Promo Codes: Discounts vs. Benefits for Ecommerce

Soon after the holiday shopping season begins, customers will be on the lookout for discounts on seasonal products. If properly designed, a promotional code can provide shoppers with the discounts they seek while also assisting merchants in increasing sales and profits. A promotional code is more complicated than simply putting a 10 percent discount label on everything. It must be created in such a way that it provides the greatest possible benefit to your company.

What Is a Good Promo Code?

A good promotional code is one that benefits both the customers and the company itself.

It is important for shoppers to find a promo code appealing. If you want to achieve this, you should remember three rules:

• It is easy to remember
• It is easy to calculate.
• Easy to apply

An easy-to-remember promotional code is one that contains common words. To give you an example, “Thanksgiving2015” or “BlackFriday2015″ are both easy to recall. PROMOA342 ” seems difficult to keep in mind while shopping. Provide convenience for the shoppers rather than for yourself.

Making use of round numbers should allow you to calculate the promo code discount quickly and efficiently. It is much simpler to compute 10 percent off than 14 percent off, for instance. Similar to that, $20 off with all orders over $100 is a simple mathematical equation.

Finally, the more easily a promotional code can be applied, the greater the probability that it will be used and the greater the number of transactions you will have. In this case, the guidelines are much more relaxed, allowing a great deal of flexibility with regard to the date, type of product, and various other parameters. Don’t make your customers think about it. It is possible that they will leave your website without making a purchase if they are uncertain.

Holiday Business Goals

Every business has different holiday goals. Some may seek to achieve a specific gross profit margin, while others may seek to raise public awareness of their products or services. The following are three common objectives of eCommerce merchants:

• Doing better than planned, with increased profit.
• finding new customers without losing money.
• transferring inventory that has not been sold.

It’s possible to reduce all three objectives to the same promo code calculation with a few minor tweaks. If you want to customize this calculation for your specific situation, you’ll require direct exposure to your analytics first.

Consider the following factors when developing your promo code model, which will vary depending on the nature of your business.

1. Memberships

Compared to non-members, existing members demonstrate a higher level of loyalty. Providing a promo code may not have a significant impact on the overall conversion rate if members account for the majority of site earnings.

2. Product mix

When products vary widely in price, using average order values can make the products appear to be less expensive than they actually are. The price of products must be reviewed using different discounts and conversion rates in order to show accurate information.

3. Channel focus

It is important to alter the exchange rate regarding the expected channel mix if the Black Friday traffic will be different from the average month’s traffic (for example, if the traffic will come from pay-per-click, search engine optimization, social media, and email).

Shortly put, investing the necessary time and effort into carefully designing your promotional codes will pay dividends for your company during the upcoming holiday season. Additionally, a number of wrinkles can be included in the model to improve the accuracy. However, the general concept is to arrive at a rough estimate of the discount percentage, and not to get it down to a whole number of accuracies.

Coupon Codes vs. Promo Codes

As with all online stores, customers are able to only use alphanumeric codes to place orders with online-only stores. However, promo codes offer benefits beyond those of standard cut-out-and-keep coupons. The first benefit of using coupon codes is that you can restrict how many customers can take part in a promotion. The option to share it with individual users, like first buyers or subscribers to your mailing list, who have indicated that they wish to be removed from your mailing list exists as well.

The Bottom Line

Coupons will encourage customers to visit your store. The key is to plan your coupon strategy in advance so that you can determine whether or not your discount business model will boost your long-term customer loyalty or your sales per buyer.

Also Read: 7 Creative Offline Promotion Ideas For Your Business