Exactly. This is why more companies should follow Gumroad's lead: they let you send out a link with the code, but don't display the coupon field in your checkout form.
I think this is the best way to handle coupons. That way you aren't enticing people to leave the check out process once they've committed to buying. You also reward loyal customers with special links. I mean all you have to do is make the coupon field hidden and pass a get var.
Did no-one learn anything from JCPenney debacle? People LOVE coupons. I've never seen a coupon code field, where I didn't find a coupon and felt like I was getting hoodwinked as this author seems to suggest.
Coupon codes are useful for promos and such. Not every customer pays the same amount, thats how the world works.
I second this. There have been plenty of studies that show consumers love the idea of savings, even if they're just an illusion. People would rather pay $20 for a $25 item knowing they saved $5 rather than just paying $20 with no savings.
I think this is how Kohls works. Anytime we buy something there the receipt says like "total $30. You saved $83.26!". I know I really didn't save anything because I wouldn't pay $100+ for the things I purchased anyway and they wouldn't sell them for that much, but there is some effect to seeing things like that.
I love that. In start up land people always seem to ignore things that have been done successfully for years thinking that certainly there is something wrong and legacy business must be making huge mistakes and throwing out their money on things just because "it's the way it's always been done".
The problem of course is understanding which one of those things are wrong and which actually work (to which you really don't need studies) to prove.
I think you are missing the perspective of the article. Coupons (and their online codes) are a great tool for the recipients.
The article is from the perspective of a customer without a coupon. In that case, the presence of the coupon code field actually makes you less likely to buy or convert. This article isn;t blaming the methodology. It is saying the status-quo presentation is poor and needs improvement.
They can go online and search for coupons. It never takes me more than two or three minutes to find a coupon through Retailmenot and another aggregator. If no coupon exist or if they're all expired, then I'll pay full price. There is no downside for me. I don't understand why this equivalent to a "slap in the face." Frankly, this vastly improves my shopping experience through occasionally saving me money, while never exposing me to any risk or increasing the prices that I pay.
oh i got the perspective. I just think the guy is being overly dramatic. So much of this stuff is overly subjective anyway. If he came in already with intent to purchase sees possible savings but can't find them, he is unlikely to leave because his mind was already expecting to pay X.
On one of our products http://pressbackup.com we have a coupon code, if customers can't find one, and they email me, I will generate one just for them. Those customers stick around for a LONG time.
I've had this a lot actually, to the point of absolutely ridiculous coupons that gave me 40%, even 75% off at one point. It's a pain in the ass to have to Google around for a code that lets me pay the same as everybody else.
This illustrates a case where coupon codes are working as they are supposed to - if it's too much of a pain in the ass for you to Google, the retailer will be happy for you to pay the higher price.
This is not always the case, a coupon is not always to get a fraction discount but can be a way to redeem a voucher. Since it's a similar worklfow, websites display it a similar way, leading to this misinterpretation.
Correct. I'm guessing English is not your first language and thus the previous downvote(s). We use "voucher codes" this way - we don't have to educate the customer at all; they get it, which leads to a happier customer experience and less customer service headaches.
Everybody here knows about retailmenot.com, right? For the majority of places, you'll find a good repository of coupon codes without having to sift through Google results.
Well, to give specific examples of coupons I found there, I usually get 20% off when I order Papa Johns, and I got 2 months free web hosting from Digital Ocean. For Amazon, you're right; they don't usually have anything good for Amazon. For smaller places, my experience has been that they have nice coupon codes if they exist.
I think it's bad customer service to force someone to Google for a coupon code; you're also running a risk (as a site owner) that the person will simply abandon their cart.
Really? You must not do much online shopping. There is tons of times there isn't any coupon code that applies to what I'm buying and then I just feel kinda cheated. Just a little. Then there's tons of times there is no coupons at all for the site, maybe just like $10 off your $100 purchase of <very specific product> and that's it.
Well, to give specific examples of coupons I found there, I usually get 20% off when I order Papa Johns, and I got 2 months free web hosting from Digital Ocean. For Amazon, you're right; they don't usually have anything good for Amazon. For smaller places, my experience has been that they have nice coupon codes if they exist.
It causes noticeable dropoff in stores. I don't remember the numbers, but we did an A/B test and noticed a difference. We switched to referrer URLs for discounts instead. I wanted to try an experiment of putting a bunch of low value discount codes out there that would have been easy to find, and see how that affects dropoff, but we never did that.
If you put forth a little bit of effort you can find any code on the Internet - it sets you apart from the shoppers who don't care and won't take the time to look for one (which is the majority of America) hence why retailers still consistently leak codes out there.
Has anybody actually done any A/B testing on this sort of thing, or are we just making competing assertions about how slapped in the face we personally feel or not?
Not A/B testing per-se, but for a client of mine we tried it out and had lots of phone calls asking how to get a discount code. It just caused confusions and more customer service work.
I can't remember the details, but I did read an article a while ago in which Microsoft or Amazon or something increased their conversion rate significantly by hiding the coupon field.
Providing a code and its attendant price reduction clearly had positive effects on perceptions of fairness and satisfaction when compared to the control group.
...prompting for a code in the absence of having one had negative effects on fairness, satisfaction, and completion when compared to the control. As would be expected from these findings, the three groups were ranked in the predicted order (code > control > no code) for all dependent variables, including intention to repatronize and recommend the online store.
Equity theory, then, becomes an alternative explanation for reactions to code provision and non-provision... the Web buyer without a code experiences the additional impact of the inequity perceived if others are imagined to have a code, are selectively provided one, or are simply viewed as "special" in some sense.
Cool - thanks for sharing. I'm interested in A/B testing done by "folks like us", not a college professor who "guided users through a hypothetical web store experience" like the paper talks about. Interesting though - I'm not trying to be snarky or rude BTW - I like it, just not a "definitive source" for this type of work IMO.
Fair enough. Ideally, we could look at multiple A/B tests to avoid the bias a single site's user base might have or other idiosyncratic effects of their UX.
So, just a little hint: instead of writing "I'm not trying to be snarky or rude BTW" you could have just made your second sentence less snarky instead :-)
This could be an argument for doing what the Gap Brand sites do and sticking a banner with a coupon code in it at the top of every single page. Then everyone feels special.
Interesting. There is a site I shop at a few times a year. They always post the discount codes on the homepage so anyone can use them. It's things like save $X when you spend at least $Y. I wondered why not just automatically discount the sale. Maybe it's something to do with the positive effects of feeling like you got a deal.
Getting the person to do something in order to get the discount would be an action that has a positive effect and is not passive (and perhaps not even realized). Off the top I can't think of what the concept is called but I've seen other examples of this. (Like when you have to check off checkboxes on a paper form etc.)
Another thing is there are going to be people that aren't going to put the code in and you would make extra money off of them when they forget to use it. I don't know the percentage of that but it's certainly greater than 0, right?
