Comments on: How Much is Your Coupon Code Box Costing You?

By: D-Dub

D-Dub — Wed, 26 Aug 2009 18:10:14 +0000

Hi Carrie,

From a high level, to implement fix #2 on EP5.1.1, one idea would be to write a new controller to handle the coupon code embedded in the URL. This controller would strip out the coupon code, apply it to the shopping cart, then forward the user to their next destination (checkout, product page or somewhere else). The coupon code would remain applied to the cart for the remainder of the customer’s session.

This is from a very high level. For more technical details, it might be better to post in the Grep developer forums (grep.elasticpath.com).

Cheers,
Dave

By: Carrie

Carrie — Thu, 20 Aug 2009 15:21:55 +0000

We are currently on EP 5.1.1 – we want to step up a referring site to automatically take a discount, without the customer seeing the promotion code. Fix #2 in the article, seemed like a good solution, but I am not sure where to begin to implement this fix. Any help or thoughts would be appreciated.

Thanks,
Carrie Pennington

By: Mobile Commerce Usability: Forms and Checkout | Get Elastic

Mobile Commerce Usability: Forms and Checkout | Get Elastic — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 11:26:16 +0000

[...] personalization/tagging to identify customers with a promo code, and hide the coupon code field from [...]

By: FlipScript

FlipScript — Tue, 12 May 2009 16:26:49 +0000

I completely agree.

We saw our overall revenue AND our conversion rates INCREASE when we removed the “coupon code” from our site, and simply decreased the prices on our FlipScript products by the same amount.

Internet shoppers are very smart, and we always underestimate their intelligence. If they can get a coupon code…they will. If they can get a better deal elsewhere…they will. And if we play games with them regarding the pricing, they know it.

So, we stopped with the coupon game altogether, dropped the prices a bit, and took away the coupon code box.

We still may do a sale once or twice a year to clear out some leftover ambigram items, but that’s always through a special URL (and usually only sent to our existing customer list).

By: Alex

Alex — Wed, 29 Apr 2009 13:39:56 +0000

I worked with a client that did not offer a lot of coupons, but a competitor did. We saw that users would leave the site to search for coupons and they take advantage of the competitors lower pricing and coupons. We simply changed the coupon box a text link and when A/B tested against the baseline saw a significant increase in conversion. Generally speaking, all a blatant coupon box does is tell users that someone is getting a better deal than they are.

By: online coupon Code

online coupon Code — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 13:23:59 +0000

Shoppers across the world have been excited about free coupons, which are given by the companies dealing in online business. E-coupon is a sure shot way to increase online sales. E-coupons are easy to implement, you just need a shopping cart program, which will enable your consumer to enter the coupon code.Coupons are an efficient tool which can help to reach the target market segment and help sell more products.

By: sonyelip

sonyelip — Tue, 14 Apr 2009 18:33:50 +0000

There are a variety of promotional codes used. Free shipping promotional codes are very popular and can save 5-10% off the final purchase price. The savings can exceed the cost of gas and time needed to drive to a store and purchase the product in person.

By: Elliptical

Elliptical — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 22:42:33 +0000

Alex, Good idea. But if some already has a gift certificate (say given by a friend for birth day) how do you apply the two codes. May be need to put a text link “add another gift certificate” etc. your second suggestion is also good.

By: Alex Rampell

Alex Rampell — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 21:18:32 +0000

Better yet — don’t call it coupon code. Call it gift certificate. Nobody assumes that they can get a free gift certificate, but this way you can still issue coupons to select users. Or call it “Where did you hear about us?” and have a specific code trigger a discount.

I did a piece about this here:
http://blog.trialpay.com/2008/07/dude-wheres-my-coupon.html

By: Ted S

Ted S — Wed, 25 Mar 2009 04:13:05 +0000

Fascinating post. I know I’ve been guilty of doing this myself (it’s worked) and I’ve had some discussions about it too. I’d love to see an etailer do a split test and measure the conversion impact and margin impact and blend the two…

Some hypothesis thoughts… (1) more people who get coupons will convert; (2) the cost of the coupons overall may erode those margins, (3) people without codes may bail entirely.

For multi-channelers with coupons in offline materials it’s definitely more difficult. Using unique codes can be one strategy but that’s a support problem and not always feasible. Seems like testing different implementations would make sense but ultimately if you want people using the codes as a campaign driver you have to make it easy to do and that means easy for everyone to find. Not having affiliates incentivized to push people to you who you already cookied will help reduce the number of sites listing those codes though.