The power of discounting is not a secret.
Ask any retail business, whether traditional or modern, and they’ll tell you how magically discounts help them increase their sales. When applied properly, it’s a foolproof way of targeting more customers in less time.
It works because it creates the fear of missing out (FOMO) in the minds of customers, which prompts them to take action (purchase). Therefore, if you run an e-commerce store then it’s a given that you too should try the power of discounting strategies to boost the sales of your store.
Now the question is… how do you start, and which strategies do you use? More importantly, which tools can help you leverage them in an easy manner?
The answers to all these questions form the rest of this article. Keep reading, and by the end of this article, you’ll have a pretty good idea of various discount strategies that may suit your business and the tools that can help you implement them.
There are many different types of strategies you can use. Some of the common ones we’re going to explain here:
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1. Increase memberships with role-based discounts
In this type of strategy, you set product discounts based on different user roles like wholesalers, distributors, retailers, managers, etc.
This works best to increase memberships and when you’ve different types of customers who purchase in various quantities based on their requirements. For instance, you can offer different types of discounts to retailers, wholesalers, and individual customers.
Example: Udemy allows Business users to purchase a bulk of its courses at a discount so organizations can train all of their employees at a reasonable cost.
2. Boost bulk sales with quantity-based discounts
These types of discounts provide you the opportunity to create plenty of offers by offering discounts based on quantity.
For instance, if you have a bookstore then you can offer 2 books at 10% off, 3 books at 15% off, 5 books at 30% off, and so on. This strategy is best to boost the sales of your products when you’ve few customers with high purchasing power to purchase in bulk.
Example: If you’ve ever seen a buy one, get one free offer on any of the popular e-commerce sites, you’ve seen this kind of discount in action. This strategy is so popular that it’s applied by almost all e-commerce companies at some point.
3. Save time with store-wide discounts and deals
This type of discount is often known as ‘Sale’. Often e-commerce companies run them on special occasions or during festive seasons like Christmas, New Year, etc.
These discounts enable you to save time and focus on other areas of your business throughout the rest of the year, so you can manage both your e-commerce store as well as sales campaigns in an effective manner.
Example: India’s leading e-commerce giant Flipkart organizes a Big Billion Day sale every year before the festive season. Black Friday sale in the US is another example of seasonal store-wide sales
4. Increase sales of trending products with Category-based discounts
Another discounting strategy is to set product discounts on the basis of product category/subcategory. These discounts are special because they can be used to boost the sales of products belonging to almost any category/subcategory.
You can use this strategy to boost the sales of trending products. The discounts can be made available either to all customers or to a select group of customers based on their user roles or other criteria.
Example: Amazon frequently uses category discounts to sell trending products (i.e. electronics, appliances, clothes, etc.) at a discount.
5. Boost average order size with Cart Discounts
These are very personalized discounts that can be offered on items added to someone’s cart. You can create different discounting rules to automatically trigger offers to New users, existing users, and guest users.
You can also apply various tricks in this strategy i.e. awarding higher discounts on larger cart value. The key benefit of this strategy is that it promotes high-value orders, thus boosting your average income per sale.
Example: Leading e-commerce companies like eBay and Amazon offer a certain percentage off on each order whose cart value is above a predetermined amount.
6. Lure customers with strike-through prices
This is not a discounting strategy per se, but a trick that can work wonderfully with all of the other discounting strategies mentioned above.
It has been noted in many studies that displaying the non-discounted price with strike-through format alongside the discounted price lures more people into buying something. You too can see it in action by implementing it in your WooCommerce store.
Example: Amazon shows the old price in strikethrough format on all of its product pages while running a sale.
7. Upsell with custom messages on the cart page
Again, not a strategy in itself but a trick that can help you boost the cart value for strategy No.5 mentioned above.
Add custom messages on the cart page that prompt the users to increase their purchase value for availing discounts. This will help in upselling your products, which is a crucial sales strategy leveraged by all e-commerce stores.
Example: Zappos shows a “Customers who bought this also bought” section on its shopping cart page in full width to boost upselling.
Implement the strategies on your WooStore
Now, different customers (wholesalers, retailers, group-specific, special customers, etc.) coming to your store, expect certain discounts and pricing to suit their needs.
And, using the above strategies smartly will not just fulfill their needs but also shoot up your average orders.
So, what’re you waiting for? Go ahead and quickly find ways to offer and implement these discounting strategies for different types of customers.
Having said that, if you have any doubts or questions, feel free to post them in the comments below. We’ll try our best to answer them as soon as possible.
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