In this tutorial we are going to see how to create a discount coupon in WooCommerce and ideas to sell more with them.
Discount codes in online stores
Coupons are a powerful marketing tool that we can use to our advantage to sell more in our online store. In fact, with an adequate coupon strategy, we could, among other things, increase our sales by increasing the average purchase ticket or boost sales of a specific product or category.
In it we talk about all this in greater depth, so if you are interested in the subject and want to take advantage of it both technically and at a marketing level, we recommend that you take a look at it.
In this tutorial we will see how to create a discount coupon in WooCommerce, as well as some useful ideas that will help you sell more in your eCommerce. Let’s start!
Create a discount coupon in WooCommerce
The first thing we will do is check if we have the coupons activated, by default they should be. We can see it in a few seconds by adding any product to the basket, and visiting our shopping cart. If they are activated, the field to enter the discount coupon code should appear.
In case this field does not appear, we can activate the coupons from the WordPress dashboard, “WooCommerce/Settings/General” by checking “Activate the use of coupon codes” within the “Activate Coupons” section, after which we will save the changes. If you use a previous version of WooCommerce you will find the section in “WooCommerce/Settings/Checkout/Coupons”. In this case, remember that it is important to keep our WordPress, themes and plugins updated.
From this same section we could select the option “Calculate coupon discounts sequentially”. This would allow us to apply multiple discounts sequentially. That is, the first coupon would be applied to the full price, the next coupon to the amount already reduced, and so on. This is a technique that can be somewhat complex when it comes to putting it into practice in stores with different sales margins per product, so we are not going to mark it in this case.
Once we have verified that our coupons are enabled, or when we activate them, we can create our first discount code. To do this we have to go to “WooCommerce/Coupons”, which is a new option that will appear in the WordPress menu when configuring the use of coupons and reloading the page.
Then click on “Create your first coupon” or “Add coupon”, depending on whether we have used this option before or not. Immediately afterwards, different fields will be displayed that we have to fill in to add the discount.
From the “General” tab we can choose the “Discount type”, whose values can be “Percentage discount”, “Fixed cart discount” or “Fixed product discount”. As its name indicates, the first one will reduce the amount by a specific percentage, and the following ones will do so by a fixed amount, either for the cart or for the product.
In this case we are going to create a basic discount coupon. As we can see, in “Coupon amount” you would have to enter the value that it will have. If it is a percentage, simply the amount without the percent sign.
In the example the discount would be 20%, so we would have to write only “20”. We could also select the option “Allow free shipping” if we wanted to offer free shipping for our products. In this case, it would be necessary to make some extra settings in our store.
Finally, we can enter the expiration date of our coupon so that it is automatically disabled when said date arrives. Once we have everything ready, we only have to click on “Publish”. If we enter “WooCommerce/Coupons” we will see that a list appears with the coupons that we have created so far.
Apply coupons in WooCommerce
Well, once we have created our coupon, it is time to test that it works correctly. To do this we go to our store and add any product to the basket. If when adding the product the web does not automatically redirect us to the cart page, an option that we can configure in WooCommerce, we will click on “View cart” to be able to use our coupon and finalize the purchase.
As we can see, here we have the box to enter our discount code. We simply have to put the name of the coupon we want to use there, in this case “discount20”, and click on “Apply coupon”.
Our cart will be updated immediately and the coupon will be applied, discounting 20% of the total amount, as we had configured when creating our discount coupon.
And we already have our first coupon up and running! But this is not all, this coupon is one of the most basic cases that we can find. It is possible to make more complex configurations from “WooCommerce/Coupons” using the options that we will find in the “General”, “Use restriction” and “Use limits” tabs.
We could, for example, establish a minimum spend in order to apply the coupon, exclude some items so that the coupon does not apply to those products, or even exclude a discount in an entire category.
We may also limit your use to a number of items, or set a limit per customer. As we can see, although the theme of coupons is quite simple, we can consider many possibilities since WooCommerce offers us a wide variety of fields that can be combined to create very interesting discount coupons.
And not only that, but in it we will also learn how to create advanced coupons that can be very useful in our marketing strategy. Among the options available is to create gift card-type coupons that could be purchased on the page at a price lower than the balance they contain to later be used to purchase products on our website.
We may also automatically gift coupons to our customers after they make a purchase. With this we would replicate the strategy that many supermarkets follow by giving us a discount coupon with a near expiration date so that we can buy again soon, and/or to take certain specific products with us.
Summary and conclusion
Discount coupons can be very interesting in our marketing strategy. With WooCommerce we have a wide range of options when creating them.
To add a simple one we simply have to activate the option to use discount coupons and reload the page. This will enable a new section in the “WooCommerce/Coupons” menu, from which we can create an infinite number of discounts with a wide variety of configurations.
If you want to know more about creating coupons and strategies to sell more with them, we recommend you access the one where you will learn from the most basic to the most advanced options. In addition, this will give you access to more about WooCommerce, WordPress or online marketing in general. If you are interested, we are waiting for you inside! 🙂
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