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This coupon code is a slap in the face
- free652 13y agoCompany logic: Because why make a discount for you if you're buying anyway. Coupons codes are usually part of ad campaigns.
- mijustin 13y agoExactly. This is why more companies should follow Gumroad's lead: they let you send out a link with the code, but don't display the coupon field in your checkout form.
- johnward 13y agoI think this is the best way to handle coupons. That way you aren't enticing people to leave the check out process once they've committed to buying. You also reward loyal customers with special links. I mean all you have to do is make the coupon field hidden and pass a get var.
- brianbreslin 13y agoDid no-one learn anything from JCPenney debacle? People LOVE coupons. I've never seen a coupon code field, where I didn't find a coupon and felt like I was getting hoodwinked as this author seems to suggest. Coupon codes are useful for promos and such. Not every customer pays the same amount, thats how the world works.
- pbj 13y agoI second this. There have been plenty of studies that show consumers love the idea of savings, even if they're just an illusion. People would rather pay $20 for a $25 item knowing they saved $5 rather than just paying $20 with no savings.
- johnward 13y agoI think this is how Kohls works. Anytime we buy something there the receipt says like "total $30. You saved $83.26!". I know I really didn't save anything because I wouldn't pay $100+ for the things I purchased anyway and they wouldn't sell them for that much, but there is some effect to seeing things like that.
- larrys 13y ago"thats how the world works" I love that. In start up land people always seem to ignore things that have been done successfully for years thinking that certainly there is something wrong and legacy business must be making huge mistakes and throwing out their money on things just because "it's the way it's always been done". The problem of course is understanding which one of those things are wrong and which actually work (to which you really don't need studies) to prove.
- liquidise 13y agoI think you are missing the perspective of the article. Coupons (and their online codes) are a great tool for the recipients. The article is from the perspective of a customer without a coupon. In that case, the presence of the coupon code field actually makes you less likely to buy or convert. This article isn;t blaming the methodology. It is saying the status-quo presentation is poor and needs improvement.
- ruswick 13y agoThey can go online and search for coupons. It never takes me more than two or three minutes to find a coupon through Retailmenot and another aggregator. If no coupon exist or if they're all expired, then I'll pay full price. There is no downside for me. I don't understand why this equivalent to a "slap in the face." Frankly, this vastly improves my shopping experience through occasionally saving me money, while never exposing me to any risk or increasing the prices that I pay.
- brianbreslin 13y agooh i got the perspective. I just think the guy is being overly dramatic. So much of this stuff is overly subjective anyway. If he came in already with intent to purchase sees possible savings but can't find them, he is unlikely to leave because his mind was already expecting to pay X. On one of our products http://pressbackup.com http://pressbackup.com we have a coupon code, if customers can't find one, and they email me, I will generate one just for them. Those customers stick around for a LONG time.
- thufry 13y agoIn the analogous retail situation, with physical coupons, there is no "coupon code" field -- the cashier does not ask you "Do you have any coupons today?" Even worse would be for them to ask "Do you have the $10 off coupon on this dog food?" you'd feel like you lost $10. If you have a coupon, you present it to the cashier, and other customers aren't made aware of the fact that they're not getting the best price.
- nwh 13y agoI've had this a lot actually, to the point of absolutely ridiculous coupons that gave me 40%, even 75% off at one point. It's a pain in the ass to have to Google around for a code that lets me pay the same as everybody else.
- ronaldx 13y agoThis illustrates a case where coupon codes are working as they are supposed to - if it's too much of a pain in the ass for you to Google, the retailer will be happy for you to pay the higher price. Price Discrimination 101.
- croisillon 13y agoThis is not always the case, a coupon is not always to get a fraction discount but can be a way to redeem a voucher. Since it's a similar worklfow, websites display it a similar way, leading to this misinterpretation.
- ScottWhigham 13y agoCorrect. I'm guessing English is not your first language and thus the previous downvote(s). We use "voucher codes" this way - we don't have to educate the customer at all; they get it, which leads to a happier customer experience and less customer service headaches.
- rthomas6 13y agoEverybody here knows about retailmenot.com, right? For the majority of places, you'll find a good repository of coupon codes without having to sift through Google results.
- nodata 13y agoI can't remember the last time I found a decent coupon code there.
- rthomas6 13y agoWell, to give specific examples of coupons I found there, I usually get 20% off when I order Papa Johns, and I got 2 months free web hosting from Digital Ocean. For Amazon, you're right; they don't usually have anything good for Amazon. For smaller places, my experience has been that they have nice coupon codes if they exist.
- mijustin 13y agoI think it's bad customer service to force someone to Google for a coupon code; you're also running a risk (as a site owner) that the person will simply abandon their cart. See also this thread here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6204261 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6204261 I like petercooper's idea of pre-populating the coupon field with a default code.
