Want to set up attractive WooCommerce discounts and promotions during the holiday season? Well… You know that your sales and average order value can shoot through the roof during this season.
But coming up with attractive promotional ideas is one piece of the puzzle.
Setting them up in your WooCommerce store without wrangling with coding is the other. When you can do both without getting stuck in tech cobwebs is when you become unstoppable.
In this article, I’ll share with you ways to clock more sales during the holiday season and have a profitable quarter. I’ll be using Finale to set up the discounts & promotional offers in WooCommerce.
Finale is a tool that helps you create scarcity & urgency driven sales & promotions.
So strap on your seat belts and let’s dive right in.
1. Offer Deadline-Bound Discounts (Percentage Offs or Fixed Amount)
Shoppers love to pocket handsome savings during the festive season. The impressive difference between the “original prices” and the marked-down prices draws them in.
But as much people love discounts they love to sleep on their decisions.
A clear deadline gives them a clear and credible reason to shop without delaying the decision.
You can now set up bulk discounts in WooCommerce without visiting individual product pages. And also put up countdown timers to display the deal expiry date/time on the product pages.
Take a look at this WooCommerce product page with the discount and ticking countdown timer:
WooCommerce Discount & Countdown Timer On Product Page
Here’s how you can set up a campaign like this in your WooCommerce store step by step:
Step #1: Schedule a One-Time Campaign.
Set up start date/time and end date/time. You can schedule a sale in advance or set it up to start this very moment.
Schedule a One-Time Campaign With Finale
Step #2: Select discount amount and discount type
You have two options here – fixed amount discount and percentage based.
Select Percentage or Fixed Amount Discount
In case of higher priced items, you may go for fixed amount discount. $30 off or $50 off sound like big numbers and feel like real money has been credited to the account! In case of low-priced items, go for percentage offs.
Step #3: Enable the Countdown Timer on the Product Page to inform shoppers about the deal
You’ve got a multitude of options to select the countdown timer skins. You can change colors, font size, put up a border around and more.
Set up WooCommerce Sales Countdown Timer
Step #4: Finally, go to rule builder and restrict your campaign to a chosen category
Rule builder allows you to restrict your campaign to hand-picked products/ product category. There are several other rules.
Select Always For a Storewide Sale
You may also select ‘Always’ from the drop down in case of a store-wide sale.
Pro Tip: In case of low-priced products, opt for percentage offs – in case of high-priced items, offer fixed amount discounts. Psychologically $50 appears to be a big number even though it makes for a 15% off.
2. Display Counter Bar On Low-Stock Exclusive Items
There may be items in your store that you only sell during the holiday season. These are not available all year round. For example Christmas special gifts, Halloween costumes, candies, Mother’s Day special cards/gifts.
Let people know about those items and don’t be shy about creating a sense of legit scarcity. Scarcity increases people’s desire to own a product and triggers an insistent urgency to buy.
Take a look at this special deal by Amazon.com, the counter bar on the right says ‘80% deal claimed’:
Counter Bar On Amazon’s Special Deal Product Page
You can work scarcity into your WooCommerce store in a classy way. Set up a counter bar displaying the stock size on the product pages. Here’s how it’ll appear:
WooCommerce Remaining Stocks
Let’s look at how you can configure this element in WooCommerce.
Step #1: Select the inventory option and configure the settings
You have two options here – existing and custom.
Select existing when you want it to pick the stock size you’ve entered on the individual product page. Custom allows you to enter a stock size here.
Configure Inventory Settings In Finale
Step #2: Configure the Counter Bar (Customize, colors, text, font size and more)
In the counter bar section, you have a plethora of options to change its appearance.
Configure Counter Bar Settings
You can choose from a range of dynamic merge tags to craft the text.
The merge tags for sold units, remaining units, and total units will help you display the real-time stock status.
Pro Tip – Turn on the counter bar on items with a stock size less than a certain units say 5. You can select this from the rule builder and the counter bar will automatically come on once the set threshold stock size is reached. Remember scarcity triggers desire.
3.Mention the Estimated Date of Delivery To Tackle Last Minute Objections
“When will this item arrive? Hope it doesn’t come after the date has passed!”
This is a constant fear in the mind of shoppers while they’re shopping. They don’t want to spend money on an item that won’t make it on time. You can take care of their nagging doubts by specifying the estimated date of delivery.
You don’t have to be specific here but you may give a date range. This will help take care of their objections and make faster decisions. Take a look at how this website works in urgency by stating the estimated delivery date.
As per a study conducted by Behave.org, a website put up a countdown timer + estimated delivery date on the product page. This increased their conversion by 8.6%.
There was no other change made on the website during this test. Let’s see how you can configure this in your WooCommerce site.
Step #1: Set up a recurring campaign with 1 day duration and no pause period
It will be a recurring campaign and not a one-time one because you want this timer to run every day on automation. You must set up a cut-off time for the day i.e. the time at which the last parcel of the day goes out or the delivery van comes.
The timer will work backwards from that time. The cut off time will become your start time, no matter what date you start the campaign. I have set it up at 5 PM.
Set up a recurring campaign that recurs after a set interval
Step #2: Configure the countdown timer settings based on estimated delivery date
This section allows you to calculate and display the estimated delivery details. Based on what date the visitor is viewing the page you can add a set number of days as the adjustment period.
So if you can deliver the