Coupons are a powerful tool in your online promotional pricing strategy. Shoppers will frequently search for coupons before making a purchase and even a small discount is enough to tempt them to buy from you.


This program allows you to set up coupons for promotional pricing. Once a coupon is set up you then need to assign the coupon to the people who are allowed to use it on the checkout page by entering the code in the coupon code field. You can also use the "Auto Apply" feature* which automatically allocates coupons on the checkout page without the need to enter the code

*enable this in Site Settings > Prices & VAT and tick Enable support for auto applying coupons at checkout


Product Bundling & Conditional Offers
The Coupon System does not support conditional offers (e.g. if you buy product A you can get product B for £5 less). To achieve this, we recommend setting up a new product C for the combined offer and then promoting this on your site (for example,show it as an alternative product for product A).

In addition, we can create custom javascript to detect when product A is in the cart and pop a modal window showing the new product C with a button to replace product A in the cart. Please contact sales for this.

Note: If you are using stock control you will need to provision for the product C bundle.

Adding Coupons To Your Website


These instructions will give you guidance on how to include a coupon promotion on your website.

  1. Log in to the admin panel of your website.
  2. Once logged in, use the search bar in the top left hand corner and enter ‘Coupon’. This will bring up the coupon programs. (Alternatively Coupon is the 4th option on the list under Online Retailing).
  3. Click on the option ‘Coupon Manager’ this will bring you to a page where you can both add and assign coupons.
  4. Click on the ‘Add A Coupon’ button in the top right of the screen, this will navigate you to the ‘Adding a new promotional coupon / discount’ page.
  5. Enter the name of the coupon.
  6. Set Type to Coupon.
  7. Enter a description of the coupon, which is only visible at an admin level so no customers will be able to see this.
  8. There's also now a new field called "Public Comment (visible to customers)" which can be used to show to the customer as additional context for their coupon, such as which categories are included or excluded. This only shows in the Customer Area > Your Coupons (when enabled).
  9. ‘How much is this coupon worth’ is where you set the value that the coupon code will apply to the order. You can either give it a fixed value or a percentage discount.
  10. Tick Do you want this coupon to trigger free delivery if you wish to use this coupon to take off the cost of delivery and select the delivery zone(s) that apply
  11. In the boxes below you can optionally set a ‘Minimum level of spending to qualify’ meaning that customers will have to spend over  the value entered so they can receive the discount using the code, AND/OR you can enter in a ‘Minimum quantity to qualify’ so for example if you were to put the value 3 in this box, customers would have to be purchasing 3 items or more in order to use the coupon code. This means a coupon would only work where the buyer has to have at least 2 items in their cart and spends over a minimum level.
  12. Coupon to to be used on products on special offer. Tick this if you don’t mind the coupon being used with products already on offer, otherwise leave unticked.
  13. Coupon to be used with lump sum & free delivery discounts that you may also be offering. Leave the box un-ticked if you do not want this to be used in conjunction with lump sum discounts.
  14. ‘Multibuy Coupon’ is normally ticked by default and uses values from the ‘Minimum level of spending to qualify’ & ‘Minimum quantity to qualify’ and can be assigned to a category. NB If this is unticked, it will work take into account all products in the cart as long as one of them is in the assigned category.
    Specific use case example: Give a discount when someone buys at least 2 products from a category by setting the minimum quantity to 2 and assigning the coupon to the required category.   


  15. The next tick box allows allows for a lump sum coupon to be used with other existing percentage discount coupon promotions you may already be running.
  16. Exclude applying this coupon to the following categories - select categories that you want to exclude.
    Hint: To multi-select, hold down the CTRL or Command key (dependent on your computer) whilst clicking the name until it highlights. If you click it again it will unselect too.

    Excluding Certain Products From A General Promotion
    Set the required products into a new category in Category 5 called "Sale Exempt" and add a banner to the product to indicate it isn't included in the promotion e.g. "Not In Promo". Then set the "Sale Exempt" category to be excluded.

