Effective Strategies for Putting Items on Sale in Shopify

Table of Contents

1. Introduction
2. Preparing Your Store for a Successful Sale
3. How to Put an Item on Sale in Shopify: The Manual Method
4. Bulk Editing Prices for Large Sales
5. Creating Discount Codes and Automatic Discounts
6. Leveraging Digital Products to Boost Sale Margins
7. Promoting Your Sale for Maximum Impact
8. The Tevello Advantage: Predictable Costs, Unlimited Growth
9. Tracking and Analyzing Sale Performance
10. Best Practices for Long-Term Success
11. Conclusion
12. FAQ: Selling Courses and Digital Products on Shopify

Introduction

Did you know that nearly 93% of shoppers use a discount code at some point during the year? In an increasingly crowded eCommerce marketplace, the ability to effectively run a promotion is no longer just a "nice-to-have" skill—it is a fundamental requirement for survival and growth. Whether you are looking to clear out last season’s inventory, celebrate a brand anniversary, or launch a brand-new digital product, understanding how to put an item on sale in Shopify is the key to unlocking hidden revenue and building lasting customer loyalty.

A well-executed sale acts as a beacon for your brand. It doesn’t just lower prices; it creates a sense of urgency, rewards your most loyal followers, and provides an entry point for new customers who might have been hesitant to pay full price for their first purchase. However, simply slashing prices without a strategy is a recipe for eroded margins and brand devaluation. To succeed, you need a technical understanding of the Shopify platform combined with a strategic approach to marketing and customer retention.

In this comprehensive guide, we will walk you through the technical steps of setting up sales, from manual price adjustments to automated discounts. We will also explore how to move beyond physical goods by integrating high-margin digital products into your sales strategy. We’ll show you how we at Tevello empower merchants to turn their stores into digital learning powerhouses, allowing you to scale your revenue without the traditional overhead of shipping and storage. By the end of this article, you will have a master plan for running profitable, sustainable sales that grow your business.

Preparing Your Store for a Successful Sale

Before you click a single button in your Shopify admin, you must lay the groundwork. Jumping into a sale without preparation is like throwing a party without checking if you have enough food; you might get people through the door, but the experience will leave them frustrated.

Conducting a Comprehensive Inventory Audit

The first step in learning how to put an item on sale in Shopify is knowing what you actually have to sell. For merchants dealing with physical goods, an inventory audit is non-negotiable. You should categorize your stock into three groups:

1. Best-Sellers: Items that move quickly at full price. Use these sparingly in sales, perhaps as "doorbusters" to get people onto the site.
2. Steady Performers: Items that sell consistently. These are great for modest percentage discounts (10–15%) to increase volume.
3. Slow-Movers/Dead Stock: Items that have been sitting in the warehouse for months. These are your primary candidates for deep discounts (40%+) or "Buy One, Get One" (BOGO) offers.

For our digital creators using Tevello, inventory looks a little different. Since digital courses and memberships have no physical shelf space, your "inventory" is essentially infinite. This allows for much more aggressive sales strategies because your cost of goods sold (COGS) for an additional unit is effectively zero.

Setting Measurable Objectives

A sale without a goal is just a loss of margin. Ask yourself what the primary driver is for this promotion. Are you trying to increase your Average Order Value (AOV)? If so, a "Spend $100, Save $20" model is best. Are you looking to acquire new customers? A deep discount on a popular entry-level item might be the way to go.

By defining your Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) beforehand—such as total revenue, new customer acquisition rate, or conversion rate—you can analyze your success post-sale. This data is vital for seeing how the app natively integrates with Shopify to support these various business models, ensuring your technical stack matches your commercial ambitions.

How to Put an Item on Sale in Shopify: The Manual Method

The most straightforward way to run a sale is by manually adjusting the price of an individual product. This is ideal for small stores or for putting a single "Product of the Week" on sale.

Step-by-Step Individual Price Adjustment

1. Access the Admin: Log in to your Shopify admin panel.
2. Navigate to Products: Click on the "Products" tab on the left-hand sidebar.
3. Select the Product: Click on the name of the item you wish to discount.
4. Locate the Pricing Section: Scroll down until you see the "Pricing" header.
5. Edit the Compare-at Price: This is the most important step for visibility. Enter the original (higher) price in the "Compare-at price" field.
6. Edit the Price: Enter the new, discounted price in the "Price" field.
7. Save Changes: Click the "Save" button at the top or bottom of the screen.

When you do this, Shopify automatically calculates the discount and displays it on your storefront. Usually, this appears as the old price with a strikethrough next to the new, lower price. This visual cue is essential because it immediately communicates value to the customer.

Handling Product Variants

If your product comes in different sizes, colors, or formats (like a physical book and a digital course), you must manage the pricing for each variant individually. In the product editor, scroll down to the "Variants" section. You can click "Edit" on each variant to adjust the price and compare-at price fields as described above.

