How Is the Daily Deal Feature Used?

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 that 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 storefront.

Enabling the Daily Deal Feature

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 navigation menu:

1. Go to Modules.

2. Look for the "Daily Deals" module and click on its + icon to expand the selection.

3. You will see both a checkbox to enable the feature as well as a link to "Change Settings."

4. 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 that you will place on your site that will link your shoppers to the daily deal product.

Adding your Deal Products

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.

5. 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*

6. 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.

7. 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.

8. Once item(s) are selected, click on the Close button to proceed.

Fine Tuning the Deal

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

• 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

• 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 say "Activate." Only one deal may be active at a time.

• Action > Delete
  Use this option to remove daily deal item(s) as needed.

Adding the Daily Deal Widget

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 visitors of the daily deal's presence. The widget can be placed on 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:

1. Go to Modules.

2. Look for the Daily Deals module and click on its + icon to expand it.

3. 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.

1. Go to Content > Titles & Content.

2. Look for "Home Page" (It's under the "Main Pages" heading).

3. Click on the Action > Edit button to the right of the Home Page.

4. Paste the copied widget code into the "Header" section of the Home Page.

5. Click Save Changes at the top right.

Alternative Widget Placement

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:

1. Go to Content > Site Content.

2. In the Menu Links section at the top, click Add New Link.

3. Name your menu link and specify its sorting options as desired.

4. Click Add.

5. Now click Content on your new menu link page.

6. Add the widget code the "page content" area of this page instead and save.

How it Looks

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 Get it Now! button, they will be taken to your product's main listing page, which also will contain the countdown timer.

Advanced – Customizing the widget

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 by copying the dd_widget.html from your account's common folder (assets/templates/common -or- assets/templates/common-html5 if using an html5 theme) and placing it onto your own theme's specific folder.

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.