In this article we will explore 7 tips for using WooCommerce coupons to increase sales.
Using coupons is one of the best techniques to drive customers to your website and to get them over that final resistance to purchasing. WooCommerce offers a great coupon feature built-in. Below I will outline 7 tips for using coupons optimally on your WooCommerce site.
1. Set A Time Limit on Your Coupons
Always set a time limit on your coupons. This gives a greater sense of urgency to the customer’s purchase. If there is no time limit this increases the chance of the customer thinking “Oh, I can just come back and buy it later!” If the customer leaves your site without purchasing there is a good chance they will not come back.
How to set an Expiry Date for Coupons
WooCommerce Coupons make it easy to set an expiry date.
Visit your Coupons Tab under WooCommerce > Coupons and click Add New.
Then on the General Tab under Coupon Data simply choose your desired expiry date in the Coupon expiry date Field.
How to Set an Expiry Date on WooCommerce Coupons
2. Set Coupon Restrictions
You will most likely not want to apply your coupons to every single product on your entire site. In this case we will need to setup restrictions on the coupon. This is done under the Usage Restriction tab. The next section covers how to setup the individual restrictions.
Limit by Product
A successful eCommerce company I consult for has increased up-sells dramatically by offering a coupon code for accessories that are purchased along with bigger ticket items.
To limit the coupon to a certain product under the Usage Restriction tab click in the Products field and start typing the name of one of your (published) products. You can also type the product SKU and it will appear in the list. You can add more than one product by simply typing the name of another product in the field.
Limit Coupons to certain products
Limit by Category
To limit the coupon by category it’s the exact same method, just start typing the name of the Category or Categories in the Product Categories field. You can also exclude certain products or categories by typing the name in the Exclude Products or Exclude Categories fields. This works great if you want to offer a general coupon, say 10% off any purchase, but you want to exclude certain items where perhaps your product margins are slim.
Limit by Minimum Spend
Setting the coupon to apply to a minimum purchase as an excellent way to get a few more items added to the cart. A coupon which offers 10% off for purchases over $75 is another use-case which has had excellent results with my consulting clients.
This is simple to setup, simply add the amount that must be spent before the coupon will apply.
Set Minimum spend for coupon to apply
There is also a way to limit coupon usage based on Maximum spend, but honestly I can’t come up with a use-case for this scenario!
Other Coupon Restrictions
There are a few other handy ways to restrict coupon usage. The first is setting the coupon so it cannot be used in conjunction with any other Coupons. This is done by checking the Individual Use Only checkbox .
You can also limit the coupon to items that are not already on sale. This is done by checking the Exclude Sale Items checkbox.
Restrict coupons to Individual Use or Exclude items already on sale.
3. Setup Usage Limits
It may seem minor but setting up usage limits is actually very important. If you want to stop your coupons being shared on coupon sites or among individual users it’s important to set a limit on the coupon usage. There are two options available here – per coupon and per user.
If you want a customer to be able to make more than one purchase with the coupon set the Usage Limit Per User tab to your desired number. I generally tend to set this at 1. Depending on your product offering it may make sense to play with this number a bit.
As for usage limit per coupon, this is a bit harder to determine, as you want the coupon to work for legitimate purchases. I generally tend to leave this field blank. However, if you sell physical goods and only have a limited quantity you may want to limit the number of coupons redeemable.
Set usage restrictions on coupons
4. Distribute Coupons to Your Email List to Optimize Sales
The data continues to show that the majority of eCommerce sales are driven by email. It is very important that no matter what you sell, whether physical or virtual products that you begin to develop your email list. Email is an excellent way to use WooCommerce coupons to increase sales.
It is much easier to sell to a customer who has already purchased from you than to find a new customer. They have already proven to you that they value your product enough to open their wallet once, so by offering a coupon you are lowering the barrier to a repeat purchase.
5. Increase Sales by Sending Coupons to Abandoned Carts
Recovering abandoned carts can result in a substantial increase to sales. In 2019 the average cart abandonment rate was 77%! If we can recover even a portion of those carts it can result in a significant increase in sales.
There are a number of free abandoned cart plugins that I have used with limited success in the past. These emails don’t offer a coupon just a reminder of what was in the cart and copy asking them to come back.
I found a much higher rate of recovery when using automated coupons with the abandoned cart emails. Retainful has a fantastically full-featured system that integrates with WooCommerce. They offer unlimited cart recovery emails, follow-ups and next order coupons, even a live cart feed!
They also offer a wide range of professionally designed email templates for cart recovery. These look fantastic and can really impress your customers.
Retainful’s abandoned cart emails with Coupons increase sales
6. Use Coupons to Give Away Free Gifts
Rather than offering a percentage discount another method that I’ve found success with is using coupons to offer a free gift at checkout. This can work well whether you sell virtual or physical products by familiarizing customers with your wider product offering.
Free Gifts can Lead to an Increase in Sales!
Everybody loves free gifts! The word free is a powerful motivator for shoppers. Ff you can give a customer something that adds value to their life it will go a long way toward building loyalty to your brand.
The WooCommerce Free Gift Coupons extension is the easiest way to set up this type of coupon. The plugin adds a new item to your coupon Discount Type drop down menu. Once that is set, simply select the product or products you’d like to add as a free gift in the Free Gifts field below.
Free Gift Discount Type is Added
Upon applying the coupon the free gift shows automatically in the cart.
Everyone loves free gifts!
7. Send Birthday Coupons!
This is one of my favourite ideas for using WooCommerce coupons to increase sales and build customer loyalty.
People love to be remembered, and if you show your customers that they are important to you by remembering their birthday it can pay big dividends! YITH has a fantastic plugin, WooCommerce Coupon Email System that can send personalized coupons to customers based on their birthday. It can also send coupons based on other factors are well such as date since last purchase, and more.
Send customers a special coupon on their birthday!
The Bottom Line
Coupons are a fantastic and proven way to increase sales on your eCommerce website and this article has just scratched the surface. But don’t take my word for it, try out a few of these tips for using WooCommerce coupons to increase sales and see how they work!
Please take a look at some of my other WooCommerce and site optimization tips to help get your site running as efficiently and profitably as possible.
If you have any questions on any of the above plugins or techniques please let me know in the comments below. I’d be very happy to help you out!