Guide: Do not place a discount code field in the basket

When it comes to searching for discount codes, instead of attracting customers, you may lose a significant part of them. Profits too - in case of a 10% discount code, while having a 20% profit margin, it literally means losing half of the gain. Omnipresent fields for discount codes also teach customers that the price is negotiable and not having discount code means lack of resourcefulness.

A customer foraging for discount codes in external services can become distracted and lose any remaining enthusiasm for shopping. It can happen if customers see many active discount codes for different products and decide to spend more time on browsing for various options.

One of the reasons behind placing a discount code field in the basket is to increase the comfort of the seller. Sellers do not have to inform customers how to activate the code – the can just give the code to customers. Since the basket can be found by every customer, no extra steps are needed apart from entering the code. Yet, as we mentioned above, the extra comfort grained can translate to negative, long-term effects on your income.

It may seem that entering a discount code field is no big deal, yet research proves otherwise. We used to include the discount code field in all our standard templates by default, which after years of trend analysis is no longer the case. Even though we do not recommend it, the field can be added back on request.

The biggest driver for attracting the target customer demographic to your store should be competitive, standard product prices, not the ability to find a discount code for everything. Hance our advice not to include the discount code field in the basket globally.

How to activate a discount code in IdoSell with no discount code field in the basket?

The easiest way is to create a dedicated URL and it give to your customers is, e.g.: www.mystore.com/code.

You can simply place a short instruction next to a printed discount code or on the advertisement itself. In case of e-mails or sponsored links, you can embed a link which will immediately activate such code, without the need to enter anything. A discount code can even be activated by navigating to a specific product details page link, which is worth considering for external product ads. A detailed instruction and a ready to use URL can be found in the discount code edit module.

Another way of activating a discount code is to use the "discount_code" attribute in the url address of your store. Thanks to that, a customer will receive a discount code immediately after clicking on a link, and will not have to search for the proper subpage, or enter the code manually. This solution will be especially comfortable in case of using it in electronic marketing materials, e.g. newsletter campaigns.

To make discount code activation via URL, you simply need to add a ?discount_code=DISCOUNT_CODE parameter to your store's address, e.g.:

http://yourstore.iai-shop.com?discount_code=DISCOUNT_CODE

Additional positive communication effect

If a customer uses the /code subpage, then after entering a discount code (or a discount card ) they will be shown all active discounts. The customer will also see any individual discounts and will be encouraged to gather cumulative discounts.

To sum up communication with a customer using discount codes in such a way makes more sense than simply giving a discount for products already present in the basket.