There are multiple ways in which a Sale can be triggered to display on the Citrus-Lime Ecommerce platform.
Fundamentally, you can set a threshold within Cloud MT that determines what level of discount is considered a legitimate Sale Item.
This feature is located under the Site Management section of the Cloud MT navigation, titled Site Specific Options.
We cover this in more detail in this article: Cloud MT // How do I control when an item appears as On Sale?
Nonetheless, to make use of that functionality, understanding why and how a Sale price is presented is useful for managing your item data successfully.
Items come in two basic forms :
- Standard Items
- Matrix Items
[1] Sale Pricing for Standard Items
There are two ways to trigger the presentation of a Standard Item as being on Sale (on Citrus-Lime Ecommerce).
The first and most obvious way is to set a Sale Price in Cloud POS and save changes. These changes will then be updated to the Ecommerce platform and will take effect immediately*.
* Caching dependent. See A Quick Note on Ecommerce Caching below.
The second way to automatically trigger a Sale on the Ecommerce platform is to lower the Price below that of the MSRP.
For example if, when setting up an item on Cloud POS, you set the Price and MSRP identically (say, £10) and then subsequently change the Price to be £8, you will automatically trigger a Sale online.
Similarly, if you set a Web Price below that of the MSRP, then you will automatically trigger Sale Price presentation online.
All of this happens regardless of whether you have set the Sale flag on the item card in Cloud POS.
When is a Sale not a Sale?
A Sale will not be set on Citrus-Lime Ecommerce simply because the sale flag has been set. Citrus-Lime Ecommerce will not display a Sale when :
- the Sale flag has been set but the sale price is listed at £0.00;
- the Sale flag has been set but the sale price is equivalent to that of the current selling price (Price = £10, Sale Price = £10)
[2] Sale Pricing for Matrix Items
Matrix Items are made up of Matrix Components. Matrix Components are essentially Standard Items grouped within a Matrix Item. Matrix Components are typically uniformly priced and, when it is time to offer the item as a Sale Item, the price is typically manipulated to apply to all Components of the Matrix in a uniform manner.
For example, let's say we are discussing a T-Shirt.
The Matrix Parent is "T-Shirt" and the Matrix Components are the dimensions of the T-Shirt ... Small, Medium and Large.
Typically, the price of the T-Shirt will not change relative to the Dimensions expressed in the Components. In other words, the T-Shirt is £25 and this does not change relative to the Size being Small, Medium or Large.
Similarly, if the T-Shirt was being placed into Sale, then all the Component items would be reduced in a uniform manner.
In this circumstance, the conditions under which item is presented as a Sale Item (on Citrus-Lime Ecommerce) is identical to that of a Standard Item.
However, where there is variation of pricing across the Matrix Components, things start to get a little more nuanced ...
Variable Matrix Pricing
Let's consider the effects of changing the price of a single Matrix Component.
Let's imagine that the T-Shirt is set at £25 but that the Large T-Shirt is priced at £30.
For example :
T-Shirt
- Small - £25
- Medium - £25
- Large - £30
A Sale will not be automatically triggered under these conditions - this is simply an example of Variable Matrix Pricing.
On Citrus-Lime Ecommerce, the price will automatically change to have the prefix of "From". In other words, instead of simply displaying "£25", the product page will now read as "From £25".
If you were to set your Large component item to have a price that is lower than the current lowest price, then a Sale will not automatically trigger. This is just another method of implementing Variable Matrix Pricing on the T-Shirt item; the T-Shirt will be repriced at £20 and the item price on the Ecommerce platform will be prefixed with "From £20".
For example :
T-Shirt
- Small - £25
- Medium - £25
- Large - £20
However, if you change a component item price (or a Web Price) to be lower than the MSRP for that specific component, then a Sale price will be displayed on the Ecommerce Platform.
For example :
T-Shirt - MSRP of £21
- Small - £25
- Medium - £25
- Large - £20
This can be a confusing experience for the consumer because the item is now displaying Sale pricing of "Price £20, Was £21", though this is only relative to the large being lower than the MSRP. The Small and Medium are still £25 and the item is not intended to display as a Sale item.
What you could do to circumvent this "accidental sale" is set Matrix Item to have an MSRP of £0.00 :
T-Shirt - MSRP of £0
- Small - £25
- Medium - £25
- Large - £20
This is then a simple case of Variable Matrix Pricing again and the Ecommerce pricing will be displayed as "From £20" and will no longer present with sale pricing (was/now pricing).
However, if this is not what you want to do, the Sale pricing will persist on Citrus-Lime Ecommerce until the Large component item price is equivalent to the MSRP (£21) or higher.
A Quick Note on Ecommerce Caching
Elements of Citrus-Lime Ecommerce are cached. This is common practice across the internet and enables faster retrieval of database information and, therefore, faster site speeds. However, to achieve the improved speeds, a snapshot of the database information is held in a cache and is only updated every sixty seconds, if a change has been made. This means that some of the changes you might expect to see are not immediately represented online.