- mcintyre1994 13y agoI wonder if a competitor could grab the sale by purchasing ads against "<Your Company> Coupons" claiming to be 20% cheaper or something.
- johnward 13y agoThey could. Accept they won't be buying them from Google since they have ridiculous trademark rules. You can't bid on things like that now.
- mmatants 13y agoHonestly, I never noticed myself feeling that way. Is this really losing that many sales when it comes down to metrics? To me, coupons are always seen as temporary gifts from the company to butter up my loyalty. So paying full price still feels fair. But again, it's all about metrics. It would be great to see how different audiences respond.
- cdjk 13y agoIt causes noticeable dropoff in stores. I don't remember the numbers, but we did an A/B test and noticed a difference. We switched to referrer URLs for discounts instead. I wanted to try an experiment of putting a bunch of low value discount codes out there that would have been easy to find, and see how that affects dropoff, but we never did that.
- chcleaves 13y agoIf you put forth a little bit of effort you can find any code on the Internet - it sets you apart from the shoppers who don't care and won't take the time to look for one (which is the majority of America) hence why retailers still consistently leak codes out there.
- joshuahedlund 13y agoHas anybody actually done any A/B testing on this sort of thing, or are we just making competing assertions about how slapped in the face we personally feel or not? Edit: Thanks, some pretty good results out there.
- martin-adams 13y agoNot A/B testing per-se, but for a client of mine we tried it out and had lots of phone calls asking how to get a discount code. It just caused confusions and more customer service work.
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- FooBarWidget 13y agoI can't remember the details, but I did read an article a while ago in which Microsoft or Amazon or something increased their conversion rate significantly by hiding the coupon field.
- jeremybencken 13y agoThere's a professor at Vanderbilt who published this paper on the topic (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205769) in the Journal of Product & Brand Management. Providing a code and its attendant price reduction clearly had positive effects on perceptions of fairness and satisfaction when compared to the control group. ...prompting for a code in the absence of having one had negative effects on fairness, satisfaction, and completion when compared to the control. As would be expected from these findings, the three groups were ranked in the predicted order (code > control > no code) for all dependent variables, including intention to repatronize and recommend the online store. Equity theory, then, becomes an alternative explanation for reactions to code provision and non-provision... the Web buyer without a code experiences the additional impact of the inequity perceived if others are imagined to have a code, are selectively provided one, or are simply viewed as "special" in some sense.
- ScottWhigham 13y ago
- Raphmedia 13y agoIt's quite the opposite if you ask me. After you spent 15 minutes looking online for that coupon AND you find one that gives you that little 10%... Well, it makes you happy and probably makes it so that you really will proceed with the purchase. "Hey, I spent a looonnng 5 minutes searching AND I got a 10% discount. Why wouldn't I proceed with the purchase?"
- coldtea 13y agoHave you done this? Because the studies say the opposite. For one, you might NOT find the coupon after those "15 minutes". What percentage of users will find it? Second, if you have to go searching online for 15 minutes, you might be distracted enough to never return, or find something else to buy.
- Raphmedia 13y agoGood points. I am a bit of a power user and you shouldn't ever market toward power users. Unless you are something like Thinkgeek or HN.
- johnward 13y agoIf I don't find it I get upset. I've actually not purchased because there was a coupon field and I couldn't find an active coupon. I'll just wait until they have an active coupon or buy it somewhere else.
- JimmaDaRustla 13y agoAgree, but I love this too much: http://serverbear.com/coupons http://serverbear.com/coupons
- leknarf 13y agoOutside of ad campaigns, there's another case where coupon codes are useful. If you have a moderately expensive product and an actual sales team, you can use the coupon field to let the sales team make one-off special deals for individual customers. That's useful for unusually large orders (buy 10 get 1 free) or simply if you need to apologize for some sort of error (we're sorry our site was down, here's $50 off your next order). Coupon codes are an easily programmable solution to a wide variety of business problems. They're particularly useful for problems that are difficult to predict in advance.
- cdjk 13y agoTrue. You can get the same thing with referrer URLs that apply a coupon code behind the scenes, e.g. example.com/store/fifty_off. The logic is the same, you're just hiding the troublesome coupon code field.
- drone 13y agoActually, that is more difficult - trying to explain an alternative workflow to a customer over the phone is not nearly as easy as it sounds. "Enter this coupon code in the field you see on your screen," is much easier than "Ok, type in this new URL exactly, now, once you've done that, add this to your shopping cart, now go to checkout..." I've had to watch a lot of this sort of thing happen, and customers "understand" coupon codes natively at this point - they require practically no instruction. Getting the customer through the transaction as quickly as possible is one of the prime desires for any e-commerce site that also takes phone orders, and coupon codes have been, in my experience, most effective for that. Now, if you want to start a trend of re-training customers to expect specialized URLs they use before entering checkout -- then I'll be more than happy to switch over to that once customers expect it. However, I feel there's a sort of paradox here: Providing discounts to new customers helps create new transactions. The more steps required to complete the transaction, the more like the customer is to abandon the transaction. If a coupon code causes customers without one to be more likely to abandon then it makes sense to require a separate step from the normal checkout workflow to use it, thereby increasing the rate of abandoned transactions.