It's quite the opposite if you ask me. After you spent 15 minutes looking online for that coupon AND you find one that gives you that little 10%...
Well, it makes you happy and probably makes it so that you really will proceed with the purchase. "Hey, I spent a looonnng 5 minutes searching AND I got a 10% discount. Why wouldn't I proceed with the purchase?"
If I don't find it I get upset. I've actually not purchased because there was a coupon field and I couldn't find an active coupon. I'll just wait until they have an active coupon or buy it somewhere else.
Outside of ad campaigns, there's another case where coupon codes are useful. If you have a moderately expensive product and an actual sales team, you can use the coupon field to let the sales team make one-off special deals for individual customers. That's useful for unusually large orders (buy 10 get 1 free) or simply if you need to apologize for some sort of error (we're sorry our site was down, here's $50 off your next order).
Coupon codes are an easily programmable solution to a wide variety of business problems. They're particularly useful for problems that are difficult to predict in advance.
True. You can get the same thing with referrer URLs that apply a coupon code behind the scenes, e.g. example.com/store/fifty_off. The logic is the same, you're just hiding the troublesome coupon code field.
Actually, that is more difficult - trying to explain an alternative workflow to a customer over the phone is not nearly as easy as it sounds. "Enter this coupon code in the field you see on your screen," is much easier than "Ok, type in this new URL exactly, now, once you've done that, add this to your shopping cart, now go to checkout..."
I've had to watch a lot of this sort of thing happen, and customers "understand" coupon codes natively at this point - they require practically no instruction. Getting the customer through the transaction as quickly as possible is one of the prime desires for any e-commerce site that also takes phone orders, and coupon codes have been, in my experience, most effective for that.
Now, if you want to start a trend of re-training customers to expect specialized URLs they use before entering checkout -- then I'll be more than happy to switch over to that once customers expect it.
However, I feel there's a sort of paradox here: Providing discounts to new customers helps create new transactions. The more steps required to complete the transaction, the more like the customer is to abandon the transaction. If a coupon code causes customers without one to be more likely to abandon then it makes sense to require a separate step from the normal checkout workflow to use it, thereby increasing the rate of abandoned transactions.
First of all, giving everyone a referral URL works great in a web only world but what if you're advertising on a Podcast (or gasp print or radio), is it easier to tell people to type in www.mysite.com/coupon to their browser or is it easier to tell people to enter COUPON at checkout?
Secondly, the amount of people who are going to have this adverse reaction to the mere existence of the coupon code field is vanishingly small. Most customers who don't have a code will just ignore it and move on (and actually many who have been told about a code will not even use it) only a small minority will bother searching for a code to enter when they don't have one.
Whatever web site had a coupon code field that made you this angry probably had at least 20 much worse UI violations they should prioritize above trying to eliminate the coupon field.
I disagree. Coupon code forms make some customers second guess themselves at checkout. The fewer steps required to purchase something result in higher completed orders. See Amazon one-click
I disagree with the main part of your sentiment. I think they're already there after they've filled in billing/shipping info, so seeing the blank coupon code field is actually not a deterrent at that point. It's just as easy to skip that field and press the button for Checkout as it is when that field isn't there. The coupon field just adds the possibility of getting a better deal with some Google searches.
So you have a customer that's just about to buy your product, and you're sending them away from your site? I mean, as a consumer I like discounts, but as a programmer I really want my customers to just click checkout at that point.
Speaking personally, I don't think the existence of a coupon field ever makes me abandon a purchase entirely. However, it does affect how I feel about checking out: if I find a coupon code and save some amount of money, I feel good about it; if I can't find one that works, I feel like I'm "missing out" and paying more than I have to.
I don't really have a comment one way or another about what you said here, however... comparing UI violations to something that reminds someone that they're not 'one of the cool kids' that knows the 'secret code to saving money' is a bit apples to oranges, I think.
One might offend your eyes, the other (can be) more personal.
I could kind of imagine it in a world where the concept of coupons was invented on the web and e-commerce "coupon code" fields were the only place people encountered it.
But of course that's not the world we live in. Our mailboxes get stuffed full of coupons. We get them on our receipts. We get them in our e-mail. We get them in newspapers and magazines and even attached to the very products we're buying.
We're all used to the concept. Roughly nobody is getting upset at the idea that there might be some coupon out there that they don't happen to have at the moment.
Have you ever gone to the grocer and been stopped by the checker just before you hand them or swipe your credit card to ask if you're sure you don't have any coupons for any of the items in your cart?
If you have the checker might have grabbed a copy of the Sunday insert they had sitting there and scanned the $1 off coupon for that one item you happened to pick up but didn't know was actually on sale, or 95% of the time the checker doesn't even bother you about such things. By offering a coupon code box on your checkout page, you're effectively saying "Hey, we might have put a coupon in last Sunday's newspaper, but obviously you aren't special enough to have received it and we aren't going to be nice by offering it to everyone to gain customer loyalty."
If you want to do an affiliate-type discount for a single item, do it through URL parameters stored into a cookie and consumed at checkout. If you want to do a Sunday-coupon-type discount for anyone willing to go find a coupon, offer it to everyone: "Do you have any coupons? Our latest promotions can be found at ..."
Edit: and if doing a Sunday-type coupon, have the box be conditionally shown. If your current promotion is for 10% off the purchase of a Foo widget, don't show it when the customer only has Bar sprockets in their cart. You're just losing conversion at that point.
Internet coupons are different from physical coupons. You can potentially find internet coupons by searching the web for 20 minutes, while if you're at the checkout at the grocery store, you're not going to go all the way home, look through the trash to find some coupons that were mailed to you a week prior and promptly thrown out.
The difference is the knowledge that there is a coupon for the particular item I'm buying, and the (in)convenience of finding that coupon.
I'm convinced that many, many people are "upset" about the idea that they're missing out on coupons. My wife is one of those people, she can't buy anything on the internet without searching her coupon sites first. And I know a lot of people like her. For me, it takes a conscious decision that "this is not worth it, I'll just pay whatever the price is and save the time and energy".
But of course that's not the world we live in. Our mailboxes get stuffed full of coupons. We get them on our receipts. We get them in our e-mail. We get them in newspapers and magazines and even attached to the very products we're buying.
Yes, and I am sick to the back teeth of this crap in my mailbox and encouraging me to keep bits of paper in my wallet yadda yadda. Coupons suck ass and I make a point of preferring retailers that don't use them.
BTW this isn't 'the world that we live in.' This is a largely American phenomenon. In many European countries you can tell the mail carrier that you don't accept junk mail.
I've abandoned a couple purchases because of that coupon code box. I go search for one and realize that they do regular promotions so I wait for one, usually to never come back and make a purchase.
I'd say that a coupon code box runs a distant third behind surprise high shipping rates and sites I've never heard of that don't accept third-party payment sites and instead want my credit card info. Nope.
