The discount reward lives in Add to Unlock. It's different from discount codes: a discount code is something the customer types in, whereas a discount reward applies automatically to the order or to the products in their cart.
Like other rewards, it can be triggered by cart value or cart quantity. These setups are great for your main sale or a mid-sale moment, and they work all year round.
1. Spend and save (tiered discount)
A spend and save is a tiered discount where the more someone spends, the more they save on that order. For example, spend $100 get 10% off, spend $200 get 20% off. It's a strong alternative to a site-wide sale: it rewards bigger baskets and pushes order value up, rather than discounting everything on your site. A bit of a win-win.
How to set it up:
Go to Add to Unlock, then Add Reward and choose Discount.
Set the trigger to value (spend based).
Add your tiers, for example spend $100 get 10% off, spend $200 get 20% off. Configure the steps and amounts to suit your brand and margins, up to five steps on the progress bar.
Prefer a dollar amount over a percentage? Switch to fixed amount and set your spend and save in dollars instead.
Show it on the progress bar so customers can see each level they can unlock.
Tip: Spend and saves could replace a sitewide discount event and as long as spend tiers are aligned with realistic AOV targets, you could increase your margin this way too.
2. Choose the right discount method (and show the saving)
In the discount method you can pick order discount or product discount. This choice matters, especially if you're also running a gift with purchase.
Order discount applies the discount to the entire order but doesn't show on individual line items. This tends to be the default.
Product discount shows on the line items, but Shopify only allows one product discount per item. So if you're also running a gift with purchase on that product, the two will conflict.
Because order discount doesn't show on each line, add a Totals block to your cart so the saving is obvious.
How to set it up:
Set your discount method to order discount (recommended, particularly alongside a gift with purchase).
Add a Totals block to the cart. This shows the subtotal and the savings, making it clear the discount has applied.
Adjust how it displays: change the size, show the subtotal and/or savings, and show the currency.
Tip: Whenever you're running any discount code or discount reward, include the Totals block so customers can clearly see they're getting the saving.
3. Scheduled flash discount (great for a mid-sale offer)
Run a short, time-boxed discount to create urgency, for example "for the next hour, everything is an extra 10% off." Because the offer is scoped to the cart, you can run it for a set window to a specific market or customer base and create a real rush.
You can run this at the same time as a spend and save if you like.
How to set it up:
Create an Add to Unlock reward and add a Discount.
Set the trigger: cart quantity (buy one item, or two), or a spend threshold.
Set the discount amount.
Schedule the block for the window it should run, whether that's a day, an hour, 30 minutes, or even 5 minutes.
Every block in a cart can be scheduled to turn on and off independently, and you can also toggle it on yourself and schedule it to turn off. You've got complete flexibility.
Tip: You don't have to apply this to all products. Target specific products or collections and cycle offers through the sale. Slow-moving or C-grade stock is a good candidate: an extra 10 to 20% off for a limited time creates scarcity and urgency around exactly what you want to move.
4. Hidden, product-specific discount (secret reward)
You can also run an offer like "buy a specific product, get a dollar amount off, for a limited time" without cluttering the cart with an extra progress bar.
How to set it up:
Create an Add to Unlock discount reward.
Set the trigger to order quantity and choose the specific product it applies to.
Set the amount the customer gets off.
To hide it, drag the progress bar size to zero and remove the text from the reward title.
The discount now applies automatically for the time period it's live, acting like a secret reward, with no busy progress bar across the cart.
Tip: Remember you can hide any reward by making the progress bar 0 pixels in size.
BIG TIP: Include titles and descriptions of your offer that AI agents can read
A hint for this year: set up your reward titles and descriptions so AI agents can understand your offer. AI can generally only read compare-at pricing and product data, so it won't infer a cart-level offer unless you spell it out.
How to set it up:
In the reward's LLM title and description box, state explicitly what the offer is.
Keep it clear and specific so that when the offer is live, agents know what's on and can recommend it in chat and search when customers are hunting for the best deals.