What does compare at price mean on shopify

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Last Updated on July 5, 2022 by LAUNCHTIP

Using Shopify’s compare at price feature on your store is a great way to offer discounts to your customers. We’ll guide you through how to set up this feature and make the most from it.

What is Shopify’s compare at price feature?

‘Compare at’ prices can be used to let customers see how much they are saving on your products. It works really well when you are running a sale on your store. When consumers can visually see how much they are saving, they are more likely to purchase from your store.

Taking a look at this Skinny Dip London sale example, you can see that the original price has been crossed out. The new sale price is displayed in red. This uses the ‘compare at’ price feature to attract customers’ attention.

It allows you to see how much you are saving and therefore makes it more compelling to consumers.

When should you use the Shopify compare at price feature?

Whenever you wish to offer discounts on your store, we recommend using the compare at price feature. Discounts are normally used to boost sales during busy periods such as Black Friday and Christmas.

But there are other reasons why you could offer discounts too.

It’s a good idea to reduce the price of slow-selling stock. Putting these products on your storefront is a good way to gain your customers attention. If they can see some of your products are reduced, they might be more inclined to buy from you.

if you launch a new product that your customers don’t know about yet, you can offer discounts to generate demand. More consumers might be willing to try your new product at a lower price point.

Overusing the compare at price feature can have its downsides too. Using too many discounts can have these negative effects:

• Lower the value of your products
• Customers will only buy when you offer discounts
• Remove trust with your customers

Using the compare at price feature in the right way is an excellent way to increase sales when you need to strategically.

How to change compare at price?

Let’s take a look at how you actually change the compare at price feature in Shopify.

1. Navigate to your store’s main dashboard
2. Select Products from the left-hand menu
3. Select the product you’d like to set a compare at price for
4. Navigate to the Pricing section where you’ll see ‘price‘ and ‘compare at price‘ fields
5. Copy the original price across to the compare at price field
6. Input a new discounted price into the original price field and save

If you now navigate to your online store and locate the product you just edited, you should be able to see the compare at price crossed out and your new price showing.

The way your compare at price is formatted will depend on your theme settings.

If you have products with variants, you can apply a compare at price to an individual variant or across them all. This works well if you want to lower the price of slow moving variants.

If you want to bulk edit product variant pricing, this can be done by exporting the products to a CSV file or using other Shopify apps. You can also bulk edit product pricing in Shopify too.

Removing pricing from Shopify

When your sale ends or you want to end discounts on your store, you will want to change your compare at prices back to the original price.

To remove pricing, just reverse the steps above. Set the compare at price to £0 and enter the original price in the main price field. Your normal prices should now show on your store front.

Why is my compare at price not showing?

The most common reason your compare at price isn’t showing is because it must be higher than the sale price. Enter the higher product price in the ‘compare at price’ field and the lower sale price in the ‘price’ field. This should enable your new pricing to show on your store front.

After more sales? 4 bonus tips

If you’ve made it this far, you’re keen to see how you can maximise sales on your store. We’ve given you 4 bonus tips to help.

1. Post-purchase discounted offer

Offering discounts before a customer purchases boost conversions. However, it means your revenue is reduced.

If you want to get the most out of a sale, having an excellent post-purchase offer may turn the heads of your customers.

A tempting offer on the thank you page could instantly bump up your average order value, meaning your overall revenue is boosted. SellUp is easy to use and lets you setup post-purchase offers to earn you more money.

2. Use discount codes

So we know this doesn’t use the compare at price feature directly, but using discount codes and coupons consumers can use at checkout is an alternative.

Using discount codes can achieve the same effects as compare at price discounts, but it has other advantages too.

Discount codes can be based on your customer segments. You can give more personalized offers to your VIP customers and introductory discounts to new customers.

Lookfantastic use discount codes via emails to increase sales and conversions.

You can also set minimum spends for discount codes . This is good if you want customers to spend a certain amount before applying the discount code.

Discount codes can prevent consumers from converting. This can happen if the customer has refer back to their email to find the code. They might get distracted and fail to convert.

For big sales, we recommend a storewide discount, as it’s easier for customers to see and convert with.

3. Use discounted prices for product bundles

Offering discounted prices for product bundles is an alternative to straight discounts. Bundling products into upsells is a good way to do this.

If customers can save money buying products as a bundle rather than individually, they’ll be more inclined to purchase from your store.

Rheal Superfoods uses product bundles to create a discount for customers.

By using this approach, customers can save money on individual products and also don’t have to worry about searching for the products individually. Customers feel like they are getting a good deal with a product bundle.

It’s a great method to use, as it will boost your store’s average order value, so you could be getting more profit per sale.

4. Split a product’s price into smaller payments

With large priced items, consumers may find it hard to pay the full amount up front. Offering customers the ability to split their payments into smaller instalments is a great way for them to purchase the product.

Products that have a high price can mean it’s hard for customers to outlay the full amount. Afterpay Attract allows customer to split the full price into smaller payments until the full amount is paid back.

Dyson uses Afterpay so customers can split the large payment into smaller instalments.

Let’s conclude the compare at price feature

To grow your ecommerce sales on your Shopify store, you can use a combination of pricing and discount strategies.

We don’t suggest using discounts all the time, but instead sparingly and at times you want to boost sales, grow your customer database or shift outdated stock.

All stores are different so it’s definitely key to test different strategies to see what works best for you.

You can look to test a few discounts with the compare at price feature to see how it works with your customers.