Technically speaking, a credit card is a third-party payment system ;)
But, I still get your point. Ridiculous shipping charges has definitely led to me abandoning a cart more often then coupon code boxes. Although, I still prefer it when sites just tell me what the shipping is before I put the item in my cart. Not telling me before I have to fill in anything more than a zip code tends to be a sign of high shipping charges and sometimes leads to me going to a competitors website without even checking what it will cost to ship.
I've abandoned purchases as well. When I know I might be missing out on a coupon, I go hunt for it. Most of the time I don't find the coupon I'm looking for, but I do stumble across (coupons for) other products, which might offer a better deal. I end up purchasing those, or not purchasing anything anymore.
Instinctively I agree with the author: when a customer has effectively made a purchase decision, a webshop shouldn't divert him to random pages on the internet, unless there is a mechanism in place that leads to extra sales. Showing a coupon box during one of the final phases of the purchasing process is a way of diverting customers to random pages on the internet.
I've done the same. The coupon code box screams, "You're a sucker if you don't have a code to put in here."
I go searching for a code. I find a few great ones that have expired but nothing active right now. Now I can continue my purchase and feel like a chump or abandon my cart. The latter usually wins.
Another problem with coupon codes is they allow for affiliate commission stealing. Say someone visits a site via an affiliate URL and they are about to checkout when they notice the coupon code field. They Google coupon codes and find a site that says you have to use their URL (as many do). Now the coupon code site gets credit for the referral. On the surface this doesn't seem like a big problem but it is very common.
Another problem with coupon codes is they allow for affiliate commission stealing. Say someone visits a site via an affiliate URL and they are about to checkout when they notice the coupon code field. They Google coupon codes and find a site that says you have to use their URL (as many do). Now the coupon code site gets credit for the referral. On the surface this doesn't seem like a big problem but it is very common.
Another problem with coupon codes is they allow for affiliate commission stealing. Say someone visits a site via an affiliate URL and they are about to checkout when they notice the coupon code field. They Google coupon codes and find a site that says you have to use their URL (as many do). Now the coupon code site gets credit for the referral. On the surface this doesn't seem like a big problem but it is very common.
- Go to buy a product, get all the way up to the checkout and abandon for an unrelated reason
- Go back and purchase the product at full price
- Get an email with a discount code for abandoning my cart the first time
Left a very unpleasant feeling of being stooged. If I'd only known to abandon my cart first...
At my company we've tested having the coupon box automatically filled in vs. not automatically filled in and we found that conversions were no higher by automatically filling it in.
And if you want to be focused purely on the bottom line; conversions were just as high without it automatically filled in but coupon usage was notably lower; meaning automatically filling in the coupon was just giving away money.
I suspect that people don't trust a merchant-supplied coupon.
A also suspect this is why when you Google "landsend coupons" the #1 site is a UGC coupon-sharing site and #2 is the merchant's own site. By every traditional measure, the merchant's page should outrank the coupon site.
Why would you trust a coupon sharing site more? The merchant has an incentive to only give you some token discount, whereas the "crowd" has no such incentive. So you're more likely to trust the crowd in this scenario.
"At my company we've tested having the coupon box automatically filled in vs. not automatically filled in and we found that conversions were no higher by automatically filling it in."
What are you filling it in with and what type of discount did the coupon apply to the purchase?
So are you saying that for the purposes of testing you took a loss on the sale in order to see if there was abandonment?
Some places like Newegg put the promo code on the item page itself, so it's basically like giving it to everyone who buys the item. In this case, there's no loss on the sale.
The parent wasn't claiming this; they were merely adding a single data point about a relevant topic! I for one had not thought about pre-filling the coupon code box before, and I'm glad the parent brought it to my attention.
The grandparent tested the idea, that showing a coupon which is already filled and active, will carry an illusion of a bargain and hence the customer will be more likely to convert.
Could the coupon box "train" customers to jump on deals when offered? Perhaps that is the seller's hope, and that it is about a relationship and revenue stream into the future.
(I'm not saying this "training" is a net win for the seller, but I can see "loyalty" as one of their goals.)
"This PayPal/Comscore study found that 27% of potential buyers abandoned their shopping cart because they had to go look for a coupon code.
Another study found that removing the promo code box improved conversion from 3.8% to 5.1%"
Didn't read the study but I wonder if those numbers take into account the positive benefit of using the coupon box.
In other words you do a promotion offering a discount to increase sales. The result of the promotion is an increase of x but also a decrease of y because of abandonment. It seems (by the way you phrase the summary) that the study only concluded the negative aspect and not the upside to the coupon code. (Once again I didn't read the study so I am just asking.)
This is just one example. The problem is that different sites / products attract different types of persons. In our ecommerce site, we noticed almost no difference in conversions.
We use coupon codes to track our marketing efforts.
I abandoned a merchant, not just my shopping cart because of that.
advanceautoparts or something. was buying from them, got to the checkout, searched for coupons, found that they have 25%+ coupons going on year around.
I can't possibly buy from a site that has all it's prices upmarked by at least 25% to begin with.
When you look at the big picture findings from this survey, it makes you realize: 20-40% of people will abandon a cart for ANY reason.
And none of these "studies" have looked into what the conversion rates for people who DO use coupons are. When you introduce a coupon to a good customer, or at the right moment, does that INCREASE conversions? I'd would bet good money the answer is yes. And I would bet you money that that increase outweighs the seemingly random "25% of people quit a cart for every possible reason."
There is no such thing as a one-sided effect.
BTW -- abandoning a cart is not the same thing as quitting a checkout in progress. Beginning the checkout process is a much bigger indicator of intention than putting stuff in your cart. Many people just put stuff in their cart as a kind of shopping list, or "I might want to look at this more later." Which is no doubt why cart abandonment rates are so high.
>First of all, giving everyone a referral URL works great in a web only world but what if you're advertising on a Podcast (or gasp print or radio), is it easier to tell people to type in www.mysite.com/coupon to their browser or is it easier to tell people to enter COUPON at checkout?
Only lots of the companies that uses this practice never advertise on podcasts or radio.
>Secondly, the amount of people who are going to have this adverse reaction to the mere existence of the coupon code field is vanishingly small.
Citation needed.
>Most customers who don't have a code will just ignore it and move on
Of course, since there is nothing else they can do. The issue is if this leaves a bad taste on their mouth or not.
>Whatever web site had a coupon code field that made you this angry probably had at least 20 much worse UI violations they should prioritize above trying to eliminate the coupon field.
He could not care less about other UI violations compared to feeling a second-rate customer that has to pay more.
Or just don't show the box during period where there is no valid coupon code for any of the selected items? Half the complaint, and associated failed transactions, is around there not even being a currently running coupon campaign anyway.
But then why have coupons and just offer money off to everyone?
But then why have coupons and just offer money off to everyone?
Why would you offer a discount to people when you can make more money by not offering a discount? To me I see the coupon as a reward to the people that know about it. Plus if it's a promotion you are probably increasing the volume and taking away the price comparison for people that like to save. Plus maybe some loyalty knowing those guys always haave coupons.
