Friday, July 22, 2011

Ways to Use Coupon and Discount Codes in Your Website - Drive Sales and Learn About Your Business!

If you have a website and you sell products, you will want to consider using coupon codes and discount codes. The proper use of them can teach you a great deal about your business while also driving sales.

1) E-Commerce Sites

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Coupon codes and discount codes are a must for e-commerce sites. Consumers expect them and look for them. You should create these codes with definite expiration dates and with specific goals in mind.

Sample goals:

- Move a specific line of products (product-specific codes)

- Increase overall sales (site-wide code)

- Pre-sell items (product-specific code)

- Clearance items (product-specific code)

- Announce new product line (product-specific code)

When you set up your coupon or discount codes, you also want to track where the person found the code. Set up different codes for each of the following resources:

- Your internal blog and website

- Your e-mail distribution list

- One for each of your social media accounts/sites

- External blogs (one per blog)

- External sites (one per site)

Setting up your coupon and discount codes in this manner will help you learn where your buyers are coming from. You want to know who is actually buying on your site and where are they coming from. Coupon codes are a good way to start to learn this.

You can even set up different coupon and discount amounts based on the resource. For example, you may negotiate with a large blog that you will offer their readers a bigger discount code than offered anywhere else in exchange for a blog posting about your site. It can be an effective bargaining chip because all blog owners want to reward their followers.

2) Brick and Mortar Stores

Your website may or may not sell directly online. Regardless of whether or not it does, you want to offer coupon codes and discount codes that they can print and bring into your store. This will help you start to see how much traffic is driven from your site to your store.

Auto dealerships and restaurants effectively use this to gauge how well their online marketing is going. Simply have a printable coupon or discount certificate that must be presented at your business and see the effect of your marketing.

Similar to the e-commerce sites, you want to have different certificates or coupon codes based on where they found you. This will help you determine which resources are driving the most traffic to your website.

3) Frequency and Discount Amounts

At the very least you should offer quarterly discount codes. Depending on your business you may consider monthly, weekly or even daily specials. If you are going to offer any discount codes you want to make sure they are real. People will read right through "fake" discounts and you will lose all credibility.

Some discount and coupon codes you can consider:

- Free domestic shipping

- Free overnight shipping

- 10% - 90% off (you determine the appropriate percentage off)

- Buy 1 get 1 free (or similar)

- Free gift with purchase

Again, the key is creating a real discount code or coupon code that has value. If you do this you can increase sales while also learning important information about where your business gets its clients/customers.

Ways to Use Coupon and Discount Codes in Your Website - Drive Sales and Learn About Your Business!

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