A Complete Guide on WooCommerce Coupon Code Management

WooCommerce Coupon code Management

Last updated - May 24, 2022

WooCommerce offers basic features for setting up and managing coupons out of the box. However, if you are looking for a more extensive coupon strategy, you can always try out some of the extensions. This article tries to give a complete perspective on WooCommerce coupon code management. It also looks into the advantages that coupons offer to eCommerce store owners and you will also find some tips on efficient WooCommerce coupon code management.

Coupons are a tried and tested marketing strategy that worked for many businesses, right from Coca-Cola in the late 19th Century. It helps retailers to promote buying in their stores. Historically, it is a great way to sell off stock, so that new products can occupy the retail space. Customers prefer it too for the obvious reasons, and neuroeconomics studies point out that it improves happiness. eCommerce has considerably changed the way customers access coupons, as most platforms have great features to support it.

How to set up coupons on WooCommerce?

WooCommerce offers default options to help you create and manage coupons. Let’s take a look at how you can set up coupons on your store with the basic WooCommerce installation.

Enable coupons

First of all you need to enable the use of coupons in the General Settings  (WooCommerce > Settings > General)

You will see a checkbox to Enable the use of coupon codes. Enable this option to get started with WooCommerce coupons. Here, you can also enable an option to calculate coupon discounts sequentially. If this option is enabled, while applying more than one coupons at the same time, the discount will be calculated sequentially. That means the first coupon will be applied on the full price, the second one will be applied on the discounted price and so on.

WooCommerce coupon code management

Now, you will find an option on the admin panel to manage coupons (WooCommerce > Coupons). You can click this option and get started by creating your first coupon.

WooCommerce Coupon Code Management

Now, you will see the page that you can use to create the coupon. Here, you can enter the coupon code itself and specify associated aspects as well. Customers will enter this coupon code to avail the specified offer. The coupon code has to be unique as it is going to help in identifying a particular discount. You can also add a description for the coupon to help customers understand more about the coupon. However, this is optional.

WooCommerce Coupon Code Management

Coupon Data

Now, on this page, you will see a few options to set up terms for the coupons. These settings are under Coupon Data. There are three options here – General, Usage Restriction and Usage Limits.

Let’s take a look at each of these options.

General

Under the General section, you can choose the type of discount you want to apply. The options are fixed cart discount, percentage discount and fixed product discount. You can choose any of these options based on your store strategy. Once you choose the Discount type, you can specify the Coupon amount, and Coupon expiry date. You can also enable free shipping option here.

WooCommerce Coupon Code Management

Usage restriction

WooCommerce allows a set of usage restrictions, where you can control how customers will be able to avail the coupon codes.

You can set minimum and maximum purchase value limits to be able to avail the coupon code. You can also specify whether you want this particular coupon code to be used along with other coupons. Here, there is also an option to exclude sale items. If this is enabled, the coupon will not work with products on sale, or in case of cart coupons when sale items are in the cart.

In addition, you can specify products and categories to include and exclude while applying the coupon. Also, you will be able to specify customer emails for which the coupon can be applied. Using this option, you can provide coupons only to a specified set of customers.

WooCommerce coupon code management

Usage limits

There is also a section to set usage limits under Coupon data. You can set the usage limits based on the coupon or based on the user. Simply specify the number of times a coupon can be used before its validity expires.

WooCommerce Coupon Code Management

Once you have created a few coupons you can access them directly from the admin (WooCommerce > Coupons).

WooCommerce Coupon Code Management

Your customers who have the coupon will be able to apply them on the Cart or Checkout pages.

You can find a more detailed version of setting up WooCommerce coupon codes in this article.

WooCommerce Coupon Code Management with Plugins

Though WooCommerce decent features out of the box, you can optimize the whole strategy by getting some dedicated extensions.

Also check out our video on the best free and premium WooCommerce Coupon plugins:

Smart Coupons

This WooCommerce extension helps customers to buy credits and gift coupons. You can also issue coupons along with product purchases automatically. It also helps to generate a large number of coupons in one go. It also helps to make the whole coupon redeeming process easier for customers. Also, you can provide coupons embedded in links to customers. Moreover, you can customize the coupons to include your store branding on it.