Take GoDaddy for instance. They always have promotions running. If someone just wanted to purchase a domain they would go on there and pay $12 but if they wanted to save money they could drive the price down to as low as $2.49 (in some cases). They are not losing money at that price and will even make more in the long run since they didn't lose you to namecheap and for the rest of the time you own it with them you will be paying $8-10 with the convenience of auto-renew.
This complaint comes from the discussion about affiliate marketing on this site yesterday. A large number of affiliates make there money with coupon sites apparently, taking advantage of this exact scenario. People see coupon, then they google for it.
If you think this blog post looks familiar, it is.
I would argue that remembering and entering a coupon is just as hard as remembering and entering a sub-directory name in a URL. In fact, finding the coupon code box can sometimes be a pain. It's not always on the first page in the ordering process.
People are different. I do what he described every single time I see the coupon code when I wouldn't have thought about searching for one. I would have been happily enjoying my purchase instead to cruising junky ad filled sites looking for a discount.
It's simple loss aversion. Instead of people seeing their purchase as a gain, they think about what they're losing by not having a coupon.
That's right: it's about the psychology post-purchase. How does the buyer feel? Do they feel good about their experience, or is there a nagging feeling of having missed out on a deal?
It's interesting. I sometimes sigh when I see a discount box because I know I'm going to spend the next 10 minutes searching for a code.
For me, not having the box would have meant I "knew" I was getting the best deal. Having the box and failing to find a code means I "failed" at getting the best deal, even if there wasn't a better deal to be had.
Finding a code sometimes makes me think, "am I allowed to use it?" but of course, I'd try anyway and yes, can be pleased if I get the magical 10-15% off.
I wonder if your response would be different if the language around the coupon code was different. Instead of just a "Coupon code:" label, something that deterred you from entering one.
That's got me thinking. I suspect it might. The psychology behind it form me is not to be getting a worse deal than everyone else. If everyone else can enter a discount code, then I should be able to as well.
But if the code is targeted at a specific set of customers that I know I don't fall into, then I would probably overlook.
Things like:
- Student discount
- Over 60s discount
- Job seekers discount
But finding the right label that doesn't offend, and right way to validate the authenticity of the customer's eligibility, is no trivial task.
I do the same thing. The article described my sentiments exactly... I feel like I'm missing out on something. Especially for a bigger purchase, a 10% off coupon can save $100-200 and is worth waiting for sometimes
"This is a pretty ridiculous complaint" - No offense, but this is a ridiculous complaint. You totally sidestepped the point of the article - what message are you sending to your full price paying customer?
Imagine you're side by side with a guy in two checkout lines and by chance you have the same 6 items. Both of you get rung up and it comes out to $100 on the display. At that point, you reach for your card. The other guy though, reaches over to the cashier and does a wiggly weird handshake. The cashier smiles knowingly, hits a button and boom it says $86. You've got no recourse to complain. The items you picked up were clearly marked and you accepted the total amount. You start to notice how every 5th person does the goofy weird handshake? Feel like shopping there again next time?
And you're offered those coupons all the time in newspapers and magazines but decide they're not worth the hassle. Here the first time you even discover coupons is at the checkout
If you first discover that coupons exist at the cashier, you must be an alien going to a store for the first time.
You hit the nail on the head with the first part of your comment -- you decided they weren't worth the time, and therefore you don't save the money. You don't huffily dump your items and leave the line. No, you think, "Hm, maybe I should clip coupons next time." (Although, of course, you don't.)
"If you first discover that coupons exist at the cashier, you must be an alien going to a store for the first time.'
I guess the risk of using an analogy is they eventually break down if you go too crazy on them. I made it a "real world" example to look at the online experience another way so that people could perhaps relate to the original's author pet peeve. I think if the author of this original article felt like he understood how to get a coupon for the site he was on and decided not to anyway he wouldn't have written the article. Subtle but important point here.
And, usually, I shrug those coupons off because they are $.60 off of a product I wasn't going to buy in the first place, so I don't care.
On the other hand, if I buy something at Bed, Bath and Beyond or almost any clothing retailer without a 20% off coupon, I do indeed feel like a chump. If the cashier in a store I've never been in before asks 'do you have any coupons?' after ringing me up, I definetly feel like I've screwed up, but I'll still finish my purchase because, well, instant gratification and societal expectations and all that. But I'm not going to go back to that store until I DO have coupon.
So maybe it depends. If your shtick is 'Never pay full price and find ridiculous discounts,' coupon fields might be the way to go, as long as you always have coupons available. But if you expect even some customers to pay full price, having your cashiers ask everyone for coupons is probably not the best practice.
No I don't shop in stores that I know give out coupons.
Biggest one is Bed Bath Beyond. If for some reason Amazon can't wait and I need it now, no way in hell am I buying a product from that store w/o the 20% off coupon
This is not analogous, and you should know that. The invested effort of going to a store is a lot higher. Look at the abandonment rates of average grocery store visits compared to even the highest-conversion website and it should be obvious how this analogy falls apart.
I see people use coupons all the time. By the time I get to the register, I've already effectively "accepted the total amount." Coupons don't bother me.
Why would they? Moreover, why would I want to complain?
I do not think "ridiculous" means what you think it means.
1) I personally have abandoned checkout carts when I realized they offered big discounts and I didn't have one right then.
2) Alternatively, the coupon code box has very often reminded me to go find a coupon - and pay less than I was already willing to pay.
My behavior is normal human behavior. You can debate whether (1) is "logical," but the checkout process should maximize profit from real human beings, not theoretically logical ones.
The checkout page should have the lowest friction possible. Coupon boxes make people hunt for them. Anytime a customer leaves your store there's a chance they may not come back. This applies to physical stores too.
> is it easier to tell people to type in www.mysite.com/coupon to their browser or is it easier to tell people to enter COUPON at checkout?
I hear URLs spelled out in radio ads all the time. If this were 1996 you might have a valid point, but not in 2013.
I dropped my car off for state inspection by my usual mechanic. Then I found a coupon in the local paper for $10 off an inspection at that place. When I went to pay, I showed the coupon but the mechanic told me, "oh I already did that. You're a regular, we take care of you!" I don't think I've ever seen a website that could do that.
I'll fully admit, it seems counter-intuitive, but yes, it does.
I think the reason is that while I know somewhere in my mind that Amazon (using them as an example, since I order from them frequently) has a huge quantity of information about me, but it's not something I think about on a day to day basis.
However, the moment they do something to bring my attention to the fact that they have extensive information on me, such as a fictional "you usually buy a movie every Saturday Night, and it's Sunday and you haven't made a purchase, would you like to buy a movie now?" would immediately bring the awareness of their tracking to the front of my mind, and create the associated worry about "just how much do they know about me?"
I know that the answer to that question is "a lot," and enumerating exactly how much they might know about me is a very long process. It makes me question "can I trust Amazon to use this to my advantage, and not theirs?" Even if they never do use it in an "evil" way (which I believe will be the case), the capability is still unsettling to me.