- ebbv 13y agoThis is a pretty ridiculous complaint. First of all, giving everyone a referral URL works great in a web only world but what if you're advertising on a Podcast (or gasp print or radio), is it easier to tell people to type in www.mysite.com/coupon to their browser or is it easier to tell people to enter COUPON at checkout? Secondly, the amount of people who are going to have this adverse reaction to the mere existence of the coupon code field is vanishingly small. Most customers who don't have a code will just ignore it and move on (and actually many who have been told about a code will not even use it) only a small minority will bother searching for a code to enter when they don't have one. Whatever web site had a coupon code field that made you this angry probably had at least 20 much worse UI violations they should prioritize above trying to eliminate the coupon field.
- mattdanger 13y agoI disagree. Coupon code forms make some customers second guess themselves at checkout. The fewer steps required to purchase something result in higher completed orders. See Amazon one-click
- bennyg 13y agoI disagree with the main part of your sentiment. I think they're already there after they've filled in billing/shipping info, so seeing the blank coupon code field is actually not a deterrent at that point. It's just as easy to skip that field and press the button for Checkout as it is when that field isn't there. The coupon field just adds the possibility of getting a better deal with some Google searches.
- cdjk 13y agoSo you have a customer that's just about to buy your product, and you're sending them away from your site? I mean, as a consumer I like discounts, but as a programmer I really want my customers to just click checkout at that point.
- kazagistar 13y agoAB testing seems to disagree with you. I am more prone to t rust the data.
- sp332 13y agoI dropped my car off for state inspection by my usual mechanic. Then I found a coupon in the local paper for $10 off an inspection at that place. When I went to pay, I showed the coupon but the mechanic told me, "oh I already did that. You're a regular, we take care of you!" I don't think I've ever seen a website that could do that.
- mijustin 13y agoYes. Think of how this improves customer loyalty overtime, as opposed to feeling like you're constantly getting a bad deal.
- bennyg 13y agoImagine if a site did that haha. "We've been tracking you, you're a regular. Here's 5% off for spending ~13min per day on our website from IP 192.168.0.1"
- aestra 13y agoI think they are talking about e-commerce sites which have logons and order histories i.e. Amazon and Newegg.
- mijustin 13y agoThere are sites that do that!
- rorrr2 13y agoExpecting complete privacy and anonymity from a website that you give your credit card info, your full name, your address makes zero sense
- falcolas 13y agoPerhaps, but rubbing your tracking in their face is still going to give them the creeps. It would give me the creeps.
- 13y ago
- ig1 13y agoI've seen cases where having a coupon code actually increased conversions more than just discounting the product for everyone. The people who searched for the (easily found) coupon were far more likely to completely the purchase process because they felt like they were getting a deal. If you're using voucher codes you shouldn't just use one approach based upon an article like this, rather you should be A/B testing different variants and see what performs for your startup. Your customers aren't the same as everyone else and you shouldn't expect them to behave the same.
- dminor 13y ago> Your customers aren't the same as everyone else and you shouldn't expect them to behave the same. Yes! In our case we found it had no effect on conversions and customer service calls increased from people asking about where to enter the (expired) code they found somewhere on the net. Our solution was to keep the coupon code box and seed a $1 discount code on one of the coupon sites. We stumble across these wild A/B claims from time to time and in almost every case we've seen no difference in conversions.
- jeremybencken 13y agoThis may not be rational, but there's some research showing this is a widespread phenomenon. Mostly, it has to do with a sense of fairness. Coupon codes can make consumers feel like the merchant is being unfair, which leads to dissatisfaction. The solution: don't show the coupon code field or make it extremely easy for consumers to get coupon codes. I've noticed more and more stores put their coupon codes right in the header while you're browsing. So it's impossible NOT to get a coupon. http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/research/promo/jpbm_reprint.pdf http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/research/promo/jpb... (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205769 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6205769)
- hollerith 13y ago>more and more stores put their coupon codes right in the header while you're browsing By "in the header" you mean on the search-engine results page; don't you?
- jeremybencken 13y agoactually, no, although that's an interesting place to do it. as a few others have commented, merchants like Newegg and Gap use something like a HelloBar to highlight their coupons in the header nav.
- tjansen 13y agoSimple solution: don't call it coupon, call it gift card.
- auctiontheory 13y agoGenius!
