Introduction
By partnering with Shopify Professional Services, CAA Quebec transformed their promotional capabilities, seeing significant results almost immediately.
- Employee discount program, previously almost nonexistent, began generating sales daily, with 20 sales occurring in just one week. This immediate impact was a direct result of replacing cumbersome manual processes with an automated, seamless solution.
- This reduced processing time, saving costs and increased productivity.
- New features for promotion management helped achieve monthly sales targets more quickly.
- The ability to quickly create or remove promotions for one-off events, along with simplified calculations by tier and product exclusions, gave them unprecedented agility.
- The capacity to run two promotions simultaneously significantly boosted sales for products that would have otherwise been excluded from main offers.
CAA Quebec is a prominent membership-based organization offering vital roadside assistance, travel, and insurance services. Their Shopify store at boutique.caaquebec.com serves as a platform for engaging with their member base, where they sell a variety of products and accessories for cars, roadside assistance kits, and more.
CAA’s unique and intricate promotional requirements far exceeded the capabilities of standard discount options on Shopify. They needed a highly customized and flexible discount system capable of executing specific member-exclusive offers, complex tiered promotions, and tailored employee benefits. Before partnering with Shopify Professional Services, CAA Quebec's internal team faced significant hurdles. They found themselves struggling to locate a third-party app with the precise functionality they needed for their intricate promotional requirements. The solutions they did find often came with their own set of limitations and bugs, forcing their business to adapt to the app's constraints rather than the other way around. This constant friction, coupled with customer frustration from discounts not applying as announced, highlighted a critical gap.
Partnering with Shopify Professional Services changed this. We listened to CAA Quebec's unique business requirements and their internal team's needs for automating complex discount functionalities. By understanding their operational model, we were able to use Shopify Discount Functions for powerful backend logic and the innovative Discounts Admin UI extensions. This collaboration engineered a seamless administrative experience and a bespoke discount solution, tailored to their exact needs. This empowered CAA Quebec to implement their complex promotional strategies with precision and efficiency, all while avoiding the recurring costs and limitations often associated with third-party apps.
The Challenge
CAA Quebec's marketing team was frequently constrained by the limitations of their existing discount tools. Their promotional campaigns were often complex, requiring highly specific conditions that standard Shopify discounts couldn't accommodate. Before our solution, they were unable to run numerous targeted promotions, or had to resort to cumbersome manual workarounds, leading to inefficiencies and missed opportunities. For example, setting up a promotion that offered different percentages of discount based on collection, and also ensured the discount was calculated based on the original product price (if a compare-at price was enabled) proved impossible. For instance, if a discount was 20% and a product had a compare-at price of $10 but an original price of $15, the requirement was to discount 20% from $15, a nuanced calculation not supported natively.
Their struggle stemmed from the inability to define precise rules directly within the Shopify admin. They required a system that could handle:
- Multi-conditional logic: The ability to combine up to five distinct conditions for a single discount, far beyond standard limitations.
- Multi-step tiered discounts: They needed a system capable of applying varied discounts based on different spending thresholds or tiers.
- Intricate price-based calculations: A critical need to apply discounts based on the original product price even when a "compare-at price" was enabled, ensuring that the total discount, including existing markdowns, adhered to a predefined maximum. This required dynamic calculations at checkout.
- Flexible product and collection targeting: The ability to specify discounts for particular collections while simultaneously excluding others, or to exclude individual "on-sale" items.
- Dynamic minimum purchase requirements: Conditions based on either a minimum order amount or a minimum quantity of items.
Despite the wide variety of high-quality discount and promotion apps available in the Shopify App Store, these existing solutions were not an exact fit for CAA Quebec's unique and tailored requirements. They often lacked the precise combination of conditions CAA Quebec needed, were overly complex for their specific workflows, or had user interfaces that didn't align with their team's preferences. This often resulted in either prohibitive subscription costs for partial solutions or forced compromises on their promotional strategies. Crucially, CAA Quebec found themselves trying to adapt their inherent business models and requirements to fit the structures of existing applications – a case of forcing 'business around technology.' The absence of a solution that perfectly integrated their unique business logic within the familiar Shopify admin was a significant impediment to their marketing efforts.
The Solution
To address CAA Quebec's complex discount requirements, we opted for a custom-built solution that integrates directly into the Shopify ecosystem: Shopify Discount Functions for backend logic and Discounts Admin UI extensions for the administrative interface. This approach offered many benefits compared to other external or less integrated solutions.
Why Discounts Admin UI Extensions?
We chose the Discounts Admin UI extensions because they offer the best of both worlds: deep customization capabilities combined with a seamless, native Shopify experience. This approach allowed us to:
- Integrate Directly into the Shopify Admin: Instead of forcing CAA Quebec's team to learn a new, external interface, we extended the existing Shopify discount creation flow. This significantly reduced training time and made the new functionalities immediately intuitive for their marketing and sales teams.
- Streamlined User Experience: By adding custom fields and logic directly within the familiar Shopify environment, we streamlined the discount creation process. Users could configure complex discounts using tailored inputs, eliminating the need for manual workarounds or cross-referencing multiple systems.