Actually, I agree with you. It brought to mind when Facebook does that creepy "you probably know these people" thing based on knowing X and Y and going to Z school.
I gave it the data, I know I voluntarily handed it over, and yet I still pause and think "holy crap" sometimes.
"spending ~13min per day on our website from IP 192.168.0.1" isn't a purchase history any more than a plainclothes security guard following you around a department store is a purchase history.
No (smart) website would actually say that. They'd say something like, "Thanks for being a regular! Here's a discount." Like a friendly checkout clerk, rather than a stalker. So then tech folks know they're probably tracking stuff like that, but you knew that anyways.
Same with most subscription services like ISPs and phone companies. Get you in with a low cost deal to get your hooked. Here's the trick though, you can call and just ask for a better rate, tell them X company is looking to give you a better deal, but you want to keep them. I did it with my DSL.
No, it's a fabrication. Amazon used to a/b test prices (but don't anymore), so people would see a lower/higher price when they deleted their cookies (thus putting them into the opposite a/b class). There is no evidence that Amazon has ever increased prices for older customers. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon.com_controversies#Differ... for more details.
Really? So how do they distinguish I am a new user or not, if I am not logged in? From IP address? Maybe I need to reset my router, get a new IP, visit Amazon in private browsing mode and then doing the search so I have the price before logging in...?
Many websites offer discounts to their regulars. You could mimic this specific behavior by automatically applying a coupon code to checkout baskets of regulars, with some text explaining how much you love them.
Of course, you might want to let users know that you do this, and that means emailing them, and that makes this more of an emailed coupon offer, which is back to being more like a traditional coupon approach, but either way hopefully you can give your regulars some warm fuzzies.
I'm a Zappos "VIP" which means I get a few tiny benefits when I shop at the "vip.zappos.com" website. So at least one site does do the "regulars get a bonus" thing.
(It also means I bought too many shoes at some point in my life.)
I've seen cases where having a coupon code actually increased conversions more than just discounting the product for everyone. The people who searched for the (easily found) coupon were far more likely to completely the purchase process because they felt like they were getting a deal.
If you're using voucher codes you shouldn't just use one approach based upon an article like this, rather you should be A/B testing different variants and see what performs for your startup. Your customers aren't the same as everyone else and you shouldn't expect them to behave the same.
> Your customers aren't the same as everyone else and you shouldn't expect them to behave the same.
Yes! In our case we found it had no effect on conversions and customer service calls increased from people asking about where to enter the (expired) code they found somewhere on the net.
Our solution was to keep the coupon code box and seed a $1 discount code on one of the coupon sites.
We stumble across these wild A/B claims from time to time and in almost every case we've seen no difference in conversions.
This may not be rational, but there's some research showing this is a widespread phenomenon. Mostly, it has to do with a sense of fairness. Coupon codes can make consumers feel like the merchant is being unfair, which leads to dissatisfaction.
The solution: don't show the coupon code field or make it extremely easy for consumers to get coupon codes. I've noticed more and more stores put their coupon codes right in the header while you're browsing. So it's impossible NOT to get a coupon.
actually, no, although that's an interesting place to do it. as a few others have commented, merchants like Newegg and Gap use something like a HelloBar to highlight their coupons in the header nav.
Happened to me: I had the code, but forgot to enter it. So afterward I contacted customer service and they just said: sorry there is nothing we can do for you.
In France one of the biggest high tech ware reseller use this coupon promotiona codes. These coupon codes are ditributed through it's own promotional mailing list.
Il you subscribe to their special offer mailing lists you get their coupon codes. Of corse ou get a slap in your face when you see the coupn field box. But this is also where you should say how to get coupon codes.
Propose a subscription to your special coupon offering mailing list where you can also ommunicate about your product. This is opt in advertisement.
Initial customer acquisition costs money. A lot of money. Once you have a happy customer for repeat business, you reward and entice them with discounts, usually via email newsletter.
As a first time customer, you are not being "cheated". You are just a lot more expensive.
It doesn't matter if that's how it is. What matters is how consumers perceive it. If they think they are being cheated then who are you to say they are not? I don't care how much it costs for a retailer to nab me as a customer.
When launching new order pages a few years ago, I was bothered by the same thing and asked my e-commerce company to add a checkbox, which you have to click in order to show coupon field:
Interesting - I like it. When you say it "helps a bit", what makes you feel that way? If I'm going to change my cart, it needs to be something simple like what you've done.
(I haven't A/B tested this, so I can only rely on intuition and feedback from other people.) I think that the honesty plays a role here. If there's an empty space that says "put a coupon there", people will be looking for a way to fill it, even if they don't have a coupon -- because this box invites them to. However, if there's a checkbox saying "click here if you have a coupon code" (although my checkbox says something different), it means that by clicking it people will lie, and not everyone wants to do it.
Now that I think of it, maybe even better strategy would be to buy a domain "blabla-coupon-code.com" and put there a coupon code for your thing with a small discount. People who like to search the web for coupons will be satisfied ;)
That's a pretty neat solution. One thing though, my laptop hasn't got a great screen and when I tried clicking the checkbox the input field that appeared was very very light - my immediate thought was that there's just an apply button. I know this stuff's a bit of a black art, but it might be worth A/B testing a less faint input field?
That would likely combat the problem of people quitting the checkout process because they saw a coupon box and hunted for a code. However as a method of tracking referrals I'd expect its usefulness to be close to zero, as it ostensibly is still a coupon, and will appear on the websites that offer them as such.
People might voluntarily divulge who referred them to your store. Only with the correct entry do you get a discount, as an added bonus to people who answered.
So incorrect results arn't technically incorrect, they're just bonus data.
This is exactly how RockAuto does it. If you enter an unknown string, it probably goes into some database that they can use for advertising. They also send out deal codes over email that are intended to go into the referral box.
Some sites present the coupon field slightly differently as a Gift Card/Gift Certificate/Coupon Code field which might help that "slapped in the face" feeling.
"You get pages of results: mostly garbage, some scams, and a few legitimate coupon sites. Unfortunately, the codes listed on those sites are a year old: you missed your chance."
It frustrates me when I see a coupon code box and cannot find any working codes. Oftentimes the most recent codes for a retailer on RetaiMeNot haven't been active in months or years. On the flip side, when I find a code that saves me anything, even free shipping, I am ecstatic. I feel like I am responsible, thrifty and savvy and I have a proclivity to purchase more items from that retailer later on.
I think these emotions are worth evoking in customers and banning the coupon code box destroys this ability. A referral link doesn't capture as much of the emotional satisfaction as seeing your cart totals drop after typing in a string of characters and clicking "Apply to Cart." Retailers could just hide the coupon code box when there aren't any active coupons. When a coupon is active, the box reappears.
I've done work for the kinds of retailers who have coupon code boxes, and most of the time, the only reason it's on there is because the default WordPress plugin/Joomla template/eCommerce solution has it there. No one ever thinks to remove it, despite them never planning on using it.
