The Box on Your Site That Costs You Money

The Coupon Box

If you have a coupon box on your site, it can be a great tool for promotions.  Offer a special discount by getting out that coupon number to the people who can use the offer.  But there’s also a cost of having that coupon box on the site–no, there aren’t any extra charges from your hosting company, the costs come from lost sales.

What Happens

When a customer is ready to buy and has put merchandize into the shopping cart, and then goes to the shopping cart to check out, what happens if they see a coupon box and don’t have a coupon?  What message is sent?  How do you feel when you get to the checkout page and don’t have a coupon?

The customer without a coupon can infer the message “You’re paying more than someone else who has a coupon!”  That’s a nicer message than the other message that’s just underneath it:  “Some other customer is more important to us than you because we gave that customer a discount that we’re not giving you.”

What To Do

What can you do?  You’d like to be able to offer coupon discounts from time to time, or perhaps offer a coupon to some special customer all the time.  Take a close look at the use of coupons.  How many sales do you actually make with coupons?  If that coupon box is on your site but you’re not giving coupons now, take it off.  And put it back when you make an offer.  Or, instead, when you offer a discount, offer it to everyone who comes to the site!

The Bottom Line

Don’t leave that coupon box on your checkout page unless you really need it.

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