- ohwp 13y agoHappened to me: I had the code, but forgot to enter it. So afterward I contacted customer service and they just said: sorry there is nothing we can do for you. Do you think I will be a returning customer? -no
- chmike 13y agoIn France one of the biggest high tech ware reseller use this coupon promotiona codes. These coupon codes are ditributed through it's own promotional mailing list. Il you subscribe to their special offer mailing lists you get their coupon codes. Of corse ou get a slap in your face when you see the coupn field box. But this is also where you should say how to get coupon codes. Propose a subscription to your special coupon offering mailing list where you can also ommunicate about your product. This is opt in advertisement.
- throwit1979 13y agoInitial customer acquisition costs money. A lot of money. Once you have a happy customer for repeat business, you reward and entice them with discounts, usually via email newsletter. As a first time customer, you are not being "cheated". You are just a lot more expensive.
- johnward 13y agoIt doesn't matter if that's how it is. What matters is how consumers perceive it. If they think they are being cheated then who are you to say they are not? I don't care how much it costs for a retailer to nab me as a customer.
- dchest 13y agoWhen launching new order pages a few years ago, I was bothered by the same thing and asked my e-commerce company to add a checkbox, which you have to click in order to show coupon field: https://blogjet.cleverbridge.com/9/?scope=checkout&product=122736&cfg=cr https://blogjet.cleverbridge.com/9/?scope=checkout&product=1... It's not an ideal solution, but I believe this additional step helps a bit.
- ScottWhigham 13y agoInteresting - I like it. When you say it "helps a bit", what makes you feel that way? If I'm going to change my cart, it needs to be something simple like what you've done.
- dchest 13y ago(I haven't A/B tested this, so I can only rely on intuition and feedback from other people.) I think that the honesty plays a role here. If there's an empty space that says "put a coupon there", people will be looking for a way to fill it, even if they don't have a coupon -- because this box invites them to. However, if there's a checkbox saying "click here if you have a coupon code" (although my checkbox says something different), it means that by clicking it people will lie, and not everyone wants to do it. Now that I think of it, maybe even better strategy would be to buy a domain "blabla-coupon-code.com" and put there a coupon code for your thing with a small discount. People who like to search the web for coupons will be satisfied ;)
- mcintyre1994 13y agoThat's a pretty neat solution. One thing though, my laptop hasn't got a great screen and when I tried clicking the checkbox the input field that appeared was very very light - my immediate thought was that there's just an apply button. I know this stuff's a bit of a black art, but it might be worth A/B testing a less faint input field?
- raldi 13y agoAlternate suggestion: Have a textbox that says, "If you don't mind us asking, where did you hear of us?" Then the radio ad or whatever can say, "Enter DAN SAVAGE as your referrer to receive a free gift!"
- savszymura 13y agoYey for the Lovecast!
- thisishugo 13y agoThat would likely combat the problem of people quitting the checkout process because they saw a coupon box and hunted for a code. However as a method of tracking referrals I'd expect its usefulness to be close to zero, as it ostensibly is still a coupon, and will appear on the websites that offer them as such.
- GhotiFish 13y agoactually. Do it right and it's even more useful. People might voluntarily divulge who referred them to your store. Only with the correct entry do you get a discount, as an added bonus to people who answered. So incorrect results arn't technically incorrect, they're just bonus data.
- nathancahill 13y agoCheck out https://getambassador.com/ https://getambassador.com/
- nijk 13y agoThe hard part is recognizing imprecise submissions, and people wanting confirmation that the coupon worked.
- coldpie 13y agoThis is exactly how RockAuto does it. If you enter an unknown string, it probably goes into some database that they can use for advertising. They also send out deal codes over email that are intended to go into the referral box.
- martingordon 13y agoSome sites present the coupon field slightly differently as a Gift Card/Gift Certificate/Coupon Code field which might help that "slapped in the face" feeling. I noticed this on Zappos and the first Google result for "zappos coupon" is this: http://www.zappos.com/truth-about-zappos-coupons http://www.zappos.com/truth-about-zappos-coupons
- fjk 13y ago"You get pages of results: mostly garbage, some scams, and a few legitimate coupon sites. Unfortunately, the codes listed on those sites are a year old: you missed your chance." It frustrates me when I see a coupon code box and cannot find any working codes. Oftentimes the most recent codes for a retailer on RetaiMeNot haven't been active in months or years. On the flip side, when I find a code that saves me anything, even free shipping, I am ecstatic. I feel like I am responsible, thrifty and savvy and I have a proclivity to purchase more items from that retailer later on. I think these emotions are worth evoking in customers and banning the coupon code box destroys this ability. A referral link doesn't capture as much of the emotional satisfaction as seeing your cart totals drop after typing in a string of characters and clicking "Apply to Cart." Retailers could just hide the coupon code box when there aren't any active coupons. When a coupon is active, the box reappears.