The best way for coupon code boxes to stop appearing is for developers and designers to bring it up with their client. A lot of the time, once the client is actually confronted with it has to make a decision, they choose not to have it.
It's not a slap in the face of the customer. It's the company shooting their own foot. Whenever I see the coupon code box, I search for coupons. Sometimes I fine one. If so, they've lost money.
Last time I encountered a coupon field, my wife told me that there was a coupon code on the main landing page. Result: I have reread the main landing page, entered the coupon and was happy to spare a couple of bucks.
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[ 5.7 ms ] story [ 244 ms ] threadCoupons codes are usually part of ad campaigns.
Coupon codes are useful for promos and such. Not every customer pays the same amount, thats how the world works.
I love that. In start up land people always seem to ignore things that have been done successfully for years thinking that certainly there is something wrong and legacy business must be making huge mistakes and throwing out their money on things just because "it's the way it's always been done".
The problem of course is understanding which one of those things are wrong and which actually work (to which you really don't need studies) to prove.
The article is from the perspective of a customer without a coupon. In that case, the presence of the coupon code field actually makes you less likely to buy or convert. This article isn;t blaming the methodology. It is saying the status-quo presentation is poor and needs improvement.
On one of our products http://pressbackup.com we have a coupon code, if customers can't find one, and they email me, I will generate one just for them. Those customers stick around for a LONG time.
Price Discrimination 101.
See also this thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6204261
I like petercooper's idea of pre-populating the coupon field with a default code.
To me, coupons are always seen as temporary gifts from the company to butter up my loyalty. So paying full price still feels fair.
But again, it's all about metrics. It would be great to see how different audiences respond.
Edit: Thanks, some pretty good results out there.
Providing a code and its attendant price reduction clearly had positive effects on perceptions of fairness and satisfaction when compared to the control group.
...prompting for a code in the absence of having one had negative effects on fairness, satisfaction, and completion when compared to the control. As would be expected from these findings, the three groups were ranked in the predicted order (code > control > no code) for all dependent variables, including intention to repatronize and recommend the online store.
Equity theory, then, becomes an alternative explanation for reactions to code provision and non-provision... the Web buyer without a code experiences the additional impact of the inequity perceived if others are imagined to have a code, are selectively provided one, or are simply viewed as "special" in some sense.
Though I do suspect it A/B tests differently :)
Another thing is there are going to be people that aren't going to put the code in and you would make extra money off of them when they forget to use it. I don't know the percentage of that but it's certainly greater than 0, right?
"In one usability test, removing the coupon code field increased overall conversion from 3.8% to 5.1% (an increase of 34%)."
Well, it makes you happy and probably makes it so that you really will proceed with the purchase. "Hey, I spent a looonnng 5 minutes searching AND I got a 10% discount. Why wouldn't I proceed with the purchase?"
For one, you might NOT find the coupon after those "15 minutes". What percentage of users will find it?
Second, if you have to go searching online for 15 minutes, you might be distracted enough to never return, or find something else to buy.
Coupon codes are an easily programmable solution to a wide variety of business problems. They're particularly useful for problems that are difficult to predict in advance.
I've had to watch a lot of this sort of thing happen, and customers "understand" coupon codes natively at this point - they require practically no instruction. Getting the customer through the transaction as quickly as possible is one of the prime desires for any e-commerce site that also takes phone orders, and coupon codes have been, in my experience, most effective for that.
Now, if you want to start a trend of re-training customers to expect specialized URLs they use before entering checkout -- then I'll be more than happy to switch over to that once customers expect it.
However, I feel there's a sort of paradox here: Providing discounts to new customers helps create new transactions. The more steps required to complete the transaction, the more like the customer is to abandon the transaction. If a coupon code causes customers without one to be more likely to abandon then it makes sense to require a separate step from the normal checkout workflow to use it, thereby increasing the rate of abandoned transactions.
First of all, giving everyone a referral URL works great in a web only world but what if you're advertising on a Podcast (or gasp print or radio), is it easier to tell people to type in www.mysite.com/coupon to their browser or is it easier to tell people to enter COUPON at checkout?
Secondly, the amount of people who are going to have this adverse reaction to the mere existence of the coupon code field is vanishingly small. Most customers who don't have a code will just ignore it and move on (and actually many who have been told about a code will not even use it) only a small minority will bother searching for a code to enter when they don't have one.
Whatever web site had a coupon code field that made you this angry probably had at least 20 much worse UI violations they should prioritize above trying to eliminate the coupon field.
Or... if you're feeling really adventurous, use an audio hyperlink ;) http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/08/apple-developing-audio-hype...
One might offend your eyes, the other (can be) more personal.
But of course that's not the world we live in. Our mailboxes get stuffed full of coupons. We get them on our receipts. We get them in our e-mail. We get them in newspapers and magazines and even attached to the very products we're buying.
We're all used to the concept. Roughly nobody is getting upset at the idea that there might be some coupon out there that they don't happen to have at the moment.
If you have the checker might have grabbed a copy of the Sunday insert they had sitting there and scanned the $1 off coupon for that one item you happened to pick up but didn't know was actually on sale, or 95% of the time the checker doesn't even bother you about such things. By offering a coupon code box on your checkout page, you're effectively saying "Hey, we might have put a coupon in last Sunday's newspaper, but obviously you aren't special enough to have received it and we aren't going to be nice by offering it to everyone to gain customer loyalty."
If you want to do an affiliate-type discount for a single item, do it through URL parameters stored into a cookie and consumed at checkout. If you want to do a Sunday-coupon-type discount for anyone willing to go find a coupon, offer it to everyone: "Do you have any coupons? Our latest promotions can be found at ..."
Edit: and if doing a Sunday-type coupon, have the box be conditionally shown. If your current promotion is for 10% off the purchase of a Foo widget, don't show it when the customer only has Bar sprockets in their cart. You're just losing conversion at that point.
The difference is the knowledge that there is a coupon for the particular item I'm buying, and the (in)convenience of finding that coupon.
I'm convinced that many, many people are "upset" about the idea that they're missing out on coupons. My wife is one of those people, she can't buy anything on the internet without searching her coupon sites first. And I know a lot of people like her. For me, it takes a conscious decision that "this is not worth it, I'll just pay whatever the price is and save the time and energy".
Yes, and I am sick to the back teeth of this crap in my mailbox and encouraging me to keep bits of paper in my wallet yadda yadda. Coupons suck ass and I make a point of preferring retailers that don't use them.
BTW this isn't 'the world that we live in.' This is a largely American phenomenon. In many European countries you can tell the mail carrier that you don't accept junk mail.
Another study found that removing the promo code box improved conversion from 3.8% to 5.1%
Source: http://ux.stackexchange.com/a/11365
(There's also some good shopping cart / checkout UX tips in there too)
However that was still reduced and delayed revenue for the vendor over not having the box. And how many times have I completely given up… Lots.
