Vouchers and coupons are some of the most used tools to promote online shops. However there are some basic guidelines to consider if you don’t want their usage to backfire. Here are three tips you should keep in mind for your voucher/coupon offer.
A) Do not offer a prominent voucher field in your payment process
When shoppers arrive at the payment page they will often get distracted by a prominent voucher field asking “Do you have a voucher code?” as illustrated in the image below:
A lot of the customers will start wondering at that point: WHY did I not get voucher code?. As a consequence, they will start to google for a voucher of your shop.
This will lead to three possible scenarios:
- In the worst case scenario, the user won’t find a voucher for your shop but for a competitor. As a result he will cancel the ordering at your shop and walk off to the competitor.
- The customer finds a voucher for your shop and you will then have to grant a price reduction and pay an affiliate bonus for a customer that would have bought at your shop anyway.
- The customer can’t find a voucher for your shop or for a competitor’s shop. He might continue his purchase in your shop (though heavily distracted), but with a slight dissatisfaction that he didn’t feel before he spotted the voucher field. When this customer considers buying in your shop in the future, this tiny negative connotation can very well prevent him from doing so
All those three scenarios have a highly bad impact for your shop. Therefore, a too prominent position for a voucher field should be avoided in the payment process.
Instead of doing so, place your voucher field in a less prominent area – but keep in mind: It still has to be easy to find for customers who want to reedem their vouchers, otherwise they will be annoyed. Consider designing it the following way:
Customers with a voucher at hand will actively look for a voucher field. If they can’t spot it initially, they will search for it in the “Additional options” area.
B) Be aware of the implications of promoting your coupon on coupon sites
You want to offer a voucher but are not sure how to distribute it? Many online retailers think it best to promote the voucher as widespread as possible in order to gain as much new customers as possible. Coupon sites offer an easy way to distribute vouchers this way.
However, coupon sites are visited mostly by bargain-hunters. Be aware that those users are rarely recurring visitors/shoppers. They always search for the best deals indifferent where they get it. Their customer lifetime value is significantly smaller than one of an ordinary user. You should keep that in mind if you calculate the prizing of your coupons .
C) Do not offer coupons with a low value online
You operate a small online shop and consider to offer a voucher for it? Do it well or do not do it at all!
Why? A coupon with a small value, e.g. 5€/£/$, will hardly have any positive effect on your shop.
There are hundreds or thousands of other low value vouchers out there on the internet, lots of them for large, well known shops. If one of those bigger shops has a similar assortment to yours, then the users will tend to buy there. And if you own a niche shop and with no competitor who has a similar assortment to yours, well, then why offer a voucher at all? That money is better invested in target-oriented advertisments e.g. in Google.
AdWords or banner ads in topic forums.
However, the possible positive impact of vouchers is beyond controversy. In order to make your voucher offer work, choose a higher value – at least 15€/£/$. In this way your voucher will likely stand out in the crowd and attract new customers. If you worry about refinancing the voucher, combine your offer with a minimum order value.
Author: Bernhard Rubenbauer (Product Manager deal united)
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