There are a lot of ways to convince users to purchase from your store. You can offer free shipping and set lower prices for bulk purchases. If you want to take things one step further, you can even offer a WooCommerce sitewide discount.
With a sitewide discount, customers can get some amazing deals which will likely translate to increased sales. If you’re using Advanced Coupons, setting up WooCommerce sitewide discounts is pretty straightforward.
Blanket storewide discounts might not always be a good business move, though, and in this article, we’ll explore why that is. Let’s talk about prices!
How To Do A WooCommerce Sitewide Discount
With Advanced Coupons, you have full control over the deals you offer within your store. You can create highly-targeted coupons or go all out and offer sitewide discounts if the situation calls for it.
You can do a WooCommerce sitewide discount by creating a new coupon without any type of usage restrictions or cart conditions. To do this, go into WooCommerce > Coupons > Add coupon.
On the next screen, you can set a percentage discount under Coupon data > General:
By default, new coupons don’t have any pre-set restrictions. You can configure these through the Usage restriction and Cart Conditions options for each coupon you create:
The purpose of those settings is to help you design coupons that users can’t abuse (to prevent monetary losses). Since you’re offering a sitewide discount, though, you’ll need to go easy on restrictions (otherwise it’s not really a global deal).
Some features you should consider include role restrictions – so only customers can use the discount – and auto-apply. With auto-apply, every purchase will get the 20% discount without that user having to enter a coupon code manually.
It’s important to understand this type of promotion isn’t something you should implement without a lot of consideration. Sitewide discounts are only a viable option in very specific scenarios, such as going-out-of-business sales. Let’s talk about why that is.
3 Reasons Not To Offer A WooCommerce Sitewide Discount
There’s a reason why blanket discounts aren’t more popular either in online or physical stores. In fact, there are plenty of reasons why that is, so let’s start by talking about monetary losses.
1. Costs vary by product
The most compelling argument against blanket discounts is that not every product you sell costs the same. It’s one thing to offer a 10% discount coupon for a $10 item, but if that same product costs $500, you’ll probably come out losing.
For any discount or promotion to be worthwhile for you as a store owner, you need to run some calculations beforehand. Thus, this involves asking questions such as:
- How big of a discount can I offer on X product while still making money?
- Are there other types of discounts or promotions I can run?
- How good of a deal do I have to offer to get more sales?
Successful promotions often involve a lot of prior trial and error. Some of your coupons will bring in more sales than others, so it’s important that you learn from each experience. Ultimately, your goal should be to offer smarter discounts instead of bigger ones.
2. Highly-targeted deals are a better alternative
With Advanced Coupons, you have full control over every aspect of your discounts. You can create coupon codes that only work for one purchase per user, specific product types, purchases over X amount, and more.
There are plenty of advantages to using targeted coupons over sitewide discounts, including:
- You can drastically limit your monetary losses.
- They help prevent coupon abuse (which in turn saves you even more money).
- Targeted coupons require less micromanagement on your end.
There’s almost no limit to the type and number of discounts you can offer on your site. Using Advanced Coupons, setting restrictions and conditions is remarkably simple. That means there’s little reason to run a WooCommerce sitewide discount instead.
3. Advanced Coupons offers better discount alternatives
A moment ago, we touched on how Advanced Coupons offers you plenty of promotion and discount options. If you’ve experimented with the plugin, some of these might sound familiar:
- Buy One Get One (BOGO) deals
- Give discounts on the second or third product
- One-time-use welcome discounts
Those are just a handful of the deals you can offer with the right coupon system. If you take the time to learn how to use Advanced Coupons, it’s pretty hard to lose money on any of the promotions you run.
More importantly, if you configure your coupons correctly, they require very little micromanagement. Unlike with sitewide discounts, you won’t have to keep an eye on every sale you make. Instead, you can let your offers run their course while you focus on other aspects of growing your store.
Conclusion
Offering a WooCommerce sitewide discount can help you increase sales dramatically. If you’re liquidating your inventory, sitewide discounts can help you move products faster. However, outside of that scenario, there are plenty of better ways to help increase your store’s sales.
Let’s break down the three main reasons why offering sitewide discounts is almost never the best approach you can take:
- Costs vary by product, so you may lose money on some sales.
- Highly-targeted deals are a better alternative.
- Advanced Coupons offers you plenty of more effective discount alternatives.
Do you have any questions about offering WooCommerce sitewide deals? Let’s talk about them in the comments section below!