But, I still get your point. Ridiculous shipping charges has definitely led to me abandoning a cart more often then coupon code boxes. Although, I still prefer it when sites just tell me what the shipping is before I put the item in my cart. Not telling me before I have to fill in anything more than a zip code tends to be a sign of high shipping charges and sometimes leads to me going to a competitors website without even checking what it will cost to ship.
Instinctively I agree with the author: when a customer has effectively made a purchase decision, a webshop shouldn't divert him to random pages on the internet, unless there is a mechanism in place that leads to extra sales. Showing a coupon box during one of the final phases of the purchasing process is a way of diverting customers to random pages on the internet.
I go searching for a code. I find a few great ones that have expired but nothing active right now. Now I can continue my purchase and feel like a chump or abandon my cart. The latter usually wins.
- Go to buy a product, get all the way up to the checkout and abandon for an unrelated reason - Go back and purchase the product at full price - Get an email with a discount code for abandoning my cart the first time
Left a very unpleasant feeling of being stooged. If I'd only known to abandon my cart first...
And if you want to be focused purely on the bottom line; conversions were just as high without it automatically filled in but coupon usage was notably lower; meaning automatically filling in the coupon was just giving away money.
A also suspect this is why when you Google "landsend coupons" the #1 site is a UGC coupon-sharing site and #2 is the merchant's own site. By every traditional measure, the merchant's page should outrank the coupon site.
Why would you trust a coupon sharing site more? The merchant has an incentive to only give you some token discount, whereas the "crowd" has no such incentive. So you're more likely to trust the crowd in this scenario.
What are you filling it in with and what type of discount did the coupon apply to the purchase?
So are you saying that for the purposes of testing you took a loss on the sale in order to see if there was abandonment?
We did not take any losses.
(I'm not saying this "training" is a net win for the seller, but I can see "loyalty" as one of their goals.)
Another study found that removing the promo code box improved conversion from 3.8% to 5.1%"
Didn't read the study but I wonder if those numbers take into account the positive benefit of using the coupon box.
In other words you do a promotion offering a discount to increase sales. The result of the promotion is an increase of x but also a decrease of y because of abandonment. It seems (by the way you phrase the summary) that the study only concluded the negative aspect and not the upside to the coupon code. (Once again I didn't read the study so I am just asking.)
We use coupon codes to track our marketing efforts.
advanceautoparts or something. was buying from them, got to the checkout, searched for coupons, found that they have 25%+ coupons going on year around.
I can't possibly buy from a site that has all it's prices upmarked by at least 25% to begin with.
I guess you don't buy much, then.
I find it handy, because I can place an order online and pick it up at the store. But I usually get 20% off. Hmm...
Look at other reasons people abandoned carts in that PayPal/Comscore study:
Wanted to comparison shop: 37%
Lack of money: 36%
Wanted to look for a coupon: 27%
Wanted to shop offline: 26%
Couldn’t find preferred pay option: 24%
Item unavailable at checkout: 23%
Couldn’t find customer support: 22%
Security concerns: 21%
http://www.emarketer.com/Article/Sad-Tale-of-Abandoned-Shopp...
When you look at the big picture findings from this survey, it makes you realize: 20-40% of people will abandon a cart for ANY reason.
And none of these "studies" have looked into what the conversion rates for people who DO use coupons are. When you introduce a coupon to a good customer, or at the right moment, does that INCREASE conversions? I'd would bet good money the answer is yes. And I would bet you money that that increase outweighs the seemingly random "25% of people quit a cart for every possible reason."
There is no such thing as a one-sided effect.
BTW -- abandoning a cart is not the same thing as quitting a checkout in progress. Beginning the checkout process is a much bigger indicator of intention than putting stuff in your cart. Many people just put stuff in their cart as a kind of shopping list, or "I might want to look at this more later." Which is no doubt why cart abandonment rates are so high.
I wrote the post from an anecdotal POV, and just started digging into the research once the discussion came up here. ;)
On further inspection, here is some research that might support my point:
- Oliver & Shor found that: "prompting for a code in the absence of having one had negative effects on fairness, satisfaction, and completion when compared to the control." http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/research/promo/jpb...
- This study by Oliver & Swan (1989) found a big link between a consumer's perception of pricing fairness, and their overall satisfaction with a purchase. http://www.jstor.org/discover/10.2307/1251411?uid=3737720&ui...
- Xia, Monroe, & Cox found: "For price comparisons, the other-customer comparison has the greatest effect on perceived price unfairness because of the salience of such a comparison" http://bear.warrington.ufl.edu/weitz/mar7786/Articles/price%...
- This study by Google found that in a real-world setting, "that more than 40% of shoppers have left a retail store without purchasing because they knew they left a coupon at home". http://www.google.com/think/research-studies/from-clipping-t...
Only lots of the companies that uses this practice never advertise on podcasts or radio.
>Secondly, the amount of people who are going to have this adverse reaction to the mere existence of the coupon code field is vanishingly small.
Citation needed.
>Most customers who don't have a code will just ignore it and move on
Of course, since there is nothing else they can do. The issue is if this leaves a bad taste on their mouth or not.
>Whatever web site had a coupon code field that made you this angry probably had at least 20 much worse UI violations they should prioritize above trying to eliminate the coupon field.
He could not care less about other UI violations compared to feeling a second-rate customer that has to pay more.
But then why have coupons and just offer money off to everyone?
Why would you offer a discount to people when you can make more money by not offering a discount? To me I see the coupon as a reward to the people that know about it. Plus if it's a promotion you are probably increasing the volume and taking away the price comparison for people that like to save. Plus maybe some loyalty knowing those guys always haave coupons.
Take GoDaddy for instance. They always have promotions running. If someone just wanted to purchase a domain they would go on there and pay $12 but if they wanted to save money they could drive the price down to as low as $2.49 (in some cases). They are not losing money at that price and will even make more in the long run since they didn't lose you to namecheap and for the rest of the time you own it with them you will be paying $8-10 with the convenience of auto-renew.
If you think this blog post looks familiar, it is.
People are different. I do what he described every single time I see the coupon code when I wouldn't have thought about searching for one. I would have been happily enjoying my purchase instead to cruising junky ad filled sites looking for a discount.
It's simple loss aversion. Instead of people seeing their purchase as a gain, they think about what they're losing by not having a coupon.
This research paper studies those effects: http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/research/promo/jpb...
For me, not having the box would have meant I "knew" I was getting the best deal. Having the box and failing to find a code means I "failed" at getting the best deal, even if there wasn't a better deal to be had.
Finding a code sometimes makes me think, "am I allowed to use it?" but of course, I'd try anyway and yes, can be pleased if I get the magical 10-15% off.
"Slum it! Enter your poverty code here:"
But if the code is targeted at a specific set of customers that I know I don't fall into, then I would probably overlook.
