Originally Posted by: Aaron 
One of the other reasons that I believe more merchants prefer Offers to Sales is that with Sales you do not know that a product is on sale. Yes, the price is reduced on the category and product pages, but there is no indication that there is a markdown. Offers, on the other hand, are clearly delineated on the cart page.
Yup, that's why a sale icon might be a nice addition. A long time back we had a customization to show a sale icon. Comparing our existing site with a new stock 2013 site is when I realized it was a customization (after posting this.) We also added the ability to add On Sale products to criteria of a dynamic category.
You said it perfect to understand: Sales show on the product or category page without an indication of a discount while offers show the discount in the cart. It really depends on how your sale or offer is presented to decide which one works best.
With our existing site:
We use sales when it's not important to show how much the discount is, only the sales icon. We also do this to flag certain products to only show the sale icon and be in an dynamic category with the on sale criteria checked.
We use offers when it is important to show how much is being discounted, but the customer still doesn't know on the category or product page unless you use text in the description or use one of the content columns.
90% of the time we combine them both when we want to show the sales icon to notify the customer, but want to show the discount at checkout. Scheduling both also help greatly.
I think, but I could be wrong, it was easier to show the icon with a sale rather than with an offer. That's why it was customized this way. It was a long, long time ago ;)
Edited by user Friday, January 3, 2014 3:00:12 PM(UTC)
| Reason: Not specified