- ceol 13y agoI've done work for the kinds of retailers who have coupon code boxes, and most of the time, the only reason it's on there is because the default WordPress plugin/Joomla template/eCommerce solution has it there. No one ever thinks to remove it, despite them never planning on using it. The best way for coupon code boxes to stop appearing is for developers and designers to bring it up with their client. A lot of the time, once the client is actually confronted with it has to make a decision, they choose not to have it.
- mathattack 13y agoIt's not a slap in the face of the customer. It's the company shooting their own foot. Whenever I see the coupon code box, I search for coupons. Sometimes I fine one. If so, they've lost money.
- username42 13y agoLast time I encountered a coupon field, my wife told me that there was a coupon code on the main landing page. Result: I have reread the main landing page, entered the coupon and was happy to spare a couple of bucks.
- adeaver 13y agoFrom having built a few of these, my solution was to add a string to the end of the URL's in the promo material (ads, email, whatever) that, when clicked on, would trigger the coupon code box on the site for that user only. Otherwise you didn't see it. The company I worked at that used this did a lot of targeted and 1-off promotions so it seemed to work pretty well.
- kellros 13y agoAn alternative approach would be to create a 'claim coupon' form and point your couponeers to that so that they may redeem the coupon. The trickier part would be then to keep track of the coupons in a similar fashion to the 'Items in Cart' (either via session based tracking or link it to their account). This approach would also allow for implementing coupons in different ways (ex. time-based, limited), reduce mental stress by being able to retry codes till you found a valid coupon (some providers allow for coupon codes but no way to verify it's valid) and not distract from the check-out process (it would simply require showing which of the redeemed coupons are applicable to the purchase). A plus side of this approach is that a coupon is enough to persuade potential buyers to create accounts to keep their coupon (while it's valid - for later use) and thus also reducing friction in the check-out process which should lead to more sales. I do also now believe the existing 'coupon' implementation is at fault by leaving too much on the table.
- mhb 13y agoPrevious discussion of someone else's rant about this: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2844369 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2844369
- yanowitz 13y agoI've taken to using http://couponfollow.com/checkout http://couponfollow.com/checkout (the chrome extension). It helpfully colors the coupon code box red if it has a suggested coupon code. Eventually, I suppose, everyone will move to one-time coupon codes. But that will probably take years, so in the meantime, I save money.
- ctdonath 13y agoHow about moving the coupon code field up front? If I have a coupon code, that's probably why I'm on the site now, I want to apply it, and I only want to see what it applies to. Let me enter the code right away. Show me what it applies to. Make it easy to use it. Don't make me go thru all the contortions of buying something, unsure of whether the code will apply or not - and pissing me off if it doesn't after all that.
- fnordfnordfnord 13y agoIt annoys me, and if the purchase is for something that I don't need immediately, it always makes me try to find either a coupon code, a cheaper price, or even a cheaper alternative.
- pshon 13y agoDon't mess w/ coupons, just ask Ron Johnson. http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-10/lessons-from-j-dot-c-dot-penney-dont-mess-with-coupons http://www.businessweek.com/articles/2013-04-10/lessons-from...
- 6cxs2hd6 13y agoHas anyone tried putting a generic coupon code on the checkout form, right next to the input box? Or even pre-filling the input box with the generic code? Seems like that way, everyone can feel good, and some can feel even better. p.s. Oh wait. I should probably file a B.S. patent for this idea. Unless someone has already has.
- amirhirsch 13y agothis is a fun way to apply a discount: http://www.yourinspirationweb.com/en/fun-with-javascript-jquery-and-konami-code/ http://www.yourinspirationweb.com/en/fun-with-javascript-jqu...
- enko 13y ago> It’s the optics that matter. Oh really? Refraction and reflection of light, the study of same - that's what matters is it? Of course not. You mean appearances matter. Name-dropping some physics-sounding word does not make you sound smart, it makes you sound confused and wrong. Optics means optics. It doesn't mean whatever you choose it to mean. Deliberately misusing words doesn't make you sound cool, it makes you sound like a "Sandwich Artist".
- brandon272 13y agohttp://dictionary.reference.com/browse/optics http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/optics "2. (used with a plural verb) the way a situation, action, event, etc., is perceived by the public or by a particular group of people: The optics on this issue are pretty good for the Democrats. Administrators worry about the bad optics of hiring new staff during a budget crisis."
- enko 13y agoYeah, brought to you by the same type of people responsible for http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literally http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/literally Since the early 20th century, literally has been widely used as an intensifier meaning “in effect, virtually,” a sense that contradicts the earlier meaning “actually, without exaggeration” I know the language is being debased. Doesn't mean I like it.
