How to Leverage Sales on Your WooCommerce Website
Sales play a vital role in eCommerce, attracting customers, driving revenue, and managing inventory. They can take various forms, from individual product discounts to storewide promotions or flash sales.
Now, WooCommerce does provide basic sales functionality, but it lacks flexibility, making it challenging to set up and track promotions, adjust prices, and measure the impact on revenue and inventory, especially with a large product catalog.
This article will guide you through leveraging sales on your WooCommerce website and maximizing your sales and promotions using Admin Columns. You’ll learn practical strategies to manage discounts effectively and discover essential plugins to boost your online business.
Whether planning a flash sale or a long-term promotion, these tips will help you enhance your store’s performance and increase revenue.
Implementing sales and promotions in WooCommerce
Before we look at the more advanced techniques, let’s go through WooCommerce’s base functionalities that allow you to implement promotions and sales.
Setting up sale prices for individual products
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Navigate to the WooCommerce dashboard and go to the Products section. Here, select Edit for the product you wish to put on sale.
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In the Product Data section under the General tab, locate the Sale price box and enter the price you wish to charge during the sale.
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Click Schedule to set a specific date range for the sale. This feature allows you to control precisely when the sale starts and ends.
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After setting the dates, click Update. The sale price will automatically apply to the product during the specified date range.
Changing sale prices for products in bulk
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From the WooCommerce dashboard, navigate to the Products page and select the products you want to edit by checking the boxes next to them. Use the checkbox at the top or bottom of the list to select all products displayed on the page.
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Choose Edit from the Bulk actions dropdown menu and click Apply. This action opens the Bulk edit window.
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In the Bulk edit window, find the Sale dropdown menu. Here, you can choose to edit your sale prices by increasing or decreasing the existing price by a fixed value or a percentage.
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Once you have made your adjustments, click Update to apply the new sale prices to the selected products.
Limitations of managing sale prices with default WooCommerce
As you’ve probably noticed already, the sale price functionality is pretty bare-bones, especially in the following areas:
- Scheduling sales individually: WooCommerce allows you to schedule sales for individual products. However, if you apply sale prices to products in bulk, the sale will run indefinitely. To set end dates, you must manually schedule each product, which can be time-consuming and impractical for large inventories.
- Limited editing capabilities: Percentage-based changes can only be made using the bulk editor. If you want to reduce an individual product’s price by a percentage, you’ll need to calculate the new price manually before entering it, which is prone to errors and inefficiency.
- Page-by-page bulk editing: WooCommerce’s bulk editing tool only allows you to modify the prices for products displayed on the current page of your product list (up to 999 products). This constraint makes it very hard to implement store-wide discounts, particularly for stores with thousands of products.
- Restricted product segmentation: You can only filter products by category, stock status, or type. This lack of flexibility can restrict your ability to perform targeted sales promotions across different segments of your product range.
So, if you want to overcome these limitations and really improve your WooCommerce sales strategy, you need to use a supplementary plugin like Admin Columns. Let’s see how it can help you.
Unlocking WooCommerce sales potential with Admin Columns

Admin Columns is a powerful tool for back-end data management with versatile features that can help you overcome WooCommerce’s limitations when managing sales and promotions. Here’s how!
- Easily adjust sale prices and scheduling in bulk: Using the plugin’s bulk editing feature, you can set new sale prices, increase or decrease prices by a set value or percentage, or clear sale prices directly from the Products list table. This also lets you adjust sale scheduling without navigating to the individual product view, saving you time and effort.
- Bulk edit your entire product catalog at once: With Admin Columns, you can bypass the default WooCommerce limitation of editing a maximum of 999 products at once – the plugin has been tested with data sets of over 100,000 products, but there is no known limit to what it can handle! This is perfect for creating site-wide discounts, as you can mass-select every product in your catalog with just a few clicks.
- Segment your product catalog by almost any data type: Want to set up a sale based on stock quantity, number of orders, or the total revenue your store has earned from the product? Admin Columns lets you filter your product catalog by virtually any criteria, enabling you to easily segment which products you want to put on sale.
Beyond these core features, Admin Columns offers a variety of other tools to help with sales and order management.
For example, you can display more useful data in your admin area, such as the number of orders received, the average order interval, or total revenue. You can do this by adding custom columns to the list table and then saving the specific view for reference and quick access. This allows you to easily see the impact of your sales and promotions at a glance.

Admin Columns also makes it easy to adjust individual sale prices using its inline editing feature. This lets you quickly update sale prices or scheduling directly from the list table without navigating to the product editor screen.

Finally, the plugin’s conditional formatting feature can make inventory and price management even easier by adding visual indicators to show when products are selling well (or poorly) or when stock is getting low.