For creators, this is a perfect time to think about bundling. Imagine a fitness coach selling a physical yoga mat; they could put the mat on sale but bundle it with a "Beginner Yoga Flow" course. This is a primary example of how one brand sold $112K+ by bundling courses, proving that physical and digital goods are a match made in heaven.

Bulk Editing Prices for Large Sales

If you are running a storewide sale or discounting an entire collection, editing products one by one is a waste of time. Shopify provides a powerful Bulk Editor tool to speed up this process.

Using the Bulk Editor

1. Select Multiple Products: In the "Products" section, use the checkboxes to select all the items you want to put on sale.
2. Click Bulk Edit: A bar will appear at the bottom or top of the list; click "Bulk edit."
3. Add Necessary Columns: If you don't see the "Price" or "Compare-at price" columns, click on the "Columns" button in the top right and select them.
4. Enter New Values: You can now click through the cells and type in the new prices.
5. Pro-Tip: You can use keyboard shortcuts (like Ctrl+C and Ctrl+V) to quickly copy prices across multiple rows.

Using Collections to Automate Sales Visibility

A smart way to organize your sale is to create a "Sale" collection. You can set this up as an automated collection where the condition is: "Compare-at price is greater than $0."

This means that any time you put an item on sale using the manual method, it will automatically appear in your "Sale" section on the website. This keeps your store organized and makes it easy for "bargain hunters" to find exactly what they are looking for.

Creating Discount Codes and Automatic Discounts

Sometimes, you don't want to change the price on the product page itself. You might want to offer a discount only to your email subscribers or apply a discount automatically at checkout once certain conditions are met.

Creating Manual Discount Codes

Discount codes (e.g., "SAVE20") are excellent for tracking the success of specific marketing channels.

1. Go to Discounts in your Shopify admin.
2. Click Create discount.
3. Choose Amount off products or Amount off order.
4. Select Discount code and enter a name (e.g., WELCOME10).
5. Define the value (percentage or fixed amount).
6. Set requirements (e.g., minimum purchase of $50).
7. Set active dates and save.

Setting Up Automatic Discounts

Automatic discounts are great because they reduce friction. The customer doesn't have to remember a code; the price just drops when they qualify. We often see this used for "Buy 2 Get 1 Free" promotions. In the Discounts section, simply choose Automatic discount instead of "Discount code." You can then set the same logic (percentage, fixed amount, or BOGO).

If unifying your stack is a priority, start by a simple, all-in-one price for unlimited courses.

Leveraging Digital Products to Boost Sale Margins

One of the challenges of physical product sales is that as you lower the price, your profit margin shrinks rapidly. This is where Tevello transforms your business. By adding digital products—like instructional videos, PDF guides, or exclusive communities—into your Shopify store, you create "margin insurance."

The "No-Cost" Upsell Scenario

Consider a merchant selling high-end espresso machines. During a holiday sale, they might put the machine on sale for 10% off. To make the deal even sweeter without losing more money on the hardware, they can include a "Mastering the Perfect Shot" video course for free. Because the course is hosted through Tevello, it costs the merchant nothing to "ship" it to a thousand customers. This increases the perceived value of the sale significantly while protecting the bottom line. Our mission at Tevello is to help you build an all-in-one ecosystem where digital products that live directly alongside physical stock create a superior customer experience.

Selling Courses Natively

When you put a digital product on sale, you want the experience to be seamless. Unlike other platforms that redirect your customers to a different URL, Tevello keeps them on your store. This means that when they buy a discounted course, they use the same Shopify checkout they already trust.

This native integration is why we see high success rates for merchants generating revenue from both physical and digital goods. You don't just sell a product; you sell a brand experience that you fully own.

Promoting Your Sale for Maximum Impact

Learning how to put an item on sale in Shopify is only half the battle. The other half is making sure people know about it.

Announcement Banners and Pop-ups

Your homepage is your most valuable real estate. Use an announcement bar at the very top of the page to broadcast your sale. Keep it simple: "FALL SALE: 20% OFF ALL ITEMS - USE CODE FALL20." If you have a particularly aggressive sale, a well-timed pop-up (offered when a user is about to exit the site) can save a sale. Offer them an extra 5% off if they complete their purchase right now.

Email Marketing and SMS

Your existing customers are your best resource during a sale. Send a "VIP Early Access" email to your subscribers 24 hours before the sale goes live to the general public. This makes them feel valued and helps you generate early momentum. For digital products, email is even more powerful. You can send "drip" content that educates the customer on the value of a course before offering them a limited-time sale price to join the community.

Social Proof and Urgency

Adding a countdown timer to your product pages can significantly increase conversion rates. When customers see that a sale ends in "4 hours and 12 minutes," the fear of missing out (FOMO) kicks in. Combine this with social proof, such as displaying how many people have purchased the item in the last 24 hours. For large-scale merchants, this strategy is key to migrating over 14,000 members and reducing support tickets by creating a clear, urgent, and self-explanatory buying path.

The Tevello Advantage: Predictable Costs, Unlimited Growth

When you run a massive sale, the last thing you want is for your software costs to eat into your profits. Many course platforms or membership apps charge you more as you grow—either by taking a percentage of your sales or by charging you per student.

