Thanks - best idea ever!

request coupon code

[ssgumby]

I just wanted to say thanks to whoever offered the idea of adding a link for getting a coupon code on checkout. I wish I could
remember who posted it. Anyway, our site started up on July 1 06. We are in a very competitive market. We received 20
orders in July with an average of 100 visitors a day. Note, my estimates on visitors is I take my total visitors and
divide by 2 to account for spiders, aol, me ... Next, in early August I added the request a coupon link and we receive
5-10 requests a day. We are averaging 150 visitors a day and we had 40 total orders for august.

Our strategy is lots of marketing .. cheap and free marketing is our goal but we do dabble in the cpc area. We are on most
of the shopping sites, have done an ad in an email newsletter, ran ads on large national sites and have offered exceptional
customer service. We ship all orders that arrive by 2 pm EST the same day; this has been huge for us. We sponsor grand prize
contests for large national sites by offering gift certificates to our site. We sponsored a "community" event. We sent out
mailers post card style.

Our next steps are to crank up our blog, crank up our forum postings, get flyers out in large cities where we know we
can attract customers and crank up the holiday noise.

Thanks for all the GREAT insight here. I have read 70% of ALL the posts in this forum.

[Brett_Tabke]

Excellent.

How did you do your "request coupon" code? Where abouts on the page did you put it? Was it a two step process? Or click-and get coupon?

[ssgumby]

Ok, let me go over my checkout process.

We have a 4 step process

1. Review - review cart contents, change quantity, estimate shipping and enter coupon code.
THis screen gives the "total" as it will appear on the credit card.

2. Customer Detail Information - shipping address, billing address, comments, etc

3. Pick shipping - Here the user can select a different shipping method than the one they estimated.

4. Credit Card information

Now, on step 1 next to our coupon code field we had a button for apply coupon. Below this we added a large
coupon image with "Don't have coupon, click here to get one." When they click, they subscribe to our
coupon newsletter which will send them an immediate 5% off total order. We then will follow up with a monthly coupon
savings newsletter with various discounts.

I want to work on narrowing my checkout down to 2 or 3 steps in the future

[evaddnomaid]

What sort of coupons do you offer? Do they give the buyer a percentage off?

If you are going to put the "get a coupon" link right next to the code entry box on checkout, then why even offer coupons at all? Why not just reduce the price of the merchandise in the first place? Isn't the point of coupons that they are a little bit scarce, so the buyer feels like he accomplished something by finding a coupon? Or does the offer of a coupon serve as inducement for buyers to sign up for your opt-in email newsletter?

[Stores]

I would be concerned that taking them off your checkout page to have to check email might hurt conversion in the long run. You numbers seem to say otherwise, but there are a lot of studies that would disagree.

[jsinger]

Interesting post. I remember a pretty knowledgeable guy here who said that even when he plastered word about his coupons all over the site --even right in the cart--only 1/3 of his visitors used them!

Go figure!

[ssgumby]

We offer various coupons, most of which are a % off. The way it works is, they click the link and it pops up, they then enter email and name and submit which present them a screen with the coupon code. We then email the same code to them and ask them to forward on to family\friends. So technically, we never have them leave the cart.

We offer this because we get them signed up for montly promotions.

It definitely has made a difference for us and I appreciate the person who suggested it here. Again, I dont remeber who it was as I read through most all these posts.