Performance impact of "individual" catalog entry promotions

Promotion types that offer discounts on individual catalog entries can degrade site performance because of the amount of processing required while a customer checks out. By using promotion types that apply to categories or subtotals, instead of promotion types that apply to individual catalog entries, we can reduce the performance cost for evaluating promotions. The evaluation of these individual catalog entry-based promotions is impacted by the quantity for the catalog entries in an order. The following promotion types offer discounts on individual catalog entries:

If you use one of these promotion types, and a customer purchases many catalog entries (hundreds or more) that qualify for the promotion, the promotion engine processes adjustments on each item individually at checkout. As a result, site performance can be degraded during this processing. Site traffic and system capacity are other factors that affect site performance in this situation. When we are creating a promotion that is based on an individual catalog entry, consider specifying redemption limits to limit the quantity for catalog entries. By limiting the quantity for catalog entries, we can limit the performance impact when using promotion types that are based on individual catalog entries.

To avoid the potential performance impact of individual catalog entry promotion types, consider creating promotions that offer discounts on the subtotal of all qualifying catalog entries. The following promotion types offer discounts on the subtotal of all qualifying catalog entries:

Use these alternative promotion types means that any Redemption Limits or Maximum Discount Amount properties you set apply at the order level rather than to each individual catalog entry. However, this trade-off can be worthwhile to ensure that site performance is not impacted. See Comparison of "individual" and "subtotal" percentage off promotion types.

The administrator can configure order boundaries to prevent unbound exceptions. For information, see Configure Order boundaries to prevent unbound exceptions. We can limit the maximum quantity in a shopping cart; then, the site can use "individual" type promotions.


Related tasks
Creating a percentage off individual catalog entries promotion