How Markdown Optimizer works

Setting it up, step by step

1. Install and let the catalogue sync

   Install Markdown Optimizer from the Shopify App Store. It reads your products, variants, listing dates, prices, costs and stock, and keeps them current with a nightly catalogue read.

2. Describe your ladder

   Add steps, each with a waiting period and a discount, for example 30 days for 5% off, 60 days for 10% off and 120 days for 25% off. Mark the last step final so products stop there.

3. Choose which steps wait for approval

   Tick Ask me first on any step you want to sign off before it applies. Steps left clear run on their own.

4. Decide about products without a cost

   The app counts products with no cost per item in Shopify. Choose whether they may be marked down without a below-cost check, or excluded.

5. Preview the ladder

   Check which products it applies to, the step each would reach and the resulting price. Download the preview as CSV if you want to review it elsewhere.

6. Start it and watch the week ahead

   Start the ladder. Each product moves down it on its own clock, every step is checked before it is applied in Shopify, and the upcoming view and weekly digest show what is due.

The starting shape the app offers is a common one, not a recommendation: every waiting period and every depth is yours to choose.

Every product joins on its own clock

A step fires for a product once that product has been listed for the waiting period. Two products listed three months apart sit at different steps of the same ladder on the same day, because each is counted from the day it was listed. New products join automatically. You never select products by hand or maintain a list.

If a product's listing date cannot be read, it is not marked down at all. Treating an unknown date as old would discount stock that may have arrived yesterday.

Each step is checked before it applies

When a step comes due, the Sparande platform works out which products qualify and what the reduction would cost you. Markdown Optimizer records your policy; the platform's Decision Science does the arithmetic and checks every price before it moves. If it cannot produce a figure, you are told that rather than shown a zero.

• Against cost: where Shopify holds a cost per item, a step below cost is refused and the reason is recorded.
• Against your ladder: a step can only deepen the discount, never reduce it.
• Against the live price: the step carries the price it was worked out from; if the price in Shopify has changed since, the step is refused instead of overwriting the change.
• Against existing sales: a product already showing a sale price waits for your review on Pricing reviews.
• Against other Sparande apps: if another one is already pricing the product, the step is held and checked again the next day.

How the reduction is applied

Each step is worked out from the original price, never from the last reduced price, and the product's price in Shopify is lowered to it. A compare-at (original) price is set only where the product's recorded price history proves one. After the write, the price is read back from Shopify, and the Products page shows a step as live only once that read confirms it.

When a checkout discount may stack on the markdown, the step still goes ahead and the product is flagged, so you can decide whether the combination is acceptable.

What you are told, and when

• Before you start: the preview, and the count of products without a cost per item.
• Every week: a digest by email of what is coming up.
• The day before, if you want it: a short note that prices will change tomorrow.
• When a decision is needed: one grouped email listing what waits for you, not one per product.
• Always: the activity trail, with every step applied, skipped or refused and why.

Stopping, excluding and restoring

Stopping a ladder prevents any further step. It does not put prices back by itself, and the app says so next to the button, because assuming otherwise is the mistake that costs money. Excluding a single product works the same way: no future step, no change to a price already reduced.

To put prices back, use Remove active markdown changes in the Account menu. It restores original prices product by product, leaves alone any product whose price was changed after the markdown, and reports a product as restored only once the platform has confirmed it. Run it before uninstalling if you want your catalogue back at full price.

Where AI fits

The ladder itself involves no AI: it is your schedule, applied and checked. Where suggestions are switched on for a store, AI finds places a ladder could work harder and Decision Science verifies them across the shop; they appear as Suggested and change nothing until you accept, preview and activate. AI also writes the plain-language answer when you press "Why?" on a product.

What it will not do

• It will not invent a number where there is not enough data for one.
• It will not add a struck-through "was" price it cannot back up.
• It will not mark down a product whose listing date it cannot read.
• It will not price your catalogue on its own: nothing runs until you have previewed a ladder and started it.
• Per-market pricing is not available yet; ladders run on base prices.