WooCommerce Smart Coupons is a comprehensive solution to coupon management at your store.

The store credit system and the gift card option help to create long-term bonds with your customers. And the process of associating coupons with specific products make your tasks easier. Every time someone purchases that product, a coupon will be generated automatically. Moreover, you can apply these coupons to Cart and Checkout page with a single click. The extension also allows easy import of coupons as a CSV file.

You can purchase the single site subscription for $99. 5 site and 25 site license are available for $129 and $199 respectively.

Extended Coupon Features

This is a WordPress plugin that helps to extend the basic WooCommerce coupon functionality that you find out of the box. This simple, easy to use plugin provides features to apply discount rules automatically. If the specific conditions are met, the coupon will be added to the Cart automatically. There are also multiple ways to restrict coupons based on product combinations, customer roles, payment gateway or shipping method.

This free WordPress plugin helps to extend the basic coupon functionality of WooCommerce

With over 10,000 active installs and over 35 five star reviews, the plugin has a good reputation in the WordPress plugin repository. If you are looking for more features, you can always check the pro version of this plugin.

Extended Coupon Features Pro

The auto coupon functionality is what sets this plugin apart in the competition. However, with the pro version, you can create coupons that will add specified free products to the customer’s cart. This will be based on the conditions that you configure for the coupon. It also helps to allow a cart discount based on the number of products or order value. With the help of this plugin, you can also set auto coupon priorities.

With advanced features like the ability to add free products to customer’s cart, this plugin is a popular choice for WooCommerce coupon management.

Furthermore, it has features to apply a coupon via URL. If the specified conditions are met, users visiting the URL will get the coupon applied. If conditions not met, you can customize a message to inform the user why the coupon was not applied.

Smart Coupons for WooCommerce

Smart coupons for WooCommerce is a WooCommerce extension plugin that extends the features of the in-built WooCommerce coupons.

Coupons are a great way to improve sales and build and maintain a better customer relationship. The inbuilt WooCommerce coupon is powerful enough to create different kinds of coupons to the store. But there is a lot more that can be achieved by adding an extension.

Smart coupons for WooCommerce plugin adds a lot of features to the WooCommerce coupons and also makes the existing features more powerful. The plugin adds features like gift coupons, buying store credits and gifting it to loved ones, and getting free giveaway products when they make a purchase from the store.

The existing features are made more powerful by allowing the store owners to generate coupons in bulk and allowing them to email the coupons if required. Other than the existing restrictions that can be applied to a coupon, the plugin allows setting coupons based on the checkout option that the customer selects for the purchase.The plugin also provides different templates for coupons that are customizable.

The single site license of the plugin will cost you $69. But there is also a free version of the plugin that you can try out before going for the more advanced features in the premium version.

WooCommerce Coupon Campaigns

Any marketing strategy won’t be successful without proper tracking. Here is a plugin that will help you track your coupon strategy on your WooCommerce store. You will be able to track and measure all your diverse coupon campaigns using this WooCommerce extension. With this plugin installed, while creating a coupon, you can add it to a campaign. You can also create new campaigns while creating coupons, just like categories or tags. Now, the campaigns you create will get integrated with the reporting features of WooCommerce. You can view varied metrics that can be specified by default date range options, or by a customized time period.

WooCommerce Coupon Code Management plugins.
This plugin will help a lot in your WooCommerce coupon code management as you will be able to view the data on coupons on the Reports dashboard.

You will be able to understand how different campaigns using coupon codes perform on your store. Metrics like total orders and total revenue from a campaign in visual form will help you improve your marketing strategies. The single site subscription of the plugin would cost your $49.

Url Coupons

This is a plugin that accentuates the default coupon code feature of WooCommerce. It helps you create a url for your coupons. When your customers click on these urls, it will automatically apply the coupon code. The url will also be able to add products to cart, and hence can be a great option to enhance conversion rate on your store. Moreover, the extension provides you with an option to disable the coupon fields from your Cart page. This would help you prevent users leaving the site in search of coupons before they make a purchase.

WooCommerce Coupon code management plugins
This extension helps you assign urls to coupons, to automatically apply them when customers click the link.

