Creating Choose Free Item Discounts

• Overview
• Step 1: Create Product List
• Step 2: Create Discount
• Step 3: Add Widget to Shopping Cart
• Step 4: Add Merge Codes to Widget
• Troubleshooting

Overview

The powerful functionality of AmeriCommerce product lists, discounts, and product display widgets can be be combined to allow customers to chose a free item from a list of items on the shopping cart page. This article is a step-by-step walk-through on setting that up. 

Step 1: Create Product List

Product lists can be created in Catalog > Power Features > Product Lists. If you're not familiar with creating product lists, see: https://support.americommerce.com/hc/en-us/articles/201906850

Step 2: Create Discount

After creating a product list, navigate to Marketing > Discounts, click New, then

Configure the discount settings

1. For Method Name, enter a name for the discount (customer's will see this)
2. Check Active
3. Check Method is Strict
4. Configure the rest of the discount settings as desired
5. Save

Add a discount action

1. Click New Action
2. Check Action is Active
3. Select Choose Free Item(s) From Product List in the Action drop-down. 
4. Select the product list you created in Step 1 in the Product List drop-down. 
5. In the Qty: box, enter the number of free items to give to the customer
6. Save
7. Exit back to the Discount Edit Screen (You should see Edit Discount Method at the top, not Edit Discount Action). 

Add Discount Rule (s)

1. On the Edit Discount Method screen, click New Rule
2. Configure the rule
3. Save
4. Repeat for each rule you would like to create.

For more information on creating discounts, see: https://support.americommerce.com/hc/en-us/articles/201906960

Step 3: Add Widget to Shopping Cart

Navigate to Themes > Edit Theme > Shopping Cart > Widgets, and

Add a Product Display Widget:

1. Click Add Widget next to the desired widget area
2. Select Product Display from the widget list

Configure the Widget:

1. Edit the widget you just created
2. Change Product Display Type to Discount Action Product List
3. Check Show Qty Boxes & Add To Cart Button (Don't worry if you don't see this. Next steps explains how to add it).
4. Configure the rest of the widget settings as desired
5. Click save.

Step 4: Add Merge Codes to Widget

On the widget's edit screen, click Layout. Here is where you can add the Show Qty Boxes & Add to Cart Button checkbox if it wasn't visible on the previous step.  To do so, add qtyandaddtocartbutton="True" to the ac:widget tag:

<ac:widget qtyandaddtocartbutton="True" ... >

 Next, add the $$QTYBOX$$ and $$ADDTOCART$$ merge codes as show belown:

<!-- Note the qtyandaddtocartbutton="True" parameter here  -->
<ac:widget qtyandaddtocartbutton="True" ... >
  <ac:visibilityarea id="dvControl">
    $$ADMINHELP$$

    <div class="pad-20 pad-b-only">
      <div class="pad-b-20"><h3>$$HEADER$$</h3></div>
      <div class="">
        <ac:layoutarea id="Layout">
          $$GROUP$$
        </ac:layoutarea>
        <ac:layoutarea id="Group">
          <div class="row"> $$ITEM$$</div>
        </ac:layoutarea>
        <ac:layoutarea id="Item">
          ...
            <ac:visibilityarea id="dvControlItem">
              ...
              <!-- Bunch of HTML here for images, etc -->
              ...
              <div class="caption center">
                <h4>##PRODUCTNAME##</h4>
                <p class="text-muted">$$PRICE$$</p>
              </div>
            </ac:visibilityarea>

            <!-- Add visibility area for qty and merge code -->
            <ac:visibilityarea id="QuantityForCart" class="QuantityForCart">
              Qty: $$QTYBOX$$
            </ac:visibilityarea>
          ...
        </ac:layoutarea>
      </div>
    </div>
    <!-- Add To Cart goes just before last /ac:visibility tag-->
    $$ADDTOCART$$
  </ac:visibilityarea>
</ac:widget>

Troubleshooting

Widget not displaying:

1. Check that the widget doesn't have Hide checked.
2. If Enable Merge Code is checked, make sure the merge code is in the Shopping Cart page's HTML. 
3. Check the product display type. Should be set to discount action product list.
4. Ensure correct discount is selected in the widget settings.
5. Confirm discount AND its actions have Active checked.

Widget displays, but there's no Quantity box or add to cart:

1. Check merge code placement (step 4).
2. Verify Show Qty Boxes & Add to Cart Button is checked.