| Using Promotions to Drive Sales Online |
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How-To Guide to Doing Specials and Discounts in a Shopping Cart. Managing an on-line store is no different than running a regular offline one. Through special promotions and discounts you can increase sales during slow periods and draw your customers' attention to specific products. All ecommerce programs should give you the ability to easily setup a variety of promotions and discounts. For this article I am going to explain how to automatically create a variety of discounts by code or by the quantity purchased using the WONDER Sales component of the WONDER Business Suite. Specials and Featured Items The main focus of a promotion is to give a short term boost to sales. That means you will want to offer it to certain people for a certain time period. By automating the process and letting your customers buy what they want, when they want you will have higher sales for less labor. Let’s look at some ways WONDER Sales will allow you to manage a promotion. Discount by Code Maybe you have a loyalty program or you are offering a special promotion that you only want your returning customers to be able to get. Either way, setting up a promotion on the web using a discount code allows you tremendous flexibility and is very simple. A discount by code in WONDER Sales works as follows: 1. When you create a discount, you will assign a code to it. 2. Then, you will notify your customers about it (through e-mail, your Web site, flyers, advertising, or any other way) 3. When customers visit your online store, they will add products to their shopping cart as usual. No discount will be shown at that time. Upon check out, they will be prompted to enter the discount code, if they have one. The order verification page will display the savings. 4. That’s it! Once the sale has been completed you will then be able to easily track how well the promotion worked. Including how many people purchased using the code and what their average order size was. Steps to Setting Up Your Discount Code The following is a brief description of some of the basic information you will need to set up your promotion in WONDER Sales. a) Description. This is important not only for reporting but also for the customer to easily discern which promotion may apply to them. Make sure to name your Promotion something short, simple, and easy to understand, e.g. "Thanksgiving Sale". b) Price or Percent Discount. Now it’s time to decide exactly how you will be giving the discount. You can choose either a flat dollar amount or a discount as a percentage of the order total. If you wish to set the discount as a flat dollar amount, you could give your customers $10 off the total of an order. This type of discount is often associated to a minimum purchase amount, which you can specify below under Order Amount. If you wish to set the discount as a percentage of the order total, just decide what percentage you prefer and enter the percentage value. The system will automatically deduct the flat total or percentage when the discount code is used. Not sure which one to use? That’s ok. You can set it up but not activate it. That means you create the discount code but disable it to use some other time. c) Use. If you want to allow your customers to be able to only use the discount code once, make sure this option is checked. For example, this is typically the case with Gift Certificates: once a customer uses the gift certificate, the same customer cannot use it again. d) Discount Parameters. These parameters limit the who, what, where, and how of the discount. Note that you do not need to specify any of these parameters, unless you want to. -Quantity. You can limit the validity of the discount to orders that fall within a certain quantity range (e.g. higher than 3, or between 5 and 10, etc.). -Shipping Weight. Same as for the quantity, but calculated on the total weight of the order. -Order Amount. Here the parameter is the total order amount. Typically, you would set a minimum dollar amount for the purchase and any order under the minimum dollar amount would not receive the discount. e) Discount Code. Enter the code that your customers must use to obtain the discount. The code is entered by customers on the check out page. Discounts by Code allows you to implement a variety of scenarios, such as Coupons, Gift Certificates, Group Discounts, etc. Promotion Examples: -You can send a $10 Gift Certificate to all customers that have purchased more than $100 in the last year to encourage them to purchase again. You can obtain the list of customers that meet that requirement from the Reports module. Then you would create a $10 discount, with expiration after the first use, generate a code, and e-mail it to them. - You could reward customers that spend more than $50 on your store by granting them a 10% discount on the purchase. The discount code in this scenario could be advertised right on your store’s home page to motivate customers to place orders that exceed the amount set in the discount settings. - Group Discount. Everyone that is a part of ClubX gets 10% off. You could mail a discount certificate to the group leader and ask them to let all the club members know about it. - Repeat Customers. You make the discount code part of the confirmation e-mail that is sent to your customers (after their order is submitted), advertising that they’ll receive $10 off the next order from your store. This How To Article provided by Samantha Rufo, a principal in nxtConcepts. nxtConcepts is a next generation company using innovative ideas, proven marketing programs, and cutting edge technology to help build business. nxtConcepts is also the exclusive distributor of the WONDER Business Suite. For more information call 888-215-0820 or 740-815-6925. Need help implementing a new sales or marketing program? 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