Promotions go up in a hurry and stay up because nobody owns taking them down. Give every promotion an end date and a list of everywhere it appears before it goes live, and remove it on that date.

A May banner in July

It is the first week of July, and on a good number of small online shops the announcement bar still advertises a Victoria Day sale.

The Canada Day promotion ended on Monday, and its banner is still on the home page.

A Father's Day code still sits in the pop-up, and the shipping page promises free delivery above a threshold the shop raised in April.

None of this was a decision. Each promotion was added quickly, by whoever had a moment, on the day it was needed. Removing them was nobody's job, so nobody did.

Where promotions hide

The third is the hardest to find. A line about the spring sale, pasted into forty product descriptions, appears on no page the owner normally checks. Only a search of the catalogue finds them all.

Why they never come down

A promotion has a start date that everyone feels. The banner has to be up by Friday morning, so it is.

The end date has no such pressure. When the sale finishes, the shop is busy with the orders it produced and with the next promotion, and the old banner causes no visible problem that day.

Owners also rarely browse their own shop the way a customer does. They go straight to the orders screen, and the announcement bar sits on pages they never visit.

Text set inside an image adds a further step: changing it means editing the image, which nobody has time for in a busy week.

What a stale promotion costs

A customer who sees an offer reasonably expects to get it.

When the code fails at checkout, the shop has two poor options. Honour the expired offer and give away margin, or refuse it and leave a customer feeling misled at the moment of payment.

Plenty of customers choose neither and simply leave, which is the most expensive outcome and the one nobody hears about.

And a May banner in July tells every visitor something beyond the price: that nobody is watching the shop closely. That doubt spreads to the delivery promises and the stock levels too.

The free shipping threshold

A special case, because the threshold usually appears in more places than anyone remembers.

The shop's settings hold the real figure. The announcement bar, the shipping page, the FAQ, the footer and sometimes the order confirmation email each hold their own copy, typed by hand.

Change the setting and the copies stay wrong. A customer fills the basket to just over the old figure, sees a shipping charge at checkout, and feels tricked, though nobody intended anything of the kind.

A worked example

A two-person online pet supply store raised its free shipping threshold in the spring, when courier rates went up.

In June a customer emailed to complain. They had added a second bag of dog treats to reach the free shipping figure in the announcement bar, and been charged for shipping anyway.

The owner honoured the old threshold, then went looking. The old figure appeared in four places: the bar, the shipping page, a note in the product description template, and the order confirmation email.

The mechanism was simple. The setting had been changed in one place, and the threshold had been written by hand in four others.

The fix cut it to two mentions, the bar and the shipping page, both on a list that gets checked whenever the setting changes.

An end date before it goes live

The rule that prevents all of this is short. No promotion goes up without a written end date and a list of every place it appears.

Schedule what the shop system can schedule. Most can make a coupon expire on a set date and a sale price end on time, without anybody remembering.

Banners, pop-ups and announcement bars usually have no end date at all, so their removal goes in the calendar, against a name, on the day the promotion ends.

Whoever puts a promotion up takes it down. Shared responsibility for removal is how a banner lasts until July.

Codes that outlive the campaign

Discount codes travel. They get forwarded, screenshotted and posted on coupon websites, and they keep circulating long after the campaign that produced them.

Set an expiry date on every code, and a usage limit where it makes sense. Where the shop system allows it, make the checkout say plainly that a code has expired, rather than that it is invalid.

The sale that never ends

Some promotions are left up deliberately, because they seem to work. A banner announcing a sale every day of the year stops being a sale.

Regular customers learn to ignore it, or to wait for the next one. New customers wonder what the real price is.

That last question is also a legal one. Canada's Competition Act prohibits misleading representations about price, including claims about a regular price that is rarely charged.

The counter-case

Not every standing offer is stale. Free shipping above a threshold, or a discount on a first order, can run all year if it is true and the figure is right everywhere it appears.

A small shop that runs one promotion a year has much less to keep track of, and the check may take ten minutes.

And a current, accurate banner is useful. The problem is never the promotion; it is the end date nobody wrote down.

Give every temporary promotion an end date and a list of where it lives, before it goes up.

Before the next promotion

  1. Write down the end date before anything goes live.
  2. List every place the promotion will appear.
  3. Schedule the coupon's expiry in the shop system.
  4. Put banner removal in the calendar, against a name.
  5. Keep thresholds in as few places as possible.
  6. Search product descriptions for old offers.
  7. Browse the shop as a customer each Monday.

Step four is the one that closes the gap. Coupons can expire on their own, but banners and announcement bars cannot, and removal that belongs to nobody in particular does not happen.

Dating every promise to customers follows the same logic as Valentine's orders and the shipping cutoff.

Frequently asked questions

Why do old promotions stay on websites?

Because a promotion's start date has pressure behind it and its end date has none. Removal is nobody's job, and owners rarely browse their shop as customers do.

What does an expired offer cost?

Either margin, if you honour it, or goodwill, if you refuse at the moment of payment. Many customers simply leave, which costs more and goes unnoticed.

Why is the shipping threshold a special case?

Because it is set once in the shop system and typed by hand into banners, pages and emails. Change the setting and every typed copy stays wrong.

How do I stop it happening again?

Give every promotion a written end date and a list of everywhere it appears before it goes live, and make whoever puts it up responsible for removal.

Should discount codes have expiry dates?

Yes. Codes are forwarded and posted on coupon websites long after a campaign ends. Set an expiry, and a usage limit where it makes sense.

Is a permanent sale a problem?

Customers learn to ignore it, and claims about a regular price that is rarely charged can conflict with the Competition Act's rules on misleading price representations.

West Coast Media Solutions Inc. provides web design, web development, hosting, digital marketing, and business consulting to organisations across Canada, drawing on more than twenty-five years in the field.

Spring promotions still on the site?

Browse your shop as a customer this week. We will find every expired offer, code and threshold before your customers do.

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