WooCommerce: How to add On Sale badges to your store

Do you offer discounts in your WooCommerce store, either by running sales or discounting specific products? Discover the easier way to put your products on sale, display 'On Sale' badges, and list sale products in prominent parts of your store 🚀

In WooCommerce, you can add 'On Sale' badges by setting a sale price for individual products or variations. That's pretty time-consuming 🥱. Keep reading to discover how to streamline and showcase your WooCommerce on sale products by:

  • Quickly putting products on sale either globally, or in bulk for selected products or categories. We'll do this with the WooCommerce Discount Manager plugin.
  • Supercharging your sales by creating other types of sale price and discount, such as quantity-based incentives and buy-one-get-one-free offers. We'll use WooCommerce Discount Manager for this too.
  • Displaying WooCommerce on sale products in a quick order form in prominent parts of your store, for example on the homepage. We'll use the WooCommerce Product Table plugin for this.
WooCommerce on sale products
List on sale products separately in a Special Offers section.

What's wrong with using the 'Sale price' field in WooCommerce?

As I mentioned above, the default way of adding sale prices in WooCommerce is pretty limited. The problems are:

  • You can only add sale badges to each product or variation individually. That takes a long time and is error-prone if you want to create a store-wide sale or put multiple products or entire categories on sale.
  • The little sale badges are the only clue that the product is on sale. There's no way to display more prominent details of the sale on product pages, such as a big notice saying "50% off everything!"
  • You can only enter an exact sale price for each product. There are no options to create more advanced types of sale, such as percentage discounts, BOGO or quantity-based pricing.
  • The default WooCommerce sale prices apply to everyone. There's no way to choose which users or roles can access the sale prices, such as new or existing customers only.
  • The on sale products are listed in the same places as your non-sale products. Apart from the sale badges, there's no way for customers to quickly view or filter all the products on sale.

The solution is to use the best WooCommerce discount plugin to put products on sale, instead of entering sale prices manually. I'll tell you which plugins you can use to solve each of the above problems.

WooCommerce Discount Manager: The easier way to put products on sale

WooCommerce storewide sale plugin product page content

Using the WooCommerce Discount Manager plugin to create your sale prices will solve the first four problems that I listed above. You can use it to:

  • Add sale prices to multiple products and categories at once, or your entire store.
  • Display prominent notices about the sale on the product page.
  • Create at least 6 different types of discount and deal, with advanced rules controlling when each type of sale price will be used.
  • Restrict each type of sale price to specific user accounts or user roles - or, alternatively, new customer discounts for guest users only.

Next, I'll tell you how to set it up in a way that achieves all these things 💪

Step-by-step tutorial

  1. Get the plugin and install it in your WordPress Dashboard.
  2. Activate your license key in the plugin setup wizard.
  3. Now go to Marketing → Discounts and click 'Add New'.
  4. Select which type of WooCommerce sale price you wish to create:
    WooCommerce Discount Manager add discount type
  5. Fill in all the options, such as a fixed or percentage amount and the logic that will allow customers to qualify. For example, you can offer sale prices based on amount spent, and much more. Play around to find the most enticing and profitable options for your store.
  6. For simple fixed and percentage discounts, you can tick a box to display the "On sale" badge on qualifying products. (This isn't relevant for more advanced discount types because they're calculated later, on the cart page.)
  7. Use the 'Product Page Content' field to add any information that you want to display to highlight the discount.
    WooCommerce Discount Manager product page content
  8. Finally, test out the WooCommerce sale prices on the front end of your site. Keep tweaking until you're completely happy.

Product Filters and Product Table: The perfect pair for displaying On Sale products

The Discount Manager plugin mentioned above is great for actually adding sale prices in WooCommerce. However, other than displaying sale badges on products with fixed or percentage discounts, it won't help customers to find your on sale products.

In this tutorial, we’ll show you how to list WooCommerce On Sale products more effectively in your store. You'll learn the different ways to put products on sale in WooCommerce, and how to display them prominently in your store.

To draw attention to your on sale products, you can use WooCommerce Discount Manager with either or both of the following plugins:

  • WooCommerce Product Filters for adding an 'On sale' filter to your store. Customer can use this to filter the list of products to view items on sale only.
  • And if you want to display WooCommerce on sale products separately to your main products, then you can do this with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin. This lists any or all of your products in a quick order form. You can use it to:
    • List on sale products, for example on your homepage where customers won't miss them, and/or;
    • Transform the layout of all your shop pages.
WooCommerce Product Filters table on sale
Using the Product Filters and Product Table plugins to display On Sale products more prominently

Add an On Sale filter to your store

The WooCommerce Product Filters plugin lets you add an "On sale" filter above or beside your shop and category pages. That way, customers can easily filter the list to view products at the best prices. This is how to add it to your store:

