Until a few years ago I swore by the traditional method of shopping. The process seemed simple – Go to a “dedicated” store, take a look at the products, get a discount for being a loyal customer, make the purchase and receive the product immediately.
The arrangement was a win-win situation for both me, as a customer as well as for the shop owner.
Present Day
Sliding back to the current scenario, this arrangement no longer holds true. My purchase patterns have changed and my frequency of online purchases have been immensely influenced by the eCommerce boom. This often leaves me wanting for better deals. It’s this lingering feeling of hope to get a better deal that got us thinking at WisdmLabs and the development of Customer Specific Pricing for WooCommerce plugin was initiated. The rest, as they say, is history. 🙂
So why am I talking about this plugin today?
Well, we have updated the plugin and we have updated it in a BIG way. So let’s sneak into what you’ll be seeing in the recently released version.
The Past
Yeah, I know I said without any further ado. But let’s just talk about the existing functionality of the plugin for those who have just come in. If you are already using this plugin then you can dive straight to the next section.
When we started out with Customer Specific Pricing for WooCommerce, the plugin was simple and mainly centered around one main requirement – an option to specify customer specific pricing for WooCommerce store products.
So if you want to reward a customer for their loyalty, the plugin allows you to automate the process effortlessly.
Here’s what you would have to do. Traverse the following path in your dashboard, Product Page –> Product Data –> Customer Specific Pricing –> Customer Based Pricing
Here, you can choose the customer you intend to give a discount to, from a drop down list available. You can then specify the price of that particular product for the selected customer in the ‘Price’ field provided and you’re done. Oh no! You’re not done just as yet. Don’t forget to publish or update the product to reflect the changes on your website.
The Change Catalysts
So what prompted the change?
Developing software for a ‘services‘ project is vastly different from developing a product. A services project is mostly standard – Client gives the requirements and the software is developed keeping in mind these requirements.
For a product, however, it is different! Here the scope for a product is defined after carefully evaluating the demand for a particular functionality among users. The development of a plugin or its feature is generally undertaken based on the impact of the feature to a particular system and user demand. We were aware of the impact of the features developed for this update. As for user demand, the steady stream of requests from existing and potential customers confirmed our doubts and proved to be a dominant catalyst while locking in on the features.
What’s New?
1. Role Based Pricing
The role based pricing option allows a shop owner to define a specialized prize for users based on their role instead of specifying a custom price for individual customers.
So now if you want to give customers more benefit over subscribed users all you have to do is go to the Product Page –> Product Data –> Customer Specific Pricing –> Role Based Pricing option in the backend.
Here you will have to select the user role you want to apply a special price for and then define the custom rate in the ‘Price’ field provided for that user role. You can specify a separate rate for every role defined in your system.
2. Group Based Pricing
The group based pricing takes customer specific pricing to an all new level. The feature has been developed to work with the Groups plugin that is available in the WordPress plugins repository free of cost.
Essentially the Groups plugin allows users to create and manage various groups. The Group-Based Pricing feature in Customer Specific Pricing for WooCommerce allows shop owners to define a specialized WooCommerce product price for a specific group of users.
The setting option for this feature is much the same as the two options earlier. You will have to go to the Product Page –> Product Data –> Customer Specific Pricing option in the backend.
This time though you will have to go the ‘Group Based Pricing’ option and select the group for which you want to define a customized price.
A good way of using this feature would be by defining groups based on the total cost of customer purchases. These groups can then be offered discounts on products based on the total amount they have spent on the website. Higher the total amount spent, higher will be the discount.
What Happens if a User Belongs to a Group as well as a User Role?
When I published this post earlier last week I had skipped this point in the post. Interestingly enough though we got a comment on this post inquiring about this scenario and I certainly feel this should be answered in the post as opposed to the comments section.
Let’s take on this question with an example.
Let us assume that a Customer (User Role) Alicia has been added to the ‘Frequent Shopper‘ group. Now if custom rates have been defined for the user role ‘Customer‘ and for the user group ‘Frequent Shopper‘ then the product price associated with the user role will precede the product price associated with user group. Which means Alicia will purchase the product at the rate associated with the user role ‘Customer‘.
The updated version of the plugin follows the following order of priority – Customer Based Price, User Role Based Price, Group Based Price – with customer based price getting the highest priority.
Another scenario that can ensue is that Alicia can be a part of two or more groups which have been offered a customized price for the same product. Let us assume that Alicia is part of the ‘Festive Shoppers‘ list along with being a part of the ‘Frequent Shopper‘ group. Let’s try to understand this with an example.
Product Price – $30
Product Price for Festive Shoppers – $25
Product Price for Frequent Shoppers – $20
In this scenario Alicia will be charged the rate defined for the Frequent Shoppers group which is the least. Summing it up, if a user is part of two or more groups that have been assigned a customized price for a particular product then the customer will be able to purchase the product at the least price.
What Does this Mean for You?
Customer Specific Pricing for WooCommerce can prove to be an incredibly useful plugin. Not only does it make your customers feel special, it also makes them keep coming back for more. This trend can have a significant impact on sales and profit margins.
If you already have this plugin, all you gotta do is watch out for the update option in your dashboard. As for the others, what are you waiting for? Go make the purchase now!
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3 Responses
Tahseen, thanks for the update. But what happens when a user belongs to a group as well as role to which different discounts are applied?
Rohan, thanks for bringing up that point. I have updated the post to answer your question 🙂
Can one group get 10% off on everything, but another has prices set per product? I have a strange need where my client has a set price list for their customers (groups). The problem is we set their discount, say 10%, 20%, etc. BUT since they need to get to an exact price our current group pricing is set to 4 decimal places. What happens with woocommerce rounding at 2 decimals, we end up with prices being off by a few cents. So i need for some clients to set a straight discount across the board, and others need to be changed on a product by product level. Can your plugin handle this?