Interestingly, you can set a url of your choice to trigger a coupon. For example, you can make the landing page of a marketing campaign, or a blog post as a coupon trigger. This way, customers who click these links will find the coupon automatically applied. The plugin also gives you the control to redirect customers to a page of your choice after they click the link. It even gives you an option to personalize the coupons for customers, which can be a great way to improve customer experience on your store.

The single site subscription of this extension will cost you $49.

Group Coupons

You can make your coupon strategy much more targeted with the help of this extension. It works together with the Groups plugin that helps to configure content restrictions and group memberships on your WordPress site. With the help of Group Coupons extension, you will be able to auto apply coupons for certain customer groups, or exclude a set of customers from availing them. It also allows you to restrict certain coupons that are applicable only to certain user groups. You can also restrict coupons based on WordPress user roles while using this plugin.

WooCommerce coupon code management plugins
This is another great options among WooCommerce Coupon code management plugins to help you try out innovative marketing strategies.

Furthermore, the plugin also helps you display available coupons to customers based on their membership level on your site. You will be able to manage several interesting marketing initiatives on your store with the help of this plugin. The single site subscription costs $49.

Coupon Creator Pro

This plugin helps a lot in creating, displaying and managing coupons on your WordPress site. The ‘Click to Reveal’ feature can be a user friendly way to display coupon codes on your site. Moreover, you will find a number of templates that will help you start with the coupons. It also helps associate your coupon codes with affiliate links. Furthermore, there are options to organize all your available coupons in one place. And, your user will be able to filter them out based on different parameters such as coupon expiry date. The single site license can be purchased at $34 per year.

WooCommerce Coupon Code management plugins
This is an interesting option among WooCommerce Coupon Code management plugins to help you handle discout coupon codes.

WooCommerce Coupon Referral Program

Referral rewards are a great marketing strategy for eCommerce and helps a lot in increasing customer interactions on your store. With the help of this WooCommerce extension, you will be able to create a comprehensive referral reward program. You will have the control to define how the reward system works. For example, you can set it up like the one who referred a friend and the one who was referred to will both get a discount. Or, give the reward only the customer who referred a friend, according to your strategy.

WooCommerce Coupon code management
This extension helps in WooCommerce coupon code management by helping you create a referral program.

You can create and provide the link to customers, which they can share on social media channels. This will improve your brand’s visibility as well. You can choose a percentage value or a fixed amount for the coupon discount and define for how many orders the customer will be able to avail the discount. You can combine it with WooCommerce Points and Rewards extension, and make the referral program even more interesting. The single site license of WooCommerce Coupon Referral Program plugin is priced at $29.

WooCommerce Coupon Restrictions

By default, WooCommerce offers a few options to restrict the usage of coupons. This extension provides a lot more options to help you restrict coupons on your store. With the help of this plugin, you can restrict the application of coupon based on new customers, existing customers and based on the location of the customer. For new customers, the extension will check if they have not made any purchases on your store before applying the coupon code.

WooCommerce coupon code management
You will be able to restrict coupons to new or existing customers or only to those users from specific locations.

For location specific coupons, you can choose a country, state or zip code to make a coupon applicable only to customers from those regions. Overall, this will help you a lot in targeted WooCommerce coupon code management. The single site subscription of the plugin has a price tag of $49.

WooCommerce Coupon Box

This plugin helps you create an exit-intent popup to collect the emails of your customers and send them discount coupons as a reward. Whenever a customer signs up, the plugin will generate and send a coupon with terms specified by you. You can set up the coupon terms just like you would for a WooCommerce default coupon. The plugin also allows you to define the popup triggers, and you can control the frequency of reappearances.

WooCommerce coupon code management
You will be able to display exit intent popups on your store, and reward customers who sign up with unique discount offers.

Furthermore, you can integrate this plugin with MailChimp or ActiveCampaign and insert coupon codes in your email campaigns. Overall, this plugin could offer great assistance to your WooCommerce coupon code management strategy.

Free Gift Coupons

With the help of this plugin, you will be able to provide free gifts to customers on the successful application of the coupon code. You can set up the coupon just like the other coupons, and associate it with a product. When the customer applies the coupon code, the free item will be automatically added to the cart. This can be a great marketing ploy to introduce customers to certain products, which they don’t know about, or not very keen to purchase. You can use this strategy to familiarize customers to new products, as well as to encourage them to increase the average order value.

WooCommerce coupon code management
This extension provides a different approach to WooCommerce coupon code management by helping you give a free product by applying coupons.

The single site subscription of Free Gift Coupons extension can be purchased at $29.

WooCommerce Coupon Countdown

Displaying the time of expiry of a coupon can create a sense of urgency in the minds of customers. This plugin will help you display coupon codes with their real time validity on your store. It also help you set up timelines so that coupons will expire based on the last time an order was placed by a customer. You can limit the application of coupons only to customers who purchased specific products on your store. Furthermore, the plugin helps you display pretty coupons using shortcodes.

WooCommerce coupon code management
You will be able to display realtime countdown timers for your coupon expiry using this plugin.

WP Coupons and Deals

If you have an affiliate marketing program on your WooCommerce store, you might want to offer special discount coupons to your affiliate partners. This plugin will help you create coupon codes and deals for affiliates. You can create coupons using pre-defined templates available with the plugin. Moreover, you can allow users to copy the coupon code in a single click. Also, you can hide it till the user clicks the affiliate link, according to your store strategies. The plugin also lets you customize the coupons to a visual style that you prefer. It also helps you display a countdown timer for the expiration of coupons. You can easily adapt this plugin to your various needs in WooCommerce coupon code management.

WooCommerce Coupon code management
This plugin will help you design nice looking affiliate coupons on your WordPress site.

For a single site license of this plugin, you have to spend $29.99.

Advantages for store owners

Coupons offer some apparent advantages to store owners in areas such as inventory management and conversions. Let’s look into some of them in more detail.

More sales

This is kind of obvious. If you are offering diverse deals through coupons, naturally your sales are gonna improve. And around the world, customers are increasingly using coupons in a strategic manner. Interestingly, coupons create a win-win scenario. Your customers will be happy with the fact that they could save a certain amount of money using coupons. At the same time, you will be able to increase sales in your store considerably. According to a study, small businesses can expect close to 20% of all their business through promotional deals and coupons. This is, in fact, a significant number and clearly, reflect the importance of coupons in expanding your business.

A vast majority of online shoppers prefer to make a purchase when there is a coupon available. Store owners can make use of this trend by offering coupons strategically to clear excess stock, promote sales of products that give better returns. Similarly, you can promote the sales of slow-moving products, if there are many. When you are launching a new product, coupons are one of the most effective tools that you can rely on. Because there is always that apprehension about a new product in the minds of customers. If you associate a coupon for the new product with the purchase of an established item, conversion chances will be better. Moreover, if you keep a higher order value to apply coupons, you will be able to increase total sales value as well.

Deal with cart abandonment better

The abandoned cart is one of the disturbing realities of eCommerce and anything that addresses it would have a major impact on conversions. Discount coupons play a major role in reducing cart abandonment. This is because, when provided with a discount coupon, customers are willing to go ahead with a ‘risky’ purchase. Also, the impact of unforeseen costs like hidden shipping charges is reduced when they have a discount coupon. Studies point out that almost 60% of first-buyers would be willing to complete the first-time purchase when they have a coupon.

Furthermore, it contributes to customer loyalty as well, when you think long term. A staggering 90% participants in a study, among customers who regularly redeem coupons, said they would buy again from a store that offered a deal. Once you are able to establish the quality and value of your store and products, you may not even need to rely on coupons and discounts.

Improve customer satisfaction

Psychologically, discount and free offers drastically improve customer satisfaction on your store. Your store visitors who have a coupon with them, interestingly, spend a more relaxed time on your store compared to those who don’t have. A 2012 study found physical evidence for this in terms of heartbeat, respiration and sweating rate. All these factors were pointing to a more relaxed or happier time when combined with the presence of a coupon.

Another great scope that lies here is offering a personalized offer. Customers are more likely to be delighted to get an exclusive offer. There are ample tools in WooCommerce and other eCommerce platforms to set up such specific coupons. You can easily configure these based on customer email or phone number.

