Use collections to make it easier to group specific products and apply a promo to that group.
- Prepare for the holidays: Prepare for the holiday season by setting clear objectives and maintaining updated inventory and pricing. Look at the best sellers report for trending categories and other insights to help inform your sales strategy.
- Be ready to adjust in real-time: Continuously monitor promotion performance and adjust strategies as needed. Modify sales and promotion end dates, allocate budgets wisely, and use the report editor for evaluation.