  1. Purchase and install the plugin.
  2. Use the setup wizard to choose how your want the product filters to work. If you want to display the on sale filter above your main shop pages, then you can do this in the setup wizard too - just select the default filter group for your shop pages.
  3. Now go to Products → Filters and edit the default filter group which has been created for you. Click 'Add filter' and create an 'On sale' filter. Repeat this step to add any other product filters which will help people to find your products, such as a category filter.
    WooCommerce filter by different product data types
  4. If you want the on sale filter to appear at the top of your shop pages, then you've finished! Or to display it in the sidebar, then go to Appearance → Widgets, add a 'Product filters' widget and select your filter group.
add woocommerce product filters to widget

How to list On Sale products separately

The best way to draw attention to your discounted products is by listing them in a dedicated space on your website. There are several places where you can do this:

  • Add a 'Sale' section to the homepageList On Sale products in a prominent spot on the homepage of your WordPress website. This allows them to capture your customers' attention the second they arrive on the site.
  • Create a 'Special offers' pageList the On Sale products on a 'Special Offers' page or a 'Clearance Sale' page. You can then link to this page from your website’s navigation menu to encourage people to check out the WooCommerce On Sale products.

KitchenAid example

KitchenAid links to their Sale page from the main navigation
  • List On Sale products above your other productsYou can list On Sale products in WooCommerce on the main shop page above your other categories and products. This immediately draws the visitor’s attention to the products on sale. And, at the same time, it encourages them to check out the products and make a purchase.
  • Blog about your discounted productsAnother way to draw attention to products is by listing special offers in a blog post. This is particularly useful if you’re reviewing a specific product. Or perhaps you want to write about several different On Sale products and then list all the special deals within the post.

Use these methods to showcase your best deals. In the next section, I'll show you a simple method to list On Sale products in any (or all!) of these locations.

How to list on sale products with WooCommerce Product Table

The WooCommerce Product Table plugin makes it easy to list discounted products anywhere in your store. This includes each of the locations that I recommended in the previous section.

Step 1: Tag your On Sale products

First, you need a way to tag your On Sale products so that you can list them separately from your full price stock.

WooCommerce lets store owners highlight their most important products in the sale by marking them as Featured. Here’s how:

Mark featured products
  1. Go to Products → All Products from the WordPress admin panel.
  2. Find the product you want to mark as Featured and click on the star in the far right column.

Pro tip: If you already use featured products for something else in your store, you should create a custom taxonomy called Sale and tag each On Sale product as Yes.

Step 2: Install and configure WooCommerce Product Table

Get the WooCommerce Product Table plugin and install it on your WordPress website. Once that’s done, activate the plugin’s license key on the settings page (WooCommerce → Settings → Products → Product tables).

From the same screen, you can choose which product details you’d like to display in the table layout. You can do this by setting the Columns option to image,name,summary,price,buy.

To show customers what a great deal they're getting, the 'Price' column will display the main price crossed out with the sale price alongside.

Check out the available column options for ideas on what’s possible with the WooCommerce Product Table plugin.

Step 3: List discounted products

There are two ways to list discounted products on your WordPress site’s front-end:

Method 1: For featured products

If you marked the WooCommerce On Sale products as Featured products then you can use the following shortcode to list them in your product table: [product_table term="product_visibility:featured"].

Method 2: If you’re using a custom taxonomy

If you decided to create a custom taxonomy called Sale, you can use the [product_table term="sale:yes"] shortcode to list WooCommerce On Sale products in the table layout.

Step 4: Display the On Sale products on your website

All you have to do is add the shortcode to any page on your site. This depends on where you want to list the On Sale products. For example:

  • Homepage - simply edit the homepage and add the shortcode.
  • 'Sale' page - create a page, add it to the menu, and add the shortcode to the page.
  • Shop page, above the other products - edit the 'Shop' page and add the shortcode. The default grid of all your products will automatically appear underneath the product table.
  • Blog post - add or edit a blog post and add the shortcode wherever you want to list the On Sale products within the post.
WooCommerce on sale products

List ‘on sale’ products today

As you can see, there are lots of opportunities to run successful sales in WooCommerce which go beyond what's possible with the default 'Sale price' feature. Here's a recap of them all:

  • Use the WooCommerce Discount Manager plugin to quickly add a wide range of sophisticated sale prices and deals, and display them prominently on product pages.
  • Add On Sale filters to your shop pages with the WooCommerce Product Filters plugin, so that customers can find products on sale more easily.
  • Use WooCommerce Product Table to list WooCommerce On Sale products in a neat table layout - the perfect way to enhance product visibility and make it easier for customers to buy.

Ready to supercharge your sales in WooCommerce? Choose which of the above plugins are right for your store, and install them today 🔥

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