You may have questioned yourself quite a few times about how Magento promotions really work. The answer is really simple. The key to Magento promotions and discounts is Price Rules, hence today we will discuss how price rules work in Magento. Down below you will find a full explanation of both price rules; Magento shopping cart, and Magento catalog price rules.
Note: If your Magento eCommerce store is slow, switch to a better Magento host.
Types of Price Rules in Magento
The hierarchy below classifies the different types of Magento price rules.
The above picture shows how different price rules are important for the discounts and promotions of your eStore products. In Magento, the subcategory “Price” specifies the major price of the product and besides this it has multiple other attributes such as Special price (set for certain period of time), Tier Prices (depends on the number of products and customers) and Group Price (set for a group of a customer).
Magento Shopping Cart Price Rules
Magento Price Rules for shopping cart is by far the most attractive way of rewarding customers with discounts. It is operational when a customer is checking out from the platform based on several conditions. The rules are applied accordingly, in order to give customers discounts on different products. Luckily, if the conditions are fully met for a specific customer, they can get a considerable discount on the entire Magento shopping cart. These conditions can be many. For example, a valid coupon code. Once the rule is applied, the discount will appear on the Magento shopping cart page under the subtotal field.
To apply Magento shopping cart price rules, open the admin panel and navigate to Promotions >>Shopping Cart Price Rules and Click on the “Add New Rule” button.
This price is then further classified into 4 sections which are Rule Information, Conditions, Actions and Labels. Below you will find a walkthrough explanation of each of them. So let’s have a look!
Magento Price Rules Information
This section is an important section because it contains all the basic information of the rule. Rule Information includes the name of the rule and its respective description. This description will show what your rule intends to do; it will give the admin a brief view of the logic of the rule and applicable dates of the rule.
The field Status has a simple value of Activating or Inactivating the rule. The Customer Group will tell Magento system the group of customers on whom the promotion is applied. The Coupon field has three values; No Coupon will automatically apply the discounts to the applicable group of customers if the conditions are successfully met. In Auto, the Magento System will automatically generate the coupons and Specific Coupon admin defines a specific coupon at the back end. Uses per Customer field lets customers input the value of the total amount of the usage by the customer and if nothing is input the field is ignored by default. From Date and To Date tells the duration of the rule in which it is applied. Priority field tells the priority of the rules running at the same time and the rule with the lowest precedence will take place first. When you navigate to Public in RSS Feed the value Yes will determine if the rule is mentioned in the Magento Feed and No for not mentioning it.
These all are the fields of Rule Information which is the first section of the Magento Shopping Cart Price Rule. Now let us walk through other sections as well.
Conditions
This tab is most important as it is the first of the other two logic tab and it has only one section. In this field, the admin can add a variety of conditions on which the rule depends. Magento Price Rules are applied on the basis of the product attributes, products-subsets, cart attributes, customer segmentation or combination of the above. The conditions should meet the requirements in order to apply any rule.
Actions
This is the second tab from the three logical tabs. For clear understandings, we have broken it down into two sections.
1. Update Prices Using the Following Information
This section includes the information of the actual price discount. And here you can draw some outlines of the Magento price rules.
Apply is a dropdown having three options, Percentage which when selected, the number entered will automatically convert into percentage and will be removed from the cart as a discount. Fixed Amount if selected, the number entered will become the fixed amount and the price will be deducted from the cart. If Buy X and get Y free is selected it means if you buy X product you will get Y product for free.
Discount Amount
This field allows you to specify integer value of the discount. This field also works for dollar amount depending on the type of discount selected in “Apply” section.
Maximum Qty Discount Is Applied to
In this section, the admins have control to limit the products that can have a discount. If a customer buys 20 items and he receives a discount on only 5 of the products then the value 15 will be the value of this field.
Discount Qty Step (Buy X)
The number of products which are necessary in a cart for a promo to be applied. If BOGO rule is available in the Apply section then this field is required.
Apply to Shipping Amount
If it is set to No then the discount will be applied after the shipping is calculated and is added in the subtotal. If Yes then the discount will be applied before the shipping calculation
Free Shipping
Field to let the admin decide if this rule has free shipping on products or not
Stop Further Magento Price Rules Processing
This fields controls the processing of other rules to be applied after the application of this rule.
2. Apply the Rule Only to Cart Items Matching the Following Conditions
The second section of the Actions which allows the admin to enter several conditions is to give away discounts if the conditions are fulfilled. It is similar to what we have mentioned above in the Conditions tab. If this field remains blank, it means the discount will be applied on the entire cart or we can simply say that on every product in the cart.
Labels
This section is by far the most easy to understand. It is one of the most important Price Rule functionality. The text which you will enter here will be shown- on the checkout page in the frontend. It is important to note that this text should be precise yet understandable by the customer and these can be or cannot be shown in your cart depending on the way you design your website.
Catalog Price Rules
The above information is really overloading my mind, I assume same goes for you so let’s have a short discussion on the Catalog Price Rules too. It is the second type of Pricing Rules in Magento application. This type is mostly similar to that of Shipping Cart Price Rule that we have discussed above but then what is the difference? The only difference is that when these catalog rules are applied they are needed to be applied to the catalog only so it takes effect.
To manage these rules navigate to Promotions >> Catalog Price Rules
While creating this rule, you will note the label tab is not included however, all the others are same as Shopping Cart Price Rules. If you have followed the above steps to create a Magento Shopping Cart Price Rule than you will eventually become an expert in creating Catalog Price Rule.
And in addition to the functionality in the Actions tab here, admin users are also able to apply discounts on subproducts if and only if the value is Yes. This can only be applied if the product has children. If the value is set to No then the discount will be applied only on parent price.
Magento Cart Price Rules Extension
Magento cart price rules can be configured out-of-the-box but if your Magento module doesn’t support cart price rules customization, then it is a viable option to choose Magento cart price rules extension.
Here is a list of Magento cart price rule extensions to customize pricing on your ecommerce store.
Conclusion
Once you have created your Magento catalog price rules, it is very important to test them before making them live. This tutorial shows you how to make different types of Price Rules in Magento by giving you information about the rule information, Condition logics, actions, labels, and related banners. It further gives you an insight on Magento Shopping Cart Price Rule and also gives you an overview of Catalog Price Rule.
If you have thoroughly read this tutorial then you know how to make Price Rules in Magento and how to promote your products to customers. Still, if you have any questions then feel free to ask in the comments section below. Until then make your rule and promote your products.
Abdur Rahman
Abdur Rahman is the Magento whizz at Cloudways. He is growth ambitious, and aims to learn & share information about Ecommerce & Magento Development through practice and experimentation. He loves to travel and explore new ideas whenever he finds time. Get in touch with him at [email protected]
