[Update 2021]
We live in times where shopping has become a habit and a hobby for many. There are worldwide known shopping holidays – Black Friday, Cyber Monday, or seasonal sales. That is also when most companies notice record numbers in new customers and profits, same goes for traffic peaks.
When talking about sales in general, promotions are one of its key aspects, both from the buyer’s and seller’s perspective. Have you ever wondered how often we change our minds about buying something when we see a good offer? It’s psychologically proven that two-thirds of customers have made a purchase they weren’t planning on due to discounts of all kinds. One of the reasons for it is the psychological aspect of human nature, a so-called “fear of missing out” which means we don’t want to miss an opportunity that seemed too good to be true.
Before we go in-depth of Sylius promotion engine and its possibilities, let’s talk about Sylius’ capability of handling huge traffics. Sylius is known for it’s Best-of-breed approach that provides high scalability of the business. One of our recent case studies of Smathers&Branson gives an interesting insight on the matter. As reported their yearly growth is of 67% on average and the platform can handle over 500 simultaneous orders during Black Friday without any hiccups. Another good example of Sylius’ capabilities is the Printoclock project and their number of orders nearing 1500 daily with over 220 000 customers in general.
Now that we’ve showcased a bit of how easily Sylius can handle the needs of your customers we can talk about the promotions itself. Let’s explore Sylius promotion engine.
Promotions that happen during specific time periods like Christmas or dates like Black Friday are extremely popular. When stationery shops are closed due to national or retail holidays, it’s time for eCommerce to get its share of purchases and what’s the better way to fight for your share of the market than a promotion? Now, in the pandemic times, it’s even more true than ever. Below is the New Year’s Eve promotion example.
Another popular system of creating promotions are coupons. Let’s create an autumn sale for Sylius Course that will be coupon-based. It will last from the first day of autumn, 22.09, until the last on 21.12. or when the number of coupons ends – which in the example is 100.
This is where things get really interesting. This simple box below creates endless possibilities.
There are rules and actions that are ready out of the box. For example you can see how easy it is to set a free shipping promotion for the country of your choice. It can help increase the total order value, but can also very easily be used as a customer loyalty (when using Sylius Plus).
Promotion can be based on the number of items, on the order’s value, or on specific products in the cart as well. Below is shown an example of when a customer receives a 10% discount of the number of items in the cart above 100.
What if your shop is serving different groups of customers with different discounts? We’ll use the most common example here and our groups will be retail and wholesale customers. Wholesale clients will receive a 10% fixed discount.
What if the promotion you want to create is not available out of the box? That’s where endless possibilities lie. If you are a developer skilled in Symfony you can add actions and rules by yourself with the help of our guides. That way your shop will always be ready for the market’s demands.
For now, you can tailor your promotion engine to your unique business needs with Sylius extensions like Catalog Promotion Plugin. This way a discount may apply to all products from a selected category.
We are now developing this feature, in a more advanced version, within the Sylius core. Our team plans to release it with the next Sylius update to the version 1.11. Follow our roadmap to stay up to date with the work progress.
With the usage of actions and rules, which Sylius’ promotions are based on, you can result in very custom and personalized sales. What has been shown in this post is really only a tip of an iceberg. That is why I would like to strongly encourage you to play with it and explore the possibilities further on your own.
Visit our tour page, learn about Sylius Plus and try our demo to experience Sylius’ full potential.
