Shopify - 4 tips for major online sale days
Preparing for a major sale? Don't wait until the morning of the sale to start making important changes like pricing, inventory levels and more. Get prepared early with your Retail Express and Shopify integration so you can spend your time where it matters most - making sales and exceeding your customer expectations.
Read on for our 4 top tips for preparing for major online shopping sales days!
To find out more about the Retail Express Shopify integration, please contact sales@retailexpress.com.au today!
Updating Inventory Locations
Are you adding any new Outlets to your inventory locations? Do this as soon as possible, and preferably at the end of the trading day.
When you add an Outlet it starts a recount of your inventory for all products. Depending on the number of products this can create a long queue of synchronisations, so it's best to do this once you've ceased trading instore (so additional sales won't continue to add to the queue).
The earlier you can add the new Outlet the more time you've had to synchronise your updated inventory levels, so you're ready for the sale to begin!
Tip: Add Inventory Locations to your Shopify configuration at the end of the day
Inventory Locations can be found in your Shopify Integration settings
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Plan your bulk updates
Products and customers constantly synchronise throughout the day when sales are made and customer data is updated. If you need to do a bulk update to your products, this will add to the load of data in the synchronisation queue. The more data you update, the more to be synchronised.
Plan ahead
Don't wait until the day of the sale to make your changes - get in early and do them days before if you can. See our tips further below for scheduling price changes or discounts in advance.
Upload bulk updates at the end of the day
Try to avoid making any changes that will prompt a large number of synchronisations during the middle of trade, when your system is already synchronising back and forth with your online store. Instead, wait until the end of the day when your instore trade has ceased and the synchronisation queue is empty. Not sure what triggers a synchronisation? Click here to see a list of fields for products, customers and more.
Be specific
Include only the items you need to update. For example, if you need to update 10 products in the database using Mass Upload, ensure you only have those products on the spreadsheet - there's no need to include your entire product catalogue (as this will trigger a synchronisation of all products when uploaded, not just those you've modified).
Check and double check
Make sure your upload file is accurate before you upload it. If you make an error that needs to be corrected, that's double the number of synchronisations that need to occur - the original file and the corrected one!
Use the Mass Download filters available to target only the products you need to update
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Be strategic about your Price Changes/Discounts
There's no need to wait until the last second to upload new pricing. Retail Express has a variety of ways for you to be process price changes or apply discounts.
- Schedule the Price Change - Retail Express includes a Scheduled Price Change feature which means you can update the price automatically, allowing time for the price change to take effect. There's no need to stay up late just to update the price - let Retail Express do it for you
- Use Shopify Discounts - use the Shopify Automatic Discount to apply to sales automatically on the cart page (this won't apply to instore sales). As the discount takes place on the webstore side, there's no synchronisation required to update prices, reducing the load on the synchronisation queue
- Upload price changes in advance - If you're using Mass Upload to update your prices in Retail Express, you can get ahead of the action and start your sale early! This will give your webstore time to synchronise the updated prices, and your customers won't be disappointed to have more time to take advantage of the deals!
The Scheduled Price Change feature will automatically process price changes for you
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Know what to expect on the day
Avoid any frustration on the day by knowing what to expect. During major trading days there's a lot of changes taking place - inventory synchronisations, customer accounts, and more. A lot of your fellow retailers will be making changes as well.
While we do our best to make things as fast and as smooth as possible, delays on synchronisations can occur. If you need to make any changes it's best to allow time for any changes to appear on your site.
If you've followed the tips above you may find you don't need to make many changes at all, and you can get down to business on making sales and exceeding your customers expectations!