Hi!
My store has a catalogue of over 10,000 unique items. Sometimes I like to run one discount on my entire store, like Black Friday. Unfortunately, on Shopify, when I do this, aside from a little banner at the top of my page which announces that there is a discount in the cart, there is no indication that an item is discounted. It would be nice to have simple strike-through pricing or some better way to indicate that there is a sale on a multitude of items. I’ve worked with developers before on this issue and, unless something has changed that I don’t know about within the last year, they have indicated to me that the only way to show discounts(incentivize buyers to actually add to cart), is to individually add a “discounted price” to each variant - obviously not a possibility with such a large catalog of entirely unique vintage items.
I do understand that there are apps available that seem to have this functionality, however, we have used one in the past, and it changed the price of each one of our listings individually and we ended up having to delete every single listing in our store and re-upload them because the developer couldn’t even fix the issue - a giant undertaking to say the least. Obviously, I’m hesitant to try an application again and this does seem to be such a small problem that it feels like Shopify could theoretically fix and have be a part of the website rather than these app developers, which usually seem to charge a fee either monthly or based on the amount of items discounted, neither of which has been feasible for my small company.
Maybe I am oversimplifying a problem that I don’t understand because I am not a developer myself, but I also sell on Etsy and eBay, and both of those sites are able to effectively display discounts when I run sales. This is probably the biggest issue I’ve had thus far on Shopify and has made it largely the reason why I have not put forth a lot of effort into my site to drive sales, purely because using these marketplaces is so much easier. I would love to see this issue remedied though because I would absolutely prefer to have the bulk of my sales coming through Shopify.
Thank you so much in advance for your help!
The best way to show strike-through pricing in your store is to set “compare-at” pricing. You can set the product price to be your new reduced price and enter the previous price in the “compare-at” field. This is shown with a strike-through in most themes. To apply this in bulk across your 10,000 products you can export your products to a CSV file, edit the prices an a spreadsheet, and re-import the file.
You can use an automated collection to group all products with compare-at pricing and show them on a single page in your store.
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Hi David,
Thank you for your response, I sincerely appreciate it. I will give this a shot, the CSV file option. One last question in this regard, does that mean that I would be able to turn this on and off somehow? Forgive me for being such an amateur on this, but just wanted to ask while we are chatting about it. Also, sometimes I offer different levels of discounts so just seeing how I would be able to effectively display those… Or, when I create that compare-at price am I more or less going to just have that as the discount option?
Again, thank you sincerely for your help! The moment that you took to simplify this issue for this rookie could really mean a big increase in business for my shop so you are very much appreciated! 
Warmly,
Leah
Hi @7sistersjewelry,
I totally understand your frustration with the discount visibility issue, especially with 10,000+ unique items. Your bad experience with that app modifying all your product data sounds like a nightmare!
The good news is that newer apps handle this differently – they display strike-through pricing visually without ever touching your actual product data. They work with your existing Shopify automatic discounts and simply make them visible across your store.
What to look for:
Apps that overlay discount display (don’t modify your catalog)
Work with your existing automatic discounts
Simple one-time setup for your entire catalog
I’ve seen merchants with similar vintage catalogs have success with apps like Adsgun – we actually help several stores with many items display strike-through pricing everywhere (product pages, collections, and all other pages) without changing any of your actual product data.
The setup is straightforward and works with whatever discount percentage you set for Black Friday or other sales.
What’s particularly helpful is their live chat support – they’re pretty fast and careful with setup, especially given your previous bad experience.
They can walk you through everything to ensure nothing touches your product data before you commit.
Since you’re understandably cautious, most apps offer free trials.
Test with a small discount first to ensure nothing touches your product data – only the visual display should change.
Hope this helps you showcase those discounts properly without the headaches!