  17. Exclude applying this coupon to the following brands/manufacturers - select brand/manufacturers that you want to exclude.
  18. Use the ‘Start & Expiry’ date ranges to set the time duration for which the coupon is valid.
    TIP: If you want it to be for 1 day only then the end date will be the same as the start date.
  19. The field ‘Uses per user” allows you to set a limit for the amount of times a user can use the coupon code. Normally this would be set to 1. If you wish to allow unlimited uses by the user, then “tick for unlimited uses”.
  20. The next box allows you to set a limit for the total amount of times the coupon can be used by all users, or “tick for unlimited uses”. For example, this would be useful if you ran a first come, first served promotion with say only 100 purchases allowed to use the coupon.
  21. Finally, you can keep the generated coupon code which is displayed at the bottom of the page, or “Enter your own code Click Here” to the side of the code to enter your own code, for example BLACKFRIDAY.
  22. Once you are happy with all of the options you have chosen, click the save button at the bottom of the page.
  23. Your coupon is now created and you can now determine who can use it for which products or categories by assigning your coupon

 

Assigning Your Coupon & Using Auto Apply


Your coupons appear in Coupon Manager ready for you to assign them for use. Notice that there is a green bar on each coupon line: if it is solid green it means the coupon is assigned and therefore in use, if it is a faded green it means it is not assigned or in use.

 

1. When on ‘Coupon Manager’ in the top corner, click on the option ‘Assign Coupons To Users’.

2. You will be navigated to the ‘Assign Coupons’ page where the name of your coupon will be listed under the ‘Promotion Name’ dropdown.

3. The ‘User ID’ drop down will allow you to assign the coupon to ALL users or specific individual users.

4. The ‘User Group’ drop down will allow you to assign the coupon to ALL user groups or a specific user group if you have groups already in place.

5. The ‘Category’ drop down will allow you to assign the coupon to ALL product categories or a specific product category or multi-select a number of categories.

6. The ‘Manufacturer drop down will allow you to assign the coupon to ALL product manufacturers of a specific manufacturer or multi-select a number of manufacturers.

7. The ‘Product ID’ field will allow you to assign the coupon to ALL products or a specific product using the product ID or multi-select a number of products.


Multi-select allows you to give a discount for each of the products in the basket which match to each of the multi-selections made.

For example, if you multi-selected category A and category B, you would need to have a product in the basket in category A and another product which is in category B to trigger the discount. If you added another product in the basket which was not in either category A or B then that product would not receive the discount whereas the first two would.

Use case example:
If you buy an Xbox from the Game Machines category and a game from the Games category then you receive a 10% discount off each product when both are in the basket at the same time. If you also bought a cable from the Power Leads category then that would not receive a discount if it's not one of the multi-selected categories but the other two are.


8. The 'Auto Apply' field will allow this coupon to be automatically assigned on the checkout page, so the user does not have to enter it into the coupon code field. To enable this feature first, go into Admin > Site Settings > Prices & VAT and tick Enable support for auto applying coupons at checkout and then Update Settings. 

9. The 'Show As Deal' field will allow this deal to be shown in the checkout process as a prompt to buyers to spend more to get discounts (requires a licence upgrade to use this functionality)

10. The 'Single Use' field is used by system features like refer-a-friend to make sure a coupon can only be used once - requires a licence upgrade) 

11. You then go ahead and click the ‘Add New Assignment’ button to add this coupon rule.

12. If you want to set the coupon to a few specific categories / manufacturers / product ID repeat the process for assigning your coupon for each additional category, manufacturer etc, thereby creating multiple assignment rules for your coupon.

13. When you now go back to ‘Manage All Coupons’ you will notice that your coupon now has a green bar at the side, this now shows that it is assigned.

 

Test Your Coupon

 

Now your coupon is all in place, make sure you run through a test order and check it redeems correctly on the checkout page, by entering it into the coupon code field. If you have set up the auto apply feature, then it will automatically be applied on the checkout page.

 

Advertise Your Promotion

 

You will need to advertise your promotion and coupon code for the duration it is in play. For example, by adding Home page sliders, emailing users, running a paid ad campaign, updating content on product and category pages and even displaying the promotion and coupon code on the checkout page text (unless you use auto apply, in which case it will work automatically).


Coupon Performance Report


When viewing your coupons in Coupon Manager, when you hover over one of the rows you have a Report link which enables you to view the performance of the coupon within a specified time range, how it was used and a drill-down list of orders it was used on. 


Finding Coupons


Via Coupon Manager you can search for coupons by name or code easily to find a specific coupon: