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With Shift4Shop, merchants can offer daily deals to their shoppers. Daily deals can be a great way of driving traffic and business to your store by offering a special type of promotion which actively expires at a set timeframe – which you specify.
This can be a great way to add urgency to the offer and let shoppers know they should act while they can. Furthermore, by constantly updating the type of deal that is offered and posting a new deal at regular intervals, your shoppers will get into the habit of checking your site often to see what the new offering is.
In this article, we will show you how to enable, configure and manage your daily deals, as well as how it will look on your store front.
This article contains the following areas. Please click on a link below to review its respective topic:
Enabling the Daily Deal Feature
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The first step in our process is to enable the Daily Deal feature. To do this, use the following steps.
Log into your Shift4Shop Online Store Manager and, using the left hand navigation menu:
- Go to Modules
- Look for the "Daily Deals" module and click on its +Icon to expand the selection.
- You will see both a checkbox to enable the feature as well as a link to "Change Settings"
- Click on the "Change Settings" Link
The Daily Deals Settings page will contain the following items:
- Deal Duration
This option will control the lifespan of your Daily Deal. The selectable options are hourly increments (1 to 24 hours) to daily increments (2 to 30 days)
- Starting Time
Use this dropdown menu to select which at time of the day your deals should start.
Note, that it uses a 24 hour format, so for 1pm, you would select 13:00.
- Enable Daily Deals Checkbox
Use this checkbox to turn the feature on or off as needed
- Widget Script
This is the code which you will place on your site that will link your shoppers to the daily deal product.
Additional Information
There are two versions of the widget script. One will be for use on your actual Shift4Shop store. It will be labeled "(for this store)" while the other script will be used for external sites.
We will cover the widget code and its placement in just a bit.
Adding your Deal Products
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Before enabling the Daily Deals feature, you'll need to specify products for your promotion. To do this, please click on the "View Deals" button. The button is located at the top right of the Daily Deals Settings page.
- Click on the "View Deals" button
Here's where you will be able to add your products and configure their respective daily deal parameters. Towards the top left of the page, you will see a drop down menu labeled "Deal Group." Leave this menu alone for now*
*Additional Information
This menu will allow you to specify up to ten daily deal group oferrings that will function at the same time as the main daily deal. For the purposes of this article however, we will just be creating one main daily deal since the basic process is identical for the subsequent daily deal groups. For more information on using the Daily Deal Group function, click here.
Note: This "Daily Deal Group" feature is not to be confused with Group Deals which is a different feature altogether.
- Click on the "+Add new " button located towards the top right
A separate pop-up window will appear where you can search for your products.
- Once you have found the product for your deal click its Item Name
or go to the far right and select its respective "Action >Select" button.
- Once item(s) are selected, click on the "Close" button to proceed
Now that you've selected your Daily Deal products, you'll need to configure the specifics of your deal offering. Your Daily Deal products will be listed with the product ID and Name as well as the following:
- Sales Price
Enter the sale price of your Daily Deal item here *required
- Free Shipping
If you'd also like to offer Free Shipping on the Daily Deal product along with the sale price, mark this box
Additional Information
Please note that these settings will override the Sale Price and Free Shipping statuses of the product in order to apply them to the daily deal. When the daily deal expires, the product will go back to its regular price with Free Shipping marked off.
- Sorting
Use this field to control how the products are listed in the Daily Deals section of the Online Store Manager. This can be useful for merchants who want to have a rotating list of daily deal offerings and sorting would help display these in a more cohesive fashion
Note
The sorting is also useful because – when one deal expires – the Daily Deal module will move onto the next Daily Deal on the list. Merchants can further use this to plan automated daily deals in their stores. (if applicable)
- Status
This link will determine whether the Daily Deal is active. When Active, the deal will say "Active" and it will be in bold green text. When deactivated, the deals will simply say "Activate." Only one deal may be active at a time.
- Action >Delete
Use this option to remove daily deal item(s) as needed.
Note
When you first set up the Daily Deals module, it will be turned off by default. Therefore, you may notice the legend at the top stating that Daily Deals are not enabled. You may use the link provided to turn the module on. This has the same effect as marking the "enable" checkbox in the previous screens. When enabling the Daily Deals, the Shift4Shop store will notify you of when the deal is set to be scheduled (see previous section for "Starting At" setting). You will have the option of either allowing the automatic scheduling to take place, or enabling the deal right then and there.
Additional Note
If you enable the deal manually after its specified start time, the countdown timer on the deal widget will reflect the elapsed time that has passed since the deal's original start date. In other words, if your deals are set to start at 15:00 (3pm) but you manually enable the deal at 3:15, the countdown timer will reflect that the deal has been "active" for 15 minutes.
Adding the Daily Deal Widget
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The next step in our process is adding the Daily Deal Widget to your page. This widget will act as the main display for your deals. It's essentially the banner that notifies your visitors of the daily deal's presence. The widget can be placed in practically any page of your site, but we recommend placing it prominently on your home page.
The following instructions will detail how to add the widget to your home page.
First, let's copy the widget code. From your Online Store Manager:
- Go to Modules
- Look for the Daily Deals module and click on its +Icon to expand it
- Click on "Change Settings"
Copy the "Widget Script" code by selecting all (CTRL-A) and copying the selection (CTRL-C).
Now, let's paste the code.
- Go to Content >Titles & Content
- Look for "Home Page" (It's under the "Main Pages" heading)
- Click on the "Action >Edit" button to the right of Home Page.
- Paste the copied widget code into the "Header" section of the Home Page.
- Click "Save Changes" at the top right.
Alternative Widget Placement
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Instead of placing the widget on the home page, an alternative idea would be to create an extra page on your site. The page would be specific to your daily deals. (Content ->Site Content) So taking it from step 3 in the previous section:
- Go to Content >Site Content
- In the Menu Links section at the top, click "Add New Link"
- Name your menu link and specify its sorting options as desired
- Click Add.
- Now Click "Content" on your new menu link page
- Add the widget code the "page content" area of this page instead and save.
Now that you've enabled the Daily Deals module, configured your products and added your Daily Deals widget coding, let's have a look at the finished result!
When your shoppers reach your site, they will see the widget prominently displayed on your site showcasing your daily deal. Visitors will see the widget with a thumbnail of the product, the savings percentage of the deal, the deal price, and an automated countdown timer showing them specifically how much time is left on the deal.
Furthermore, when the shopper clicks on the product image or "Buy Now" button, they will be taken to your product's main listing page which also will contain the countdown timer.
Advanced – Customizing the widget
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The Daily Deal widget uses a special listing template in order to display your Daily Deals in a manner that is visually appealing and attention grabbing. However, if you'd like to edit the template you may do so my copying the dd_widget.html from your account's common folder (assets/templates/common-core) and placing it onto your own theme's specific folder.
Additional Information: You can also create an alternate widget template via FTP and naming the file "dd_widget1.html" in your theme folder. This will give you the option of specifying the alternate widget when adding the widget code to any given page.
Just be sure to edit the widget code to pass a STYLE parameter so that it reads "dailydeal_widget.asp?style=1" to properly reference the alternate template.
You can also edit the Product Listing template that is used for the product's main display. This template is named listing_dd.html and is also in the store's respective common folder.
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