- Avoid Third-Party App Limitations & Costs: A custom solution meant no recurring subscription fees, no reliance on a third-party's feature roadmap, and complete control over the logic and user experience. This provided long-term cost savings and ensured the solution was precisely tailored to their evolving needs.
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Native Integration for Adaptability: Building with Shopify's native extension points ensures deep integration and adaptability as the platform evolves, minimizing potential disruptions and allowing for smoother updates.
How it Works: Uniting UI and Logic
The magic of our solution lies in the synergy between the Admin UI extensions and Discount Functions:
Discounts Admin UI Extensions (Frontend): We injected custom fields and validation rules directly into the Shopify Admin's "Create Discount" page. This allowed CAA Quebec's team to input all the necessary parameters for their complex discounts – including options for multi-conditional logic, detailed tiered discount configurations, and parameters for the "Apply Discount Based on Compare-at Pricing" functionality. These custom inputs are stored as metadata on the discount object.
The real power of the Admin UI extensions is that they make these custom discount types feel and look like regular Shopify discounts, but with the added flexibility of custom UI elements. This means merchants can continue to use native Shopify features seamlessly, such as:
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- Selection of Discount Method: Choose between automatic discounts or specific discount codes.
- Eligibility: Define who can use the discount – all customers, specific customer segments, or individual customers.
- Maximum Discount Uses: Set limits on total uses for the discount or restrict to one use per customer.
- Combinations: Control how the custom discounts can combine with other product, order, and shipping discounts.
- Active Dates: Easily set start and end dates and times for promotions directly within the familiar Shopify interface.
Shopify Discount Functions (Backend): While the Admin UI extensions capture the complex rules, Shopify Discount Functions are responsible for evaluating these rules in real-time during checkout. This backend logic is deployed as a custom app directly on Shopify's infrastructure, meaning there's no need for an external server. When a customer applies a discount code, the Shopify Function runs, processes the custom metadata stored by the Admin UI, and applies the discount logic exactly as defined. This ensures lightning-fast performance and accurate discount application, even with highly complex conditional logic.
The Tailored Discount Types: A Custom Solution for Every Need
To meet CAA Quebec's requirements, we developed four discount types, each designed to handle a unique set of complex conditions:
- Standard Product Offer: This flexible discount type empowers CAA Quebec to apply percentage or fixed amounts to specific products or collections. It supports up to five distinct conditions, including collection-based inclusions/exclusions, the ability to exclude items already on sale (using compare-at price), and configurable minimum purchase requirements (either by amount or quantity).
- Tiered Order Discount: This sophisticated order-level discount implements dynamic tiered pricing based on the total purchase amount. Merchants can define specific "From," "To," and "Step" values, enabling varied discounts across different thresholds. A crucial notification at the top indicates the maximum possible discount, ensuring the correct total amount is applied and preventing excessive reductions, particularly with fixed discount types.
- Adjusted Employee Discount: Specifically crafted for employee benefits, this discount type offers advanced tiered conditions (up to five) and percentage or fixed amounts. Its standout feature is the "Apply Discount Based on Compare-at Pricing" logic. For example, if a product is already 10% off its original price and the employee discount is 30%, this function ensures only an additional 20% is applied, capping the total combined discount at 30% from the original price.
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Standard Order Offer: Similar to the standard product discount but applied at the order level, this type also supports up to five tiered conditions, allowing for percentage or fixed amounts. It includes options for specific collection inclusions/exclusions and minimum purchase requirements (amount or quantity), providing comprehensive control over order-level promotions.
Example screenshot of Tiered Order discount:
The green-highlighted section is a fully custom-developed component created using Discount Admin UI extensions, tailored to meet the merchant's requirements.
The Power of Discount Functions and Admin UI Extensions
This approach benefits from the strengths of Shopify's modern extensibility platform:
- Discount Functions provide a secure, performant, and scalable way to execute custom discount logic directly within Shopify's checkout pipeline. They are executed at the near end users, ensuring minimal latency and robust error handling. This is crucial for complex calculations like the "compare-at price" logic for employee discounts, which require precise adjustments based on existing markdowns.
- Discounts Admin UI Extensions bridge the gap between complex business requirements and a user-friendly administrative experience. They allow developers to create custom input forms, validators, and help text right where merchants create discounts, making even the most intricate promotional setups manageable for internal teams.
Together, these tools enabled us to provide CAA Quebec with a discount system that is both incredibly powerful and remarkably easy to use, fitting perfectly into their existing Shopify workflow.
"For us, it is a success to have had the chance to work with you to increase and simplify our processes. Thank you!" - CAA Quebec
Summary
CAA Quebec's need for highly specific and integrated discount functionality highlighted a common challenge for growing e-commerce businesses: standard solutions don't always align with unique business models. By partnering with Shopify Professional Services, CAA Quebec gained a tailored discount system that perfectly integrated into their existing Shopify admin. This bespoke solution, powered by Shopify Discount Functions and Admin UI extensions, replaced manual workarounds and the need for external apps, empowering their team with precise control over promotions and enhancing the overall customer experience.
If your business is struggling with complex discount requirements or finding that off-the-shelf solutions aren't an exact fit, consider using Shopify's powerful extensibility platform. Reach out to Shopify Professional Services to explore how custom development can align technology with your business needs, streamline operations, and unlock new possibilities for growth and conversion.