Transparent Pricing You Can Trust

We believe that your success should be your own. That is why Tevello offers a flat-rate plan that supports unlimited members. Whether you have 10 students or 10,000, your cost remains the same. Our Unlimited Plan is priced at $29.99 per month. That's it.

0% Transaction Fees

Perhaps the biggest advantage of using Tevello during a sale is our fee structure—or rather, the lack of one. While other platforms might take 5% or 10% of every transaction, Tevello charges 0% transaction fees. When you put a course on sale for $100, you keep the $100 (minus your standard Shopify payment processing fees). This allows you to offer deeper discounts to your customers while maintaining higher take-home pay for yourself. It’s all about predictable pricing without hidden transaction fees.

Tracking and Analyzing Sale Performance

Once the sale period ends, it's time to look at the data. Shopify’s "Analytics" tab provides a "Sales by Discount" report that is incredibly useful. It shows you exactly which codes were used the most and which products were the most popular under promotion.

Key Metrics to Review:

• Conversion Rate: Did the sale actually convince more visitors to buy, or did it just lower the revenue from people who would have bought anyway?
• Average Order Value (AOV): Did customers add more items to their cart because of the discounts?
• Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): If you ran ads for the sale, was the profit from the new customers higher than the cost of the ads?
• Return Rate: Watch out for high return rates after a sale, especially for physical goods. Fortunately, digital products have a nearly 0% return rate when the content is high-quality.

By analyzing these metrics, you can refine your next sale. Maybe you'll find that 20% off was just as effective as 30% off, allowing you to keep more profit next time. Or perhaps you'll see that unifying a fragmented system into a single Shopify store led to a massive drop in customer support inquiries during the peak traffic period.

Best Practices for Long-Term Success

While sales are great for short-term revenue spikes, the ultimate goal is to build a sustainable business. Here are a few final tips for mastering the art of the Shopify sale:

1. Don't Over-Discount: If you run a sale every single week, your customers will stop buying at full price. They will simply wait for the next "event." Aim for 4-6 major sales a year.
2. Focus on Value, Not Just Price: Instead of just "20% off," try "Get a free 30-minute consultation with every purchase." Value-adds often convert better than price-slashes.
3. Use Drip Content: For digital products, use Tevello's drip scheduling to release content slowly after the sale. This keeps customers engaged with your brand long after they've made the purchase.
4. Leverage Community: Use all the key features for courses and communities to turn one-time buyers into long-term fans. A thriving member directory and social feed can turn a "sale shopper" into a brand advocate.

By following these guidelines, you can ensure that your promotions are healthy for your brand's long-term reputation and your bank account's bottom line.

Conclusion

Mastering how to put an item on sale in Shopify is an essential skill for any modern merchant. From the technical simplicity of adjusting "Compare-at prices" to the strategic complexity of bundling digital courses with physical inventory, every sale is an opportunity to learn more about your customers and grow your business.

At Tevello, our goal is to provide you with the robust tools you need to amplify your efforts. Whether it's through our unified login that reduces customer support friction or our commitment to a 0% transaction fee model, we are here to support your journey toward becoming a digital learning powerhouse.

Remember, you don't need a massive team or a complicated tech stack to run professional-grade sales. You just need a solid plan, a great product, and the right partner. We invite you to install Tevello from the Shopify App Store today and start your 14-day free trial. You can build your entire curriculum and set up your first sale before paying a single cent.

To build your community without leaving Shopify, start by reviewing the Shopify App Store listing merchants install from.

FAQ: Selling Courses and Digital Products on Shopify

1. Can I put digital courses on sale just like physical products in Shopify?

Yes, absolutely! When you use Tevello to create your courses, they are listed as digital products within your Shopify admin. This means you can use the manual "Compare-at price" method, create discount codes, or set up automatic discounts just as you would for a t-shirt or a piece of furniture. The process is identical, making it easy to manage your entire catalog in one place.

2. Is there a limit to how many students can buy a course during a big sale?

Not with Tevello. One of the primary advantages of our platform is that we offer strategies for selling over 4,000 digital courses natively without hitting any "per-user" caps. Our Unlimited Plan ($29.99/mo) includes unlimited students and unlimited courses, so you never have to worry about your software costs scaling up just because your sales are booming.

3. Do I need a separate website to host my sale and my course content?

No. At Tevello, we believe merchants should own their brand experience. Our app integrates natively with Shopify, meaning your courses live directly on your own URL. Your customers stay on your site from the moment they see the sale banner to the moment they finish their first lesson. This consistency builds trust and significantly improves conversion rates.

4. How do I prevent people from sharing their discounted course access with others?

Tevello uses Shopify's secure customer accounts to manage access. When someone purchases a course (even at a sale price), the access is tied specifically to their Shopify customer email and password. Because of our native integration, customers use a single login for both their physical orders and their digital content, which naturally discourages account sharing and protects your intellectual property.