Implementing "On Sale" function....

[dff]

I'm in the process of adding the last bits of functionality to my first store. My client would like to be able to easily add and remove specials on her site -- and she wants to do these changes herself. Is there a simple way to put products (or groups or categories of products) on sale?

That means (1) easy to add and remove the sales (showing $x off, or x% off, or an exact sale price), and (2) easy to display the sale price on the appropriate product pages (and as specials on the storefront page), and (3) the sale price is actually used in calculations.

What are my options for implementing these functions? Can someone point me down a good path for this? I just need a good idea for where to start....

Thanks!

Dennis

p.s. I'm using OpenUI, Viking Other Page Templates, Search Manager, Storefront Templates, Category Templates, Product Page Templates, Coupon Manager, GC Manager, Buy X Get X.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

The easiest way without another module, and allowing the customer to manipulate the sale items easily would be to create a 'specials' category.

Assign the on sale products to the category and use a flat file import with just the on sale items prodcode, name, and sale price to update the item with a new price.

When the sale is over, the customer can go to the specials category and unassign all the item (or replace them with new items) and use a flat file to update the price back to the off sale price.

Since you are using storefront templates as well, you can incorporate this into a storefront zone and randomly select products or specify a list of products to 'feature' on the storefront.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

How do you think your customer would like to deal with products being on sale? Will they just alter the price and consider it to be on sale or do they want to specify a special sale price in some way and leave the normal price alone? Do they actually use the cost field in Merchant or would it be okay if that was treated as something other than cost? For example, there's a module that lets you treat the cost field as MSRP and will display to the shopper the MSRP crossed out and then the price as your 'discounted' price. There's a variety of ways to handle this so I'll make a recommendation on how you think the customer would prefer to manage it.

[dff]

My client definitely wants to show the Sale Price, with the regular price crossed out. She's not planning to track costs in Miva, so that field would be available for use.

[ILoveHostasaurus]

The Price Wizard Pro module at http://www.mivacentral.com/... (http://www.mivacentral.com/Merchant2/merchant.mv?Screen=PROD&Store_Code=m&Product_Code=SFMALL-PWP&Category_Code=&Search=strike&Search_Type=AND&Offset=1) will let you do that. It can be told to treat the cost field as MSRP and to then show the customer their savings as either a difference or percent. You can also tell it how to label that cost field, so it doesn't have to say MSRP, it can say Normal Price, etc. It will strike that price though when displaying it.

[DesignExtend-MSI]

Price Wizard Pro won't work with the template modules.

Take a look at this How-To, which explains the simple process via the templates:

http://www.designextend.com/de.mv?ARTID=t_strikethrough

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

My client definitely wants to show the Sale Price, with the regular price crossed out. She's not planning to track costs in Miva, so that field would be available for use.

Since you already have Product Page Temapltes you can simply design a template for the products 'on sale' and use the cost field for the original price and use some OpenTokens to do the math subtracting the price field from the cost field and show the savings in dollars or a percentage.

You could also do this with Category Page Templates.

[DesignExtend-MSI]

Since you already have Product Page Temapltes you can simply design a template for the products 'on sale' and use the cost field for the original price and use some OpenTokens to do the math subtracting the price field from the cost field and show the savings in dollars or a percentage.

You could also do this with Category Page Templates.

You don't need to use a separate template for this. And you don't need OpenTokens. You can use pre-defined tokens and conditionals for the template modules themselves, and if the cost field isn't higher than the price field, it would display as usual.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

True.

I just find it easier to manage to create a seperate template for the sale items.

However, you are right, you can do it with a simple conditional as well. :)

[ILoveHostasaurus]

Ah, didn't realize PWP didn't work with the template mods. I'd tend to go with Vic's seperate template suggestion if the store is high traffic since any time you can cut out conditional code, you save even just a bit of processing time. Otherwise the conditionals would probably be easier to maintain since a major look and feel change would just involve editing one template.

[Marc Anderson]

A very simple way that we use to modify products on sale is to create a special category called "Sale Items" or some such thing. Then add the products you wish to have on sale into the Sale Items category. We than tag on a statement to the Product Name, such as "Swedish Farmers Cheese - Was $6.95", and drop the price field to the sale price. Using StoreMan we can easily add and remove items using this method and it does not require a module or other tweaking of tokens, etc. The item will show up in the Sale Items category as well as any other category to which it is assigned with the sale price.

[DesignExtend-MSI]

I just find it easier to manage to create a seperate template for the sale items.

I could see how that could be a method of organizing. Only caveat is if you forget to assign it to a template, the sales pricing wouldn't display - it would just show it as price.

I have a messy desk - I am horrible at organizing.

[Vic - WolfPaw Computers]

I can definately relate!

My admin assitant will definately agree too! (Referring to my desk...:o )

[dff]

For the sake of completeness, I thought I'd record what I ended up doing for this -- thanks to all who responded! The complete solution turned out to be quite simple to implement, given the modules I am using.

In the Viking Product Page template, I added this to show the sale info and price:

----------insert into Product Page template-----------------
%begin_costdiscount%
<span style="color:#ff0000">
Regular Price: <strike><B>%prodcost%</B></strike>
&nbsp;&nbsp;•<B>ON SALE</B>•
</span><BR>

<span style="color:#ff0000"><B><I>
%module|DEN_PRODFIELDS|AF-SALE|%
</I></B></SPAN><BR>

%end_costdiscount%
Your Price: <B>%prodpriceF%</B>
<BR>
----------end of Product Page template insert-----------------

In this case, I used an Additional Field called AF-SALE to include a line about sale duration or terms or whatever. This is optional, but it adds value.

To put an item on sale, you just arrange the prices so that the product's Cost is the MSRP or "regular" price (i.e., the higher price), and the product's Price is the Sale Price (i.e., the lower price). This triggers the condition that matches the "begin_costdiscount" conditional.

It was also simple to put randomly-selected specials on the front page because I have Viking's Storefront template. I created a Category called SALE, and added the desired sale products to that category. I then changed the template to display a line of products that are randomly chosen from the SALE category (a trivial addition, since the category restriction function is provided).

That's it. As long as you're not using the Cost for actual cost info, then this scheme works very well.

[DesignExtend-MSI]

In this case, I used an Additional Field called AF-SALE to include a line about sale duration or terms or whatever. This is optional, but it adds value.
...
As long as you're not using the Cost for actual cost info, then this scheme works very well.

Alternatively you can also use condtionals to use an additional product field in conjunction with the Regular Price. Many do this if they're using the product cost field for price groups.