Special deal offers in EPOS and Ecommerce Software

Special offers (deal offers) is one of the most difficult modules to write for an EPOS or Ecommerce software system. Every single retailer seems to have a different opinion of the features they expect to find, and every retailer is more than capable of dreaming up new deal special offers that the designer never considered!

Special deal offers are things like "Buy two for the price of one" or "buy 1 get 1 free" (BOGOF) or "buy x product and get y product free". Such deals have been at the core of retail marketing and promotion since before the advent of money! Therefore it is vital that your EPOS software has a flexible feature set to allow you to setup and monitor the deal offers that you want to create

Any EPOS software which does not support these features should be avoided, however, remember, not every single deal you can dream up is likely to be supported by your EPOS software. No software is infinitely flexible, and a degree of flexibility is required on the part of the retailer to limit himself to those offers possible in his chosen EPOS software and not complain about missing features.

Setting up deal offers

You will need tools to help you setup the special deal offers. The interface needs to be easy to use, and provide you with the correct information to help you setup the retail offers. You will need to know what products you've got in stock, and what margin the offer is going to make.

If you are making a special offer because of a box payment offered by the supplier, this extra margin needs to be visible on the screens for setting up special offers, otherwise you will be forever swapping windows and working things out on a separate spreadsheet.

Are you making a profit?

As well as setting up the offers, look for features to show you how the offer is performing. Does it increase sales of the target products, is it getting rid of that end of line stock? If an offer is designed to sell off some end of line stock, does the offer automatically turn off when the supply is exhausted?

Do the reports on discounts clearly show you which offers are responsible for which discounts? You will want to know the total discount you've given away on the offer - and these needs to link into staff incentive schemes - you might well want to offer a spiv payment for getting customers to take up a particular special offer.

Deal special offers in Ecommerce

Special deal offers are also becoming more and more important in Ecommerce software. It is only recently that features have started to appear on websites to support the types of deal offer retailers have been using for years in traditional retail. If you have an integrated EPOS and Ecommerce package, you should be able to offer the same deals on the website as you do in store - and report on them together. If you have setup a "buy one,get one free" offer on some products in the store, your integrated EPOS software should allow you to "publish" that deal immediately onto the website.

A lot of suppliers have started to strongly restrict the prices retailers advertise online. The manufactures force retails to use a minimum RRP online, and retailers whose websites offer a lower price are often punish by the suppliers by reducing retro discounts, or stopping orders completely. Therefore online retailers need to find other ways of giving something back to the customer and making them buy - special deal offers are an important way of doing this. If you supplier forces a minimum price on, say, a camera, then give the customer a free strap or bag as an incentive to buy. Ecommerce software without these features is not a good choice.

To summarise, make sure the special deal offers you want can be setup easily, with an eye on the true costs, and make sure you can present the special offers online with your ecommerce software.