Guides · Shopify Sidekick
How to check your Shopify discount codes with Sidekick
Shopify Sidekick can build discount reports from a plain question and draft changes to your discounts and segments. This guide covers the questions that get useful answers, the one thing Sidekick can't work out from your analytics, and how to act on what you find.
Ask for the numbers Shopify already has
Sidekick builds reports from your store analytics, so it can answer anything those reports cover. Questions that work well:
- Sales by code: "Show sales by discount code for the last 90 days, with orders and total discounts."
- New or returning: "For WELCOME10, how many orders in the last 90 days were from first-time customers?"
- Before and after a sale: "Compare daily orders and net sales during our spring sale with the four weeks before it."
- Usage over time: "Show orders using INFLUENCER30 by day since it launched."
Give a date range and name the code exactly as customers type it. When Sidekick shows a report, open it in Analytics to check the filters before you rely on the numbers. For the queries behind these reports, see tracking discount codes by new vs returning customers.
Where the answers stop
Shopify's analytics can tell Sidekick how much a code cost, how often it was used and whether an order was a customer's first. It can't tell whether a returning customer had recently paid full price. That's the question behind "Was this code worth it?":
- A loyalty code with 90% returning customers looks healthy, even if most of them were buying at full price every month.
- A sale with record orders looks like a win, even if the weeks after it were quiet because customers bought early.
If Sidekick calls a code "worth it" or "wasteful" based only on spend and redemptions, treat that as an opinion, not a measurement. Discount cannibalization on Shopify explains the three ways a discount goes to sales you'd have made anyway.
Fill the gap
You have two options:
- Check an export yourself. Export your orders from Shopify and drop the file into the free Discount Code Checker. For every code it shows the share of the discount that went to customers who had recently paid full price. It runs in your browser.
- Give Sidekick the measure. SegmentIQ adds its figures to Sidekick, so "Was LOYAL20 worth it?" is answered with how much of the code went to recent full-price buyers, alongside first-time buyer share and discount spend. Available on every plan.
Turn the answer into a change
Sidekick can also draft changes in your admin. Prompts that fix the common problems:
| If you find | Ask Sidekick |
|---|---|
| A code going mostly to customers who were already buying at full price | "Create a customer segment of customers who have not placed an order in the last 180 days, and limit the discount code LOYAL20 to that segment." |
| A code redeemed by far more first-time buyers than its audience | "Limit the discount code INFLUENCER30 to the customer segment it was created for, and set a usage limit of one per customer." |
| A campaign code still being used weeks later | "Set an end date of this Sunday on the discount code SPRING15." |
| A segment that only buys with a discount | "Show me the discount codes used by the customer segment 'Repeat buyers' in the last 180 days, grouped by code." |
Sidekick drafts the change, and nothing is saved until you confirm. Check the customer eligibility, usage limits and dates on the discount before you save.
A routine before and after a sale
- Two weeks before: ask which codes are still active with no end date or usage limit, and which went mostly to recent full-price buyers last time.
- During: ask for daily orders by code, and watch for any code rising faster than its audience could explain.
- Two weeks after: compare the sale and the weeks after it with the weeks before, and retire or restrict codes that leaked.
Order data shows who received a discount, not what the discount caused. The only way to prove a discount added sales is a holdout test: offer it to part of a segment and not the rest, then compare.
Related: Black Friday discount strategy by segment · How to tell if a discount code leaked
Ask Sidekick "Was this code worth it?"
SegmentIQ gives Sidekick how much of each code went to customers who had recently paid full price, by code and customer segment. Read-only, with a free plan.
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