How to run storewide sales in WooCommerce

Decide whether customers should see reduced prices before checkout or enter a coupon code. A coupon is quick and keeps your catalogue prices unchanged, but shoppers must use the code unless your store has an auto-apply coupon feature. Sale prices appear throughout the shop and product pages.

Also decide whether the discount covers every product, selected categories, selected tags, or specific exclusions. Write down products that must stay at full price, such as bundles, subscriptions, or low-margin items.

For a simple promotion, go to Marketing > Coupons and create a coupon. Choose Percentage discount for a percentage sale or Fixed product discount for a fixed amount off each eligible product. Leave the product and category restriction fields empty to let the coupon apply to all products.

Use Usage restriction to exclude products or categories, prevent the coupon from applying to sale items, set minimum or maximum spend, or make the coupon individual use only. Set usage limits if the offer should be limited. WooCommerce supports these coupon restrictions in core.

If customers must see sale prices in the catalogue, use WooCommerce's built-in bulk editor. Go to Products > All Products, select the products, choose Edit from Bulk Actions, and click Apply.

Under Sale, choose Set to regular price decreased by, then enter a percentage such as 20% or a fixed amount. This creates sale prices while keeping the regular prices intact. Use the scheduled sale fields on each product when you need start and end dates. The core bulk editor can adjust selected products, but it is awkward for large catalogues and does not give you one reusable rule for future products.

For individually scheduled sale prices, open a product and enter a Sale price, then select Schedule to set the start and end dates. WooCommerce automatically stops displaying the sale price after the end date; the documented end time is 11:59 pm on the selected end date. Variable products need their prices checked at variation level, not just on the parent product.

Before publishing, check products that already have sale prices, variable products, bundles, subscriptions, and products excluded from promotions. A common Friday problem is overwriting an existing sale price during a bulk update, then having no simple record of the original value.

Open the shop in a private browser window and check a product archive, a product page, the cart, and checkout. Confirm that the regular price is struck through where expected, the discount is calculated correctly, tax and shipping still behave as intended, and excluded products remain at full price.

If you use a coupon, test the exact code, minimum spend, usage limits, and whether it can combine with other coupons. Clear page, object, and CDN caches before judging the result, because cached product pages can continue showing old prices.

If you run storewide promotions regularly, a plugin is the fast way. Storewide Sale For WooCommerce can apply percentage or fixed discounts across the shop and target products by category or tag, while scheduling the promotion without editing sale prices one product at a time.

Use this route when the sale must start and stop automatically, cover a large or changing catalogue, or apply different rules to different groups. Keep a backup and test the promotion with your payment, subscription, bundle, and caching extensions before making it live.