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Consumer online spending habits continue to evolve, and as average shoppers look for new ways to stretch their budgets during tough economic times, online coupon usage has grown. In fact, online searches for coupons and offers have increased by 58 percent over the past year. Savvy shoppers are becoming more familiar with online coupons and the potential savings they can provide. On the surface, this presents a major opportunity for online merchants that use coupons as a means to market and promote their products, but a closer look reveals a dated and ineffective process.
shopping cart abandonment & voucher codes
Posted by: Charles Nicholls 2009-12-04 05:32:22 In reply to: Daniel Greenberg
Hi Daniel
Thanks this is a useful article. For many retailers, promotions are a way of life and it’s hard to change a habit of a lifetime. So your advice on one time or limited life coupons is totally valid.
There’s no sign of coupon aggregator sites going away, if anything they are growing fast. 2009 has also see widespread discount-hunting behavior by consumers, especially the more affluent and educated.
One approach that ecommerce teams can take is to bring promotion codes on site. The goal here is to keep the customer on the site and avoid them leaving to visit a coupon aggregator site and the associated afilliate commissions.
Macy’s is a great example here. By setting up a dedicated page that lists all of their promotions on their site, Macy’s are then able to promote a link to the page from the promo code box. I wrote a blog on this www.websiteconversion.blogspot.com/2009/09/voucher-codes-website-conversion.html, with screen shots.
In the same blog I also look at Office Max which has taken a slightly different approach.
The other main technique for boosting website concversion, and reduce overall shopping cart abandonment, is to follow up on abandoned shopping carts. It works incredibly well, recovering up to 50% of the abandoned carts this way. SeeWhy has a free tool that ecommerce and marketing can use for this (www.seewhy.com)
Thanks this is a useful article. For many retailers, promotions are a way of life and it’s hard to change a habit of a lifetime. So your advice on one time or limited life coupons is totally valid.
There’s no sign of coupon aggregator sites going away, if anything they are growing fast. 2009 has also see widespread discount-hunting behavior by consumers, especially the more affluent and educated.
One approach that ecommerce teams can take is to bring promotion codes on site. The goal here is to keep the customer on the site and avoid them leaving to visit a coupon aggregator site and the associated afilliate commissions.
Macy’s is a great example here. By setting up a dedicated page that lists all of their promotions on their site, Macy’s are then able to promote a link to the page from the promo code box. I wrote a blog on this www.websiteconversion.blogspot.com/2009/09/voucher-codes-website-conversion.html, with screen shots.
In the same blog I also look at Office Max which has taken a slightly different approach.
The other main technique for boosting website concversion, and reduce overall shopping cart abandonment, is to follow up on abandoned shopping carts. It works incredibly well, recovering up to 50% of the abandoned carts this way. SeeWhy has a free tool that ecommerce and marketing can use for this (www.seewhy.com)