Use it as the base of your marketing strategy

Coupons are a great way to promote sales and conversions on your store. Similarly, they can also help you get leads for further marketing efforts. For example, if you are offering a coupon for the first time buyers, there is a high chance of a good conversion rate. And now, if you get the email ids of all the first time buyers, you can use it for further targeted marketing campaigns. Since they are already your customers, there are better chances of conversion. Collecting email ids in exchange for a coupon would be relatively easier if you are focusing on lead generation exclusively.

Track your promotional efforts more effectively

Coupons provide a measurable effort that will help you analyze your marketing efforts better. The number of purchases that applied a particular coupon code will clearly help you understand its effectiveness. Your Google Analytics data can help you understand conversion patterns before and after the implementation of a coupon code.

Some disadvantages of coupons

Though coupons come with a set of apparent advantages, there are a few things you need to be careful about.

Can affect your brand image

Offering coupons indiscriminately might lead to a negative perception of your store. Your potential customers might think about the store as one that offers discounts on everything. This might create a dent in your customer base, as you will end up targeting only those who are hunting for discounts. You might lose the layer of customers who are looking for top quality products, irrespective of the price. A little bit of strategy can help you manage this scenario when you are still building the brand. Instead of offering discount coupons on your products, you can provide coupons for offers on associated services like shipping.

Might reduce the revenue

If not planned properly, the use of discount coupons may lead to a reduction in your revenue. This is because when you offer storewide discounts, it might not have the intended effect overall. This can be dealt with effectively by carefully analyzing which products can afford to be discounted, without affecting the profit margins. Another way to tackle the issue is by offering customer-specific discounts like rewarding loyal customers. This would not create any negative impact on your revenue, but at the same time helps in your store strategy.

Won’t work for all customers

Most of the time, you offer a discount coupon expecting better returns like repeat purchases. But there are a lot of customers, who are actively seeking coupons. If one of your coupon campaigns has the majority of such customers, it won’t have the desired impact. Instead, if you try personalized offers more, it might help you better in building great relationships with customers.

How to devise an effective WooCommerce Coupon Strategy?

WooCommerce offers good features to manage coupons out of the box. If you couple that with some good planning, you can ensure better results.

Give value to customers

Just randomly creating a coupon for a low selling product wouldn’t really work. You need to think in the perspective of the customer before creating a coupon. It should be offering something significant in terms of monetary benefit or functionality.

Create relevance

This is again in alignment with the whole personalization talk. The more you provide an offer that is relevant to customers, the more you ensure satisfaction. For example, a customer who purchased a mobile phone would really appreciate an offer on cell phone accessories. Once you manage to churn out coupons and offers in a well thought out manner, it will reflect on repeat purchases.

Coupons should be time bound

You need to create coupons that have a limited validity. This would help to create a certain urgency regarding the offers. If you are offering a birthday discount, it can be only for one day, a week or a month. The expiry date on the coupons can be determined and modified by watching the conversion rates keenly.

Keep coupon codes simple

Make sure that your customers are able to redeem your coupons without difficulties. Simplify the code so that customers can input them easily. Avoid using confusing letters and characters in the code.

Promote effectively

Generating and publishing coupons on your site won’t be enough. You need to promote them effectively for it to reach potential beneficiaries. Email campaigns, social media posting, etc can be effective ways. You can also include coupons in order completion mails to increase chances of repeat purchases.

Conclusion

Coupons are a great way to enhance sales and customer satisfaction on your store. With the increased popularity of eCommerce, using coupons became easier for store owners as well as for customers. Most popular eCommerce platforms offer easy coupon management. WooCommerce offers basic features out of the box. Like in the case of many other functionalities, you will find a range of WooCommerce coupon code management plugins. There is no single rule that applies to all store. Personalization plays a great rule in coupon management. Customer specific coupons hold great potential to inspire repeat purchases on your store. By following a few guidelines, you can easily devise an effective coupon strategy on your store. The trick is to devise one based on your products and customers. Let us know how you found this article.

Further reading

1 COMMENT

  1. Wow amazing blog post. Thanks for sharing such a nice information about writing wordpress and woocommerce.

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