A 10% discount does not cost you 10%. On a bag you buy for ₦8,000 and sell for ₦12,000, taking ₦1,200 off the price takes 30% of your profit, because the discount comes out of the ₦4,000 you were keeping, not out of the ₦12,000 the customer pays.
That is the sum most sellers never do, and it is why so many people run a sale, watch orders go up, and still finish the month with less money than before. A discount is worth giving. It is only worth giving when you know what it costs you and what it buys you back.
What a discount actually costs you
Work from your profit, not from your price. Same bag: ₦12,000 price, ₦8,000 cost, ₦4,000 profit.
| You take off | Customer saves | Your profit becomes | Extra sales to end up level |
|---|---|---|---|
| 5% | ₦600 | ₦3,400 | 18% more |
| 10% | ₦1,200 | ₦2,800 | 43% more |
| 20% | ₦2,400 | ₦1,600 | 150% more |
Read the last row slowly. At 20% off you need to sell two and a half times as much just to end the month where you started. Very few sales double, so 20% off is usually a decision to earn less, dressed up as a growth plan.
This is why 5% to 10% is where most sellers should stay, and why anything you barely make money on should not go on offer at all.
When a discount is worth giving
A discount has to buy you something you were not already getting. There are only three things worth buying:
A bigger basket. Somebody who was going to buy one thing buys three. Three bags at 10% off brings in ₦32,400 against ₦24,000 of stock, so you keep ₦8,400. On the single bag you would have kept ₦4,000. You gave away ₦3,600 and doubled your profit on that customer.
A faster decision. Somebody who was going to "think about it" orders today instead. You were getting that sale anyway, so the discount only buys you speed here, and speed is worth less than a bigger basket. Keep this one small.
A first order. Somebody who has never bought from you takes the risk. Expensive on day one, worth it if they come back, wasted if they do not.
Everything below is one of those three. If a discount is not buying you one of them, it is not an offer, it is just a lower price.
The four offers on SendSawa, and what each one fixes
Your offers live in My Store → Settings → Offers, on the Growth plan (₦5,000 a month). Each one is a switch with its own settings underneath.
The countdown bar: for customers who say they will come back
A clock across the top of your store, ticking down to one deadline everybody shares. "Weekend sale, 2 days 14 hours left."
The important part is that the countdown bar changes no prices at all. It costs you nothing and takes nothing off your profit, so it buys you the faster decision with no discount attached. That makes it the first thing to try and the last thing to remove.
When the deadline passes the bar takes itself down, so your store is never sitting there showing zeros. Give it a real name too. "Weekend sale" reads like a real event, while "Offer ends soon" reads like something every store says.
Buy more, pay less: for stores selling one item at a time
Money off once somebody buys several things at once, like "Buy 3+, save 10%". This is the bundle sum from earlier, and it makes most sellers the most money, because it is the only one of the four that asks the customer for something in return.
Your storefront helps close it. Once there are two items in the basket it tells the shopper "add 1 more item to save 10%", so the nudge lands at the moment they are deciding.
Start at 3 items and 10%.
Flash offer: for stores with plenty of visitors and few orders
Every shopper gets their own clock the moment they open your store, rather than a deadline everybody shares. "10% off, 47 minutes left."
Two things make it work. If they leave and come back, their clock carries on from where it was instead of starting again, so the number they are looking at is true. And when it reaches zero the discount really does stop. They pay full price until their next turn, and you choose how many days that takes.
That second point is doing more work than it looks. A store that says "ending in 10 minutes" every time anybody visits is the kind of thing the consumer-protection rules were written about, and it is your shop's name on it. On SendSawa the clock is real, which is the only reason a customer has to believe it.
Start at 60 minutes, 10% off, one turn every 7 days.
Spin to win: for new people who do not know you yet
A prize wheel that greets people when they open your store. They spin, they win, and they now have a discount they feel they earned, which is a different feeling from being handed one.
The wheel shows other numbers around the edge to make the spin worth watching, but it always stops on yours. Nobody can win more than you set, and everybody who spins wins the same thing.
Use it on traffic that has never bought from you: a link dropped in a WhatsApp group, a TikTok that did numbers, a click from your Instagram bio. Shoppers only see the wheel once, so your dashboard keeps a link that opens it again whenever you want to see what your customers see.
The rule that caps what you can lose
Your offers do not add up.
A shopper can qualify for three at once, with three items in the basket, a spun wheel and a flash clock still running. They still get one, whichever is worth the most to them, and the others simply do not apply.
So the most you can ever give away is the biggest single number you set, not the sum of all of them. If your highest offer is 10%, then 10% is your worst case however many offers are switched on. The box at the top of the Offers card shows you that number, and it is the one to watch.
Delivery is never discounted either. You collect the same delivery money and owe the courier the same amount, whichever offer applies.
Which one to switch on
| What is happening | Switch on |
|---|---|
| People say they will come back and never do | Countdown bar |
| Orders keep coming in one item at a time | Buy more, pay less |
| Plenty of visitors, few orders | Flash offer |
| New traffic from a post or a group | Spin to win |
| Old stock you need gone by Sunday | Countdown bar and buy more, pay less |
Switch on one. Run it for a week. Look at your orders before you add a second.
Four mistakes that cost sellers money
Leaving a sale running forever. A store that is permanently 10% off does not have a discount, it has new prices, and its customers learn to wait for the next "sale" before they buy anything. Give every offer an end.
Setting a deadline that has already passed. The countdown is switched on but nothing shows on your store. Your dashboard warns you when this happens, so do not scroll past it.
Discounting the things you barely make money on. Do the profit sum first. Some items should never go on offer, and the countdown bar is there for exactly those.
Promising an ending you do not keep. Half the reason a clock works is that shoppers have learned most countdowns are lies. Being the seller whose clock is honest is worth more over a year than the one sale you would save by fudging it.
What to check after a week
Open your analytics and compare against the week before:
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Are orders up, or are the same orders just cheaper?
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Did your average order value move? That is the number "buy more, pay less" should be lifting, and if it has not moved, that offer is not doing its job.
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Is your profit per order still somewhere you can live with?
If orders went up and profit went down, your percentage is too high. Drop it by five points and run the same week again.
Questions sellers ask
How much discount should I give in my online store? Between 5% and 10% on most things, worked out from your profit rather than your price. Above 10% you need sales to rise sharply just to stay level, and most sales do not.
Will discounts train my customers to wait for a sale? Only if your offers never end. A sale with a real deadline teaches people to buy now. A permanent sale teaches them your normal price is not serious.
Do discounts come off delivery too? No. Every offer comes off the goods only, so your delivery money is untouched and you are never left short on what you owe the courier.
Can one customer combine two offers? No. Somebody who qualifies for more than one gets whichever saves them the most, and the rest do not apply. Your worst case is always your single biggest percentage.
What if I am on the free plan? Offers are part of the Growth plan at ₦5,000 a month. If a 10% offer on a ₦12,000 bag still keeps ₦2,800 of profit, roughly two extra orders a month covers it.
Where to start today
Switch on the countdown bar and give it a real deadline. It costs you nothing, it is the fastest of the four to set up, and by this time next week you will know whether urgency alone moves your orders, before you have given away a single naira.