- TorKlingberg 13y agoIt's an established secondary meaning of the word optics. http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/optics http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/optics 2.( used with a plural verb ) the way a situation, action, event, etc., is perceived by the public or by a particular group of people: The optics on this issue are pretty good for the Democrats. Administrators worry about the bad optics of hiring new staff during a budget crisis. The English language is full of words and phrases that just make writing look more fancy.
- enko 13y ago
- javert 13y agoLenovo does this, but they quote all the prices assuming you are going to put in the coupon code, which they display on the entry page into the product you are buying. If you don't realize you have to jump through this dumb hoop and think you are actually getting the discount automatically, which is quite easy to do (I did, and I'm no dummy), they do not reimburse you the difference if you call on the phone to explain. The guy on the phone specifically explained to me that that is their official policy in this situation. I mean, I trusted Lenovo (good past experiences), so I wasn't being super duper careful to look for any kind of trick. Imagine that... not looking out for being tricked! What a fool I was. If you eally want the discount, you have to cancel your order and re-order, which means getting the product later. Lenovo knows very well that many customers won't do this. tl;dr Lenovo suits have calculated a new way to trick customers, and treat customers in a shitty way. They should be ashamed. Gipped me off for a few hundred bucks.
- Silhouette 13y agoThat behaviour is surprising to me. If anyone tried something so obviously deceptive here in the UK, I expect they'd last about five minutes with the advertising standards regulators.
- beagle3 13y agoI have a simple system that works very well: Never order anything online before checking dealnews.com; Takes 10 additional seconds, saved me thousands. Among other things, they give you every single Lenovo deal (including through the Microsoft Store, which is often better than the coupons in the Lenovo store -- and usually arrives within a couple of days rather than 3 weeks), and they give you the past deals/coupons, so you can see if you need to wait a couple of days to get a 30% price reduction -- Lenovo, and many other vendors, have 30% off in two out of every 3 weeks, or two days out of every week.
- jf 13y agoEvery time I see a box for a coupon code, I check retailmenot.com - Similar to you, this has saved me hundreds of dollars.
- huffman 13y agoThis is completely off-topic, but you don't have a bold weight of the body font you're using, so the browser is trying to fake it and it looks very fuzzy.
- shimon_e 13y agoObviously there is a segment of the population that coupon codes are going to help convert into customers and vice versa. Someone really smart would develop some AI for this.
- praptak 13y agoCoupons are a form of market segmentation, which generally aims to extract surplus money from those customers who will pay more (for whatever reason - don't care, don't know any better) while still extracting some money from those who are price-sensitive. This comes at a cost though, see this classic by Joel Spolsky: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckies.html http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie... The cost is the trust and goodwill of your customers. People will feel cheated if they find out and hopefully leave you for a competitor who doesn't impose on them the additional mental cost of searching for coupons, finding price engine links with lower prices(#) or whatever. (#) Some shops actually do that - you get a better price from a price comparison engine than if you search from shop's own site. Talk about treating your trusted customers well.
- JSadowski 13y agoI'd be curious to test something like this: http://jsfiddle.net/CLJYC/ http://jsfiddle.net/CLJYC/ "Do you have a gift card or promotional code?" Y/N, and then only show the field if yes is selected.
- thehme 13y agoSometimes when I'm buying online, it does bother me to find that "other" people have a coupon for something I want and that if I REALLY want it, I will need to pay full price. It specially bothers me when I'm a returning costumer and didn't receive any e-mails letting me know of a sale or coupon. This situation applies to other situation as well, for instance, think about the couple (or single person) that signed a contract to rent a place, has been a great tenant, and would like to renew the contract that is now ending soon. However, instead of the landlord saying: "hey! you have been a great tenant, so I will NOT raise your rent (or as much), so I can keep your business for longer", he/she says (thinks): "I know you like it here, so I'm going to stick it to you and raise the price of the rent, while new people who I don't even know, will get a cheaper rate and possibly not be as good a tenant as you are". Sites should definitely keep track of loyal costumers and offer coupons in this manner and allow one to enter then once logged in, but not trouble visiting costumers with this. Letting people know they could have gotten something for cheaper is usually a discouragement from click the "place order" button. I know have definitely just x-ed out of my tab at that point in several occasions.
- EGreg 13y agoHow about having a blue spot on the page where the promotion says to click, so it doesn't say "COUPON CODE"
- ruswick 13y agoBecause that's really unintuitive.
- DanBlake 13y agoI am really late into this thread, but the way I got around this exact issue is I just renamed the field from "coupon code" to "referral code". Users dont mind skipping over it and it does the same thing.