How to manage sale prices with Admin Columns: Step-by-step
Managing sale prices in WooCommerce becomes a breeze with Admin Columns. First, let’s see how you can create a scheduled sale from the list table.
Bulk setting a sale with Admin Columns
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Select the products you want to include in the sale. You can either select the entire store or segment it by a particular filter, such as all wooden items or all items with a stock of less than 10 (we’ll show you how to do this in a bit). For now, let’s select all products in your store.
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Now, click on the Bulk Edit button in the Price column.
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A new window will open, allowing you to create a sale price for the selected products. You can increase or decrease the prices by value or percentage or return them to normal. There is also the option to round decimals up or down.
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After that, you can schedule the sale with the handy calendar feature.
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Click Update and now you have a store-wide sale in less than a minute!
Adding a Sale Price column to the list table
If you want more control over your sales, you can add a Sale Price column to the list table by following these simple steps:
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Navigate to the Products list table and click Edit columns.
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Add a Sale Price column by clicking Add Column and selecting it from the Type dropdown.
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Toggle the Smart Filtering, Bulk Editing, and Inline Editing options for this column and make any other adjustments as needed.
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To bulk edit sale prices, from the Products list table, select the products you want to edit as we did in the beginning, and then select the Bulk Edit button in the Sale Price column.
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This will open a window where you can set a new sale price or adjust the existing sale prices and scheduling. When you are done, click Update.
Adding smart filters for specific sales and promotions
As we mentioned a bit earlier, with Admin Columns, you can effortlessly segment your product catalog using advanced filtering options.
Let’s see how:
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Go to Add Filter
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Choose the field you want to filter by. In the table view, you can segment data by any column and add as many filters as you like.
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If you plan to use this combination of filters again, you can save it for future use by clicking the Save Filters button.
The plugin’s intuitive interface and powerful features streamline the process of managing sales, ensuring that you can quickly implement and adjust your pricing strategies to maximize revenue and customer engagement.
Types of discounts and promotions for WooCommerce
WooCommerce store owners can leverage a variety of sales, discounts, and promotions to boost customer engagement and drive revenue. Here are some popular options:
- Flash sales: These are short-term, high-discount sales that create a sense of urgency and scarcity. By offering a significant discount for a limited time, you can encourage impulsive purchases and quickly move inventory.
- Coupons: Offering coupon codes can be an effective way to incentivize purchases and encourage repeat business. Coupons can be used for percentage or fixed-amount discounts, free shipping, or other special offers.
- BOGO promotions: “Buy one, get one” deals are a great way to increase average order value and clear out excess stock. Customers are more likely to purchase in higher quantities when they feel they’re getting a bargain.
- Tiered discounts: With tiered pricing, customers receive larger discounts when they buy more. For example, you could offer 10% off orders over $50, 15% off orders over $100, and 20% off orders over $200. This encourages customers to spend more and can foster loyalty over time.
- Cart abandonment discounts: Many customers add items to their cart but leave without completing their purchase. Offering a targeted discount to these “abandoned carts” can be a powerful way to re-engage these customers and recover potentially lost sales.
While WooCommerce includes some basic functionality for discounts and coupons, it may not have all the features you need to execute more advanced promotions. If you want to implement sophisticated discounts, you may need to use a supplementary plugin such as WooCommerce Discount Manager, Retainful, or Discount Rules for WooCommerce.
Effective promotion tactics to attract and retain customers
To maximize sales and customer engagement, WooCommerce store owners can deploy a variety of promotional tactics. These methods have the power to boost immediate sales and contribute to long-term customer loyalty and brand strength.
Personalized marketing
Personalized marketing tailors your marketing messages to individual customer demographics, behaviors, and preferences. This strategy increases relevance and engagement, encouraging more conversions.
With Admin Columns, you can access detailed customer and order information directly from your WooCommerce list tables. This data allows for targeted promotional campaigns, making your marketing efforts more efficient and effective.
Loyalty programs
Loyalty programs reward repeat customers, enhancing customer retention and encouraging more frequent purchases. Types of loyalty programs include points-based systems, where customers earn points for purchases that can be redeemed for discounts or products; exclusive discount offers; and early access to new products.
Admin Columns facilitates the management of such programs by providing easy access to essential customer data, enabling more precise targeting and rewarding of loyal customers.
User-generated content (UGC) and social proof
User-generated content and social proof are powerful tools for building trust and credibility. Encouraging customers to share their experiences and reviews can significantly influence others’ purchasing decisions.
By showcasing real customer testimonials and reviews prominently on your site, you leverage social proof to attract and retain more customers, enhancing the overall perception of your brand.
Take your WooCommerce sales to the next level
Sales, promotions, and discounts are easily among the most important tactics for ensuring the long-term success of your WooCommerce store. So, if you want to enjoy great revenue and customer engagement, you need to be very intentional about managing them.
An effective sales management strategy can turn occasional shoppers into loyal customers and drive repeat purchases. Leveraging solutions like Admin Columns can streamline this process, making it easier to manage sales and promotions.
Admin Columns offers key features that simplify sales management. With bulk and inline editing of sale prices, scheduling sales directly from the Products list table, and easy product segmentation, you can target discounts more effectively. Additionally, customizing the list table allows you to access important product and sales information at a glance, helping you make informed decisions quickly.
Maximize your WooCommerce sales by getting started with Admin Columns. Transform your store’s sales strategy and watch your revenue and customer loyalty grow!
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