Coupons for Ecommerce Sites

| 10/07/2008

How often have you gotten to the end of an ecommerce transaction, seen the box for entering a coupon code, and realized you don’t have one? If you’ve cancelled the sale, or worse - been the vendor who has had the sale cancelled, then you know how important coupon codes are becoming as incentives to close the sale.

A growing range of websites have emerged that are nothing more than index sites where cust0mers can swap and find codes for discounts, free shipping, and other savings for their online purchases. Wildly popular, these sites have sparked a debate on whether they represent a good or bad thing for the industry.

One the one hand, they do have an effect on both the profit margin and the affiliate commission. When a customer shares their 10% run-of-site loyalty code on one of these sites, that code can go viral in a matter of moments. The numbers can add up very quickly.

One the other hand, these sites drive new customers to online vendors at a reasonable cost. And because ecommerce transactions acquire much more information about a customer than, say, a cash purchase made at a storefront – each new sale brings future marketing opportunities.

While the debate continues, a smart way to enjoy the benefits of these sites as a vendor without too much of the bite is to carefully focus future coupon code offerings. Instead of blanket run-of-site percentages, try reduced shipping vouchers and BOGO (Buy One Get One) type of offerings in specific merchandise areas. And be sure to time limit all codes, so that they don’t become permanent fixtures on these sites.

tags: Web 2.0 , Online Marketing

Interested in learning more?

Wiliam is a leading supplier of web solutions and can provide expert advice to assist your business or organisation online.

Comments

Online Couponing

Online coupons have become more and more important for online retailers over the last five years. But still a lot of merchants have not yet discovered the power of this awesome marketing tool. I quite often get asked, what might work better, fix discounts vs. percentage discounts. From our experience, fix rebats seem to work best for most retailers, rather than percentages. This is a little bit strange, though, because sometimes one can save more with percents compared to, say, a fix $10 discount voucher. I assume, most customers process that fix amount quicker in mind than they would calculate 15% off the actual sales price. I consider most important for any promotional campaign is, to set a time limit - as has been said above. Stopp your campaign after the runtime, pause it for a little while. Then set up a different kind of promotion later. This gives you split test opportunities and prevents your customer from getting used to your promotion. Greets Ron.

Ronald
http://www.coupondeals.com.au/

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Coupons for Ecommerce Sites