- keikun17 13y agoI never thought about it like this. I guess I'll try to do my best to get offended the next time i run into one
- hownottowrite 13y agoWhy do web apps and retailers do this to their paying customers? Because it was a pain to manage millions of coupon codes on legacy catalog fulfillment systems. In fact, it's still not particularly easy. Way back in the day, mail order retailers would send out millions of catalogs to current and prospective customers. To get these people to order, they would include coupons as an incentive. The coupons generally involved a short code indicating the mailing and a number indicating a segment. So, you'd get something like SU95615, which would translate to Spring 1995 segment 615. Segment 615 could be part of your own list or it might be part of a list you were renting. When the orders came in the codes would be used to tie back the promotional mailing spend to the revenue, thus allowing the retailer to score a list or segment. So why not use individual codes and then roll up? More sophisticated companies did that. In fact, some would even have SKUs that had prefixes tied to the mailing allowing for some very deep analysis. However, most did not and it was primarily due to the fact that their systems were not designed to handle such customization. In fact, some would basically choke on that much data. When these companies moved online, they took the practice of using coupon codes right along with them. As new companies without the legacy issues came along, they adopted the old ways and the cycle continued. This is why these companies do this to their customers. Is it right? Of course not, but that's the way it is. That said, there are better ways to handle this need to promote and track marketing dollars. Lots and lots of ways. Here are a few I've tried. Each one works pretty well: 1. Using specific links in email promotions with codes already embedded: This is probably the best way to go. Customer get the code applied. No need to show the field at all. This is great for targeted promotions. 2. Using business logic to apply a discount automatically: In this scenario, there is no codebox either. The system figures out the right discount based on the promotion. This is good if you're giving account-based promotions or doing something site wide. 3. Single-use, unique codes: This is a special code that can only be used once (ideally by a specific person). This method has the added benefit of being a marketing tool in and of itself (i.e. you can tell the customer they are special because the code is made special just for them). Great for email and print catalogs. In each case, there was a measured conversion improvement. In some cases, it was quite significant. However, I would strongly recommend testing. You're at the bottom of the conversion funnel here; caution is advised. You may discover, as JC Penney did, that your customer base has certain expectations and that changing those learned behaviors is more difficult than you might expect. You may find that removing the coupon field generates more customer service requests (i.e. "Where do I put in my coupon?") You may also discover that your marketing department has no clue about how to tie your ingenious solution back into their demand generation. You may also discover that your systems are not well-suited to carrying so much additional data. It's complicated but from my experience I'd have to say it's worth the effort to solve. Not only will your customers have a better experience, but you'll have better data about those customers and the sources you're tapping to bring new ones in the door. Of course, be prepared for lots of complaints from the coupon stackers. Those guys really don't like it when you remove the field.
- ck2 13y agoIt's called retailmenot.com - spend all of 10 seconds to find a discount. It might also offend you to know people in different countries pay more or less for a product. ie. Hosting in the USA is far more expensive than Europe for some mysterious reason
- illdave 13y agoLast year, I gave a talk to a group of online marketers, ecom specialists and site owners. I asked them if they ever - when shopping on sites that weren't their own - opened a new tab and searched Google for "[brand name] voucher code" whenever they hit a checkout page and saw the promo box. Literally everyone put their hand up. I'm not sure why this thread has so many people saying that it's a complaint that has no merit. Do you open a new tab and search, or do you just ignore it and carry on with the purchase?
- ruswick 13y agoFirst, I'd like to point out that his suggestion is fucking absurd. Without codes, there would be no way to discern between methods of customer acquisition (eg. is this ad more effective than that ad), especially on non-web content. Moreover, the efficacy of customer acquisition would decrease tremendously (most people respond to ads because of the promise of a discount). I don't understand how the OP believes that this is financially tenable for most sites. Codes are a fundamental aspect of advertising strategy for many companies. Second, the notion that this is hostile to the user just bemuses me. I don't understand why this has any detrimental effects on the customer. If they are fine paying full price (as they were when they began checking out), they are free to pay full price. If someone with expendable free time would rather dig through these coupon sites, that is their prerogative. The existence of a coupon code field merely gives the option to seek out a discount. This is similar to most other forms of commerce. If I have free time and want to save money, I can dig through circulars and clip ads, or I can just go to the store and pay full price. Is it offensive to the user that the self checkout also has a slot for placing coupons? No one is forcing anyone to do anything. How is it bad customer service when a user literally isn't forced to do anything other than ignore the field if they so choose? Giving people the option to save money if they are willing to exert some effort is an unequivocal positive aspect of most sites. This piece is just incoherent to me. I honestly don't understand why this is bad in any way.
- bpatrianakos 13y agoIt's MOS. Manufactured Outrage Syndrome and its what people in tech do. They see something they personally dislike, decide the world should work a different way, and then write a blog post arguing for it. The argument is that your conversions drop from people searching for coupon codes. We'll all just have to test that see for ourselves, won't we. This isn't the kind of thing where we've suddenly discovered a new counter-intuitive best practice for shopping carts. It looks like a few finicky people will be upset and call it bad customer service. I for one am willing to write them off as wannabe usability experts and continue to make the majority of users happy most of the time rather than cater to a small but noisy group. In the end you can't please every customer. Ever. Next we'll see a post about why not having a coupon code field is the worst customer service decision in the world too.
