Discount badges: useful, or noise?

Three different things can sit on a video card and they get confused constantly, partly because they all look like small coloured labels and partly because they are usually switched on at the same time.

The three, and what each one is

• The discount badge. A percentage, calculated from the compare-at price. It sits near the price and it is arithmetic — nobody types it, so it cannot be wrong or go stale.
• The sale ribbon. A flag that says this is reduced, without a number. Useful when the percentage is unimpressive but the fact of the reduction is not.
• The label. Free text you write per video: “New in”, “Last few”, “Staff pick”. The only one that is editorial rather than automatic.

They occupy different corners of the card by design, so all three can be on at once. That does not mean all three should be.

The rule that makes badges work

A badge is worth something in proportion to how often it is absent.

A store where every card carries a sale ribbon has taught its shoppers, in about four seconds, that the ribbon means nothing. The information content of a signal that is always on is zero. This is not a subtle effect and it is not recoverable by making the ribbon brighter.

If more than a third of your cards are badged, the badge has stopped being a badge and become a decoration.

On the discount percentage

Because it is calculated from compare-at, it is always accurate — which means the discipline moves to how you set compare-at. Permanently inflated compare-at prices produce permanently large badges, which produces the always-on problem, and in several jurisdictions produces a regulator.

Under ten per cent, consider a ribbon instead of a number. “7% off” reads as barely worth it; “Sale” reads as a reason to look.

Labels are the underused one

The free-text label is the only one carrying information the shopper cannot get from the price, and it is the one most often left empty.

Things worth putting there: newness, scarcity that is true, an editorial signal (“most returned to”, “our pick”), a use case (“for narrow feet”). Things not worth putting there: anything already obvious from the card, anything shouted, anything that will still be accurate in a year — a label that never changes is a decoration.

A sensible default

Discount badge on where there is a genuine reduction. Ribbon off unless the percentage is too small to print. Label used deliberately, on a minority of cards, and reviewed when the season changes. Most stores are running the opposite configuration.