Things like:
- Student discount
- Over 60s discount
- Job seekers discount
But finding the right label that doesn't offend, and right way to validate the authenticity of the customer's eligibility, is no trivial task.
Imagine you're side by side with a guy in two checkout lines and by chance you have the same 6 items. Both of you get rung up and it comes out to $100 on the display. At that point, you reach for your card. The other guy though, reaches over to the cashier and does a wiggly weird handshake. The cashier smiles knowingly, hits a button and boom it says $86. You've got no recourse to complain. The items you picked up were clearly marked and you accepted the total amount. You start to notice how every 5th person does the goofy weird handshake? Feel like shopping there again next time?
But you don't need to imagine it because it happens all the time and you still shop in stores.
You hit the nail on the head with the first part of your comment -- you decided they weren't worth the time, and therefore you don't save the money. You don't huffily dump your items and leave the line. No, you think, "Hm, maybe I should clip coupons next time." (Although, of course, you don't.)
I guess the risk of using an analogy is they eventually break down if you go too crazy on them. I made it a "real world" example to look at the online experience another way so that people could perhaps relate to the original's author pet peeve. I think if the author of this original article felt like he understood how to get a coupon for the site he was on and decided not to anyway he wouldn't have written the article. Subtle but important point here.
The article doesn't even suggest getting rid of coupons, it suggests putting them in a different spot.
On the other hand, if I buy something at Bed, Bath and Beyond or almost any clothing retailer without a 20% off coupon, I do indeed feel like a chump. If the cashier in a store I've never been in before asks 'do you have any coupons?' after ringing me up, I definetly feel like I've screwed up, but I'll still finish my purchase because, well, instant gratification and societal expectations and all that. But I'm not going to go back to that store until I DO have coupon.
So maybe it depends. If your shtick is 'Never pay full price and find ridiculous discounts,' coupon fields might be the way to go, as long as you always have coupons available. But if you expect even some customers to pay full price, having your cashiers ask everyone for coupons is probably not the best practice.
Biggest one is Bed Bath Beyond. If for some reason Amazon can't wait and I need it now, no way in hell am I buying a product from that store w/o the 20% off coupon
Why would they? Moreover, why would I want to complain?
Are coupons really that egregious to you?
1) I personally have abandoned checkout carts when I realized they offered big discounts and I didn't have one right then. 2) Alternatively, the coupon code box has very often reminded me to go find a coupon - and pay less than I was already willing to pay.
My behavior is normal human behavior. You can debate whether (1) is "logical," but the checkout process should maximize profit from real human beings, not theoretically logical ones.
The checkout page should have the lowest friction possible. Coupon boxes make people hunt for them. Anytime a customer leaves your store there's a chance they may not come back. This applies to physical stores too.
> is it easier to tell people to type in www.mysite.com/coupon to their browser or is it easier to tell people to enter COUPON at checkout?
I hear URLs spelled out in radio ads all the time. If this were 1996 you might have a valid point, but not in 2013.
"We've been tracking you, you're a regular. Here's 5% off for spending ~13min per day on our website from IP 192.168.0.1"
It would give me the creeps.
I think the reason is that while I know somewhere in my mind that Amazon (using them as an example, since I order from them frequently) has a huge quantity of information about me, but it's not something I think about on a day to day basis.
However, the moment they do something to bring my attention to the fact that they have extensive information on me, such as a fictional "you usually buy a movie every Saturday Night, and it's Sunday and you haven't made a purchase, would you like to buy a movie now?" would immediately bring the awareness of their tracking to the front of my mind, and create the associated worry about "just how much do they know about me?"
I know that the answer to that question is "a lot," and enumerating exactly how much they might know about me is a very long process. It makes me question "can I trust Amazon to use this to my advantage, and not theirs?" Even if they never do use it in an "evil" way (which I believe will be the case), the capability is still unsettling to me.
I gave it the data, I know I voluntarily handed it over, and yet I still pause and think "holy crap" sometimes.
Would be interested in seeing some stats/research on whether this is true and how much prices are affected by it.
Of course, you might want to let users know that you do this, and that means emailing them, and that makes this more of an emailed coupon offer, which is back to being more like a traditional coupon approach, but either way hopefully you can give your regulars some warm fuzzies.
(It also means I bought too many shoes at some point in my life.)
If you're using voucher codes you shouldn't just use one approach based upon an article like this, rather you should be A/B testing different variants and see what performs for your startup. Your customers aren't the same as everyone else and you shouldn't expect them to behave the same.
Yes! In our case we found it had no effect on conversions and customer service calls increased from people asking about where to enter the (expired) code they found somewhere on the net.
Our solution was to keep the coupon code box and seed a $1 discount code on one of the coupon sites.
We stumble across these wild A/B claims from time to time and in almost every case we've seen no difference in conversions.
The solution: don't show the coupon code field or make it extremely easy for consumers to get coupon codes. I've noticed more and more stores put their coupon codes right in the header while you're browsing. So it's impossible NOT to get a coupon.
http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/research/promo/jpb... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205769)
By "in the header" you mean on the search-engine results page; don't you?
Do you think I will be a returning customer? -no
Il you subscribe to their special offer mailing lists you get their coupon codes. Of corse ou get a slap in your face when you see the coupn field box. But this is also where you should say how to get coupon codes.
Propose a subscription to your special coupon offering mailing list where you can also ommunicate about your product. This is opt in advertisement.
As a first time customer, you are not being "cheated". You are just a lot more expensive.
https://blogjet.cleverbridge.com/9/?scope=checkout&product=1...
It's not an ideal solution, but I believe this additional step helps a bit.
Now that I think of it, maybe even better strategy would be to buy a domain "blabla-coupon-code.com" and put there a coupon code for your thing with a small discount. People who like to search the web for coupons will be satisfied ;)
Then the radio ad or whatever can say, "Enter DAN SAVAGE as your referrer to receive a free gift!"
People might voluntarily divulge who referred them to your store. Only with the correct entry do you get a discount, as an added bonus to people who answered.
So incorrect results arn't technically incorrect, they're just bonus data.
I noticed this on Zappos and the first Google result for "zappos coupon" is this: http://www.zappos.com/truth-about-zappos-coupons
It frustrates me when I see a coupon code box and cannot find any working codes. Oftentimes the most recent codes for a retailer on RetaiMeNot haven't been active in months or years. On the flip side, when I find a code that saves me anything, even free shipping, I am ecstatic. I feel like I am responsible, thrifty and savvy and I have a proclivity to purchase more items from that retailer later on.
I think these emotions are worth evoking in customers and banning the coupon code box destroys this ability. A referral link doesn't capture as much of the emotional satisfaction as seeing your cart totals drop after typing in a string of characters and clicking "Apply to Cart." Retailers could just hide the coupon code box when there aren't any active coupons. When a coupon is active, the box reappears.
The best way for coupon code boxes to stop appearing is for developers and designers to bring it up with their client. A lot of the time, once the client is actually confronted with it has to make a decision, they choose not to have it.