For any large marketing promotions it is always recommended to plan in advance. There is no better preparation for a large sale than planning 'tests sales' a week or 2 before the promotion to ensure that everything will go as planned on the day of the sale.
For clients using Lightspeed with Magento, managing sale prices can be done very easily. You can use the ‘special’ price in Magento or create promo codes in Magento. Promo codes can be created to require the customer to enter a specific discount code (e.g. supersale01) or Promo codes in Magento can be setup to auto-apply. This enables you to create sales where the discount is applied to the sale automatically and the customer does not need to enter a promo code at all.
For more information on creating Discount Codes in Magento, please review this video.
Magento comes with 3 types of prices:
- Default Price
- Special Price
- Customer Group Price
In your Hyperspace account settings for your Web Store (Account Settings > Web Store Settings) you can select which price in Lightspeed is sent to Magento and also configure additional settings.
Default Price
In your Hyperspace settings you can configure which price in Lightspeed should be your default price. (Recommendation: Default)
Special Price
The special price in Magento is often your sale price. In your Hyperspace settings you can configure which price in Lightspeed should be your special price. (Recommendation: Online)
Note: Your Special price must always be less that your Default price.
You will need to enable this feature first in your Hyperspace settings and also select the price that should be used in Magento for the sale price. (Recommendation: Enabled)
Once Enabled, you can select which price in Lightspeed should be the sale price in Magento. It is recommended to use the Online price for your sale price in Magento.
Customer Group Prices
You can also sync price levels in Lightspeed to Magento as Customer Group prices. This enables you to create Wholesale or VIP prices in Lightspeed that will sync to Magento. Please arrange an appointment with your Hyperspace Project Manager to learn more about this feature.
Frequently Asked Questions
1. Can I manage my prices directly in Magento?
Yes. There is a feature in Hyperspace that you can turn on to prevent Hyperspace from updating or overwriting your prices. By enabling the setting below, Hyperspace will never sync prices to your products in Magento after it creates the product online.
2. I often change my pricing for all products in Lightspeed for short-term sales. How will this affect my Magento site?
This all depends on how many products you have in Lightspeed. Lightspeed has an API that has a rate limit. Magento has its own limitations on how fast data can sync. Hyperspace cannot sync 5,000 price updates in seconds to Magento. Updating 20,000 or 40,000 products can take time.
Let's say you have 20,000 products and you change the pricing in Lightspeed for all 20,000. This could take hours to update to Magento. Changing a large volume of prices on sku's in Lightspeed for short term sales is not recommended.
It is recommended to use Discount Codes in Lightspeed and Promo Codes in Magento. This will enable you to change your pricing online very quickly for thousands of products and then adjust it back later after the sale is over.
If you do change your pricing in Lightspeed for all products and wish to force a sync, clicking on of these 2 buttons in Hyperspace at the bottom of the inventory tab will force a sync.
