Comments on: Convert First Time Visitors With Coupons

By: Buy PSP Go

Buy PSP Go — Mon, 06 Jul 2009 12:47:25 +0000

I reckon a small, non-intrusive ‘pop-up’ (like those chat boxes certain sites use) to give new users a discount voucher would work well.

By: Leore

Leore — Mon, 13 Apr 2009 21:44:56 +0000

Plimus offers this service as an added bonus to its Ecommerce platform. Our expereince has shown that when customers are presented with these features, there is more of an incentive to proceed with the sale. There are also several alternatives to coupons. You can visit this page to find out more about those options: http://home.plimus.com/ecommerce/about-us.

By: Linda Bustos

Linda Bustos — Sat, 11 Apr 2009 21:46:50 +0000

@Justin and @Neil, thanks for sharing your experiences. Goes to show that there’s no “best practice” – it’s a matter of testing to see whether something works for your site and your customers.

@Craig, you bring up an interesting point that returning visitors are also a segment you can target with triggered promotions.

@Susan, I’m not involved in marketing for Elastic Path software customers but I do know of at least one that uses the promo code lookup approach – only showing a promo box when referred from an affiliate offer or email with promo code. Another of our customers has a promo code banner on the site and would actually like people to use that in the checkout.

The problem is some customers don’t notice the promo in the banner (must test some new approaches to banners etc) and don’t use it. Some end up calling customer service when they find out they could have had free shipping over $100. So this customer is going to start auto-applying the coupon based on the cart total.

Judging from my travels around the web looking at a ton of e-stores, I most often find a coupon code box there though I have no coupon code. So my assumption is most retailers don’t do the p-code lookup.

How I would always do it is to only show the promo box when the referral indicates the customer has a code. I know there are caveats with this approach but I don’t want customers Googling “site + coupon code” and making me discount AND pay an affiliate, as I have blogged about before

By: Susan Petracco

Susan Petracco — Fri, 10 Apr 2009 14:04:47 +0000

This whole coupon thing throws me when I’m considering my own retail site (a toy store). Your post about “how much do your coupons cost you” hit home…I’ve been dealing with a coupon site who became an affiliate without my realizing what the implication of that was. I finally discontinued all of their coupons, so that now they just have an affiliate relationship.

I think I’m going to have to take time to develop a coupon add-on that will handle coupons on a special page instead of presenting it during checkout.

Linda what is your experience with the sites you work on for clients? Do most of them offer coupons? Do most of them NOT put the coupon box into the checkout stream?

By: Craig Kistler

Craig Kistler — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 14:42:25 +0000

Love this: Incentives are No Substitute for A Clear Value Proposition

I wonder though, if a visitor who didn’t originally purchase but has since returned to the site would convert more often with a coupon offer than a first-timer?

By: Neil Jones

Neil Jones — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 11:52:37 +0000

Been doing this for a while now – we offer £5 off if you sign up for the newsletter. The popup only appears once, after the user has been viewing a product for 10 seconds. It works an absolute treat, far better than I would’ve thought. I got the idea from ProBlogger, who said they used it and their subscriber numbers went through the roof.

By: Justin Palmer

Justin Palmer — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 03:56:45 +0000

“Incentives are No Substitute for A Clear Value Proposition”

That statement is dead on. We a/b tested a similar scenario at C28, and found little benefit from the coupons for first time visitors. My guess was that we were jumping to the conclusion that customers would buy with a discount, when we should have been better defining the UVP of the site first.