- drewying 13y agoI'm sure it's just me, but I've never felt bad or weird or bad or even cared much about the possibility of paying 20 bucks for something vs 19 bucks with a 5% off coupon code. That one dollar savings doesn't seem worth the hassle of spending 20 minutes on Google. I'd rather spend that 20 minutes billing 100 bucks/hour making a website for someone. Reading these comments it seems there are a lot of people on Hacker News who seem quite passionate about the idea of getting the best deal they can and not "feeling like a sucker". Which is fine, but it's definitely a feeling I don't experience. Maybe I'm just weird. With the topic at hand, having maintained an online shop for a client for several years, I see that they use Coupon Codes as a customer service thing. Didn't like your product? Here's a onetime use 15% off code so you don't hate us. At least that's how they used it. So I always ignore those fields.
- Fuzzwah 13y agoThe real slap in the face is that the coupon code field is how the affiliate marketing scam business works: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6204105 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6204105 http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/12/the-big-ugly-affiliate-marketing-scam/ http://venturebeat.com/2013/08/12/the-big-ugly-affiliate-mar...
- imissmyjuno 13y agoI have a feeling the linked blog post was written in response to those articles. Not terribly original then..
- olegp 13y agoWhat are the sites where one can find SaaS coupon codes and offers? AppSumo, F6S, TNW Market - any others? We would like to aggregate them at https://starthq.com https://starthq.com
- deleted 13y ago[deleted]
- oisino 13y agoHost Gator gets around this by putting a fake coupon in its signup flow to make you think coupon has been applied https://www.evernote.com/shard/s151/sh/0189a90d-cf03-426e-889d-f20070c1c3a0/6a52eb7f670e16951ddcf2e4a3ff077c https://www.evernote.com/shard/s151/sh/0189a90d-cf03-426e-88...
- RobGR 13y agoI think these coupon codes produce this reaction because they remind us how non-transparent online commerce can be. Walmart has a hard time at their brick and mortar store charging more for diapers to the poor person who lives down the street and has no car to get to competitors, and less to the better off person who arrived by car. But a huge amount of "big data" work is spent differentially pricing online commerce -- the travel industry is most famous for it of course. The general trend of technology tends to be that tools once only available to the big institutions become democratized and more revolutionary as they are. Similarly I think the "big data" and tracking and etc will swing around into a more equitable balance. That can be hard to believe, but try to imagine this -- you go to buy something online, but you pay with bitcoin, and a browser plugin you have pops up a screen when you are on the final checkout page -- this plugin uses the bitcoin chains and non-anonymity to show you all recent transactions with that bitcoin address. You can then get an instant sense of whether you are overpaying or getting a deal. Such a system could be gamed and evaded of course. At one time I discussed making a reverse-Priceline system, where consumers would use a browser plugin that shared what offers were being accepted and rejected on Priceline style reverse auctions. The sum total such efforts is a lot of infrastructure invested in replecating what a simple open-outcry market would be, if the market were run by disinterested, trusted authority.
- ChrisNorstrom 13y agoAlthough I understand the anger stemming from coupon code forms, a lot of us use them for very different reasons: - I run http://DayOnePP.com http://DayOnePP.com and sell my inventions there. - When something goes wrong for a customer you can give the customer a coupon code "sorrykarenhurney" which will give them free shipping or 10% off. This is a great way to win back customers who have had trouble. (You can rename the "Coupon Code" field to be "Customer Service Code" if you use it exclusively for this purpose) - When I advertise my Calendars or Pens on a design blog I tell the owner that I'll give them an exclusive discount to their readers if they mention my product on the front page. I name the coupon code after the website. - You can email coupon codes to newsletter members as a reward for signing up for your newsletter. Although the OP has a legitimate concern, he has never run an online store and doesn't see the behind-the-scenes logic in selectively giving customers discounts. It really is a necessity. Brick & Mortar stores use them even more, but no one gets pissed off at them.
- piratebroadcast 13y agoSome of the most emo shit I've read in quite some time.
- ababab 13y agoI have no affiliation, but I'll plug this awesome Chrome add-on[1] for finding discount codes at checkout. I'm not one to go actively hunting for discounts, and this has saved me probably tens of dollars since installing. [1] http://joinhoney.com http://joinhoney.com
- jakeludington 13y agoMacy's solves the problem of coupon codes in a way that's good for everyone. They have a coupon code box. They also have a link to a page that shows you all available Macy's coupon's. If one applies to your cart, you can use it. If there isn't a coupon for your cart, you might find out something else is on sale and buy that too. If you don't care about coupons, you can check out and ignore the box. The customer wins. Macy's wins.