We all love coupons, don’t we?
[dropcap]T[/dropcap]here is nothing better to find an item we like at a discounted rate or on offer. Makes one hop with joy and immediately tend to find more details. It is instinctive human psychology that we jump at right away. Many businesses employ coupon system on their eCommerce Website to lure customers and many wonder if they should offer the same for their business. Let’s explore more on this!
Coupons are definitely a great way to getting new customers to your business. It is merely another marketing technique that customers feel attracted towards, thereby increasing your visibility. On the other hand, from a business perspective, coupons can have an impact on your profit margins. But there are a few ways that you can tackle this without having to lose customers or margins.
Coupons can come in a variety of options. Some of these are:
Limited Time Discounts
The concept is simple. You give an offer and put a time limit on the discount. These can come in variety depending on your business such as hour, days, weekend or month based discount. The human psychology is not about the discount but rather the urgency of the deal that attracts customers. Employing a limited time discount is not difficult, you just need to alter prices and set an end time on them.
Holiday Coupons
Holidays are the biggest shopping season in the world. With a number of holidays, many business offer discounts to customers in advance. Pre- holidays, companies start email marketing with unique coupon codes so customers can start browsing.
These can really boon revenues and sales for your business. Many merchants offer free shipping as well so customers feel they get a good deal and finalise carts. Planning a holiday coupon campaign should be well in advance so time can be spent on marketing these offers.
Holiday Coupons have proved to be most effective in eCommerce Sales especially during the Christmas.
Deal of the Day Offer
This type of offer is most suited when merchants have low selling stock in great quantities. Merchants usually combine 2 or 3 products together and offer it as a bundle at a lower price than the combined total. Another option for deal of the day coupons would be offering only exclusive products so you can get maximum customer attention. This will help in getting you new customers as well as retaining existing ones.
Many businesses offer various associated products on different days so customers are forced to return and take advantage of complimenting products.
Nevertheless, online retailers have to understand the criticality of offering deal of the day coupons as it should be offered if current margins are high. Else, the business is heading down to a sure loss.
Now that we’ve seen different time setting of coupons, let’s see what variety of coupons you can offer.
Free Shipping Coupon
This is probably the most popular type of coupon that is dime a dozen these days. The basic concept behind offering this type of coupon to take the fear from customers to pay high shipping costs.
One of the best strategies to offer Free Shipping is to make it available on a minimum purchase amount. That way you ensure a minimum inbound value which you can even out with an average order value.
Percentage or Value off Coupon
This is another form of coupon that based on a percentage or value based on the total value of product. Many customers tend to avail these types of coupons and instead pay high shipping chargers merely because the % value excites them. Business should take care while offering %based coupons as for high valued product, this might significantly affect margins.
Free with Purchase Offers
Another customer favorite. All customers love to be pampered and merchant see this vulnerability to offer these tiny free accolades with purchases. These types of offers work well for branding too, where customers feel that they are being treated right, and sure to return again.
Obviously businesses have to plan what gift items to offer with purchases as the value of free items should not overgrow the total purchase value of the order. These rules should be defined and displayed on the page so customers are aware of the policies.
Coupons have always proved to work best in eCommerce Retail. It has consistently driven traffic and retailers have always seen an uptick in their sales and orders. I hope this post has given you a broad idea of various coupons you can offer on your eCommerce Website. If you are planning to start a coupon campaign, make sure to plan and strategies well. It may be difficult to plan at first, but eventually you will get the hang of it.