How to Create Coupons in WooCommerce

Transcript

Hi, Michele Bergh here with “Bergh Consulting”.  And I thank you for joining me today. In this video we’re going to talk about “How to create a coupon for your customers on your website using the WooCommerce coupons option”. So you do want to make sure here under “WooCommerce” and “Settings” that you have the coupons enabled. That’s the only way that you’ll be able to use them. And that is right here on under “Enable coupons” and just click that box. To find the coupons on the left-hand side sidebar, you’ll scroll down here to “Marketing” and then click on “Coupons”. 

Now I started one here, I’m going to go ahead and delete that because we don’t need it. And start fresh. When creating a coupon there’s a couple different reasons, i mean, there’s probably a variety of reasons that people create coupons there are. But sometimes they’re intended for public use and you’re advertising that you have this discount and people can use the coupon code to take advantage of that discount and sometimes you create them for private reasons, for a private customer, for a variety of reasons you might do that. If you have a coupon code that you have created for a private use by somebody, there are some safeguards that you can take and we’re going to go over those to make sure that as best as you can that nobody else can use that coupon. But I do want you to be advised that there are browser extensions that people can use to search for coupons on your website. So it’s a good idea to keep on top of the coupons when they’ve been used and you don’t want them out there anymore make sure they’re not active, delete them. Whatever you need to do to make sure they’re just not available. 

I also want to say that I know people have some mixed feelings about this but I personally don’t feel that it’s bad customer service to cancel someone’s order and tell them that you know, unfortunately they used a coupon that was not available for public use and that they’re welcome to re-order if they’d like. They didn’t get the coupon legitimately. So, I don’t think it’s bad customer service to do that but you know, if it’s not a large discount and you’re happy for the sale there’s nothing wrong with taking it as well. 

So to create a coupon you can type anything that you want into the coupon code field. You can also click on this generate coupon code, which is going to give you a random set of numbers. I prefer to create my own. So that it’s easier for me to remember, if I’m typing it in an email or putting it on social media than some random set of numbers. Once you set up your coupon, you can use the description if you want to. Nobody sees this except you, but it can be helpful in remembering what that coupon was for. I don’t usually use this field, but it is there if you want to use it. 

So under the “General” tab we have a couple different options for the type of discount. You can offer people a “Percentage”, you can offer them a “Fixed cart discount” meaning, that they’re going to get so much off their total cart, or you can offer them a “Fixed product discount” meaning they’re going to get so much off of a product. So choose the option that you want and then set the “Coupon amount”. You can always hover over these little question marks if you have questions about these fields. But because this says fixed cart, if you do the fixed option, whatever you put in here is a dollar amount. If you do the percentage discount, then whatever you put in here will be a percentage. So just remember that. If you want them to be able to get “Free shipping” through this coupon offer, you have to make sure this is checked but you also have to make sure that you have a free shipping method available. So that’s a little bit more detailed but just know that you have an option to let them have free shipping if it works out that way. But you do have a couple of extra steps that you need to take, if you want that option to be available.

The last piece on this screen here is the “Expiration date”. Kind of speaks for itself. I usually go one day past whatever day I’m telling the public, the sale is good through. And for me really, it’s just a safeguard for me. So that, if someone is in a different time zone or you know, they’re trying to get in at the last minute, it’s not a big deal to me and this just also prevents any glitches. You know, from it maybe, anything earlier than I thought that I wanted it to. But how you do that is up to you. If you don’t want an expiration date on it you don’t have to put one in there. 

This “Usage restrictions” is the area where I was talking in part about security, but this is also can be used for how you’re setting up your sale. So for example, if you want to give 20% off but it’s a minimum spend of a $100, then you can put in a 100 here and that means that they will not be able to use that coupon code unless they’ve spent at least a $100. 

You also could put in a “Max” so that, if you’re offering 20% off up to a certain dollar point, then you can put that in here. If you don’t want them to be able to combine coupon offers, then you want to make sure this box is checked. If you don’t want them to be able to use the coupon on sale items, you want to make sure this box is checked as well. You can also designate your coupons for specific products. Only include these products and you just start typing until something pops up, here we go. And I could select this product and I’ll just stick it in there and if I made a mistake, I can just take it out. 

You can also say everything is on sale except these items and put those in here. You can do it by “Category”. So downloads are any other types of you know, products that you have, courses, anything. So whatever your categories are you can select specific ones and you can exclude specific ones just like you could with the products. 

And this last one here is particularly nice if you’re putting together a coupon for a person directly, that you can designate the email address here, that they have to use to use that coupon. And that will prevent anyone else from being able to access it. But you do want to make sure they know that they have to use that email address because sometimes people have multiple email addresses, and you don’t want them to get frustrated in the process. 

The “Usage limits” you have a couple of options here per coupon or per user. So if you want someone to only be able to use it the first time they order. You know, per user it’s a one-time use. If you only want them to be able to use this coupon once, you can just put in one-time use here or maybe you’re allowing anyone to use the coupon five times, you know. So you have a couple of options here. 

And at the end you just need to remember to publish everything that you’ve set up and that will make your coupon code valid and tell the date that you have set as an expiration, if you’ve selected an expiration date. Again I like to keep an eye on my coupon section and just for good measure, if I’m not using a coupon anymore, I will periodically go through and weed those out and delete them. It just keeps your site cleaner and prevents any potential for you know, something getting activated by mistake or somebody finding a code that you didn’t want to have it. So I do recommend keeping this area clean. 

If you have any questions don’t hesitate to reach out, I’m happy to help. Thanks for watching this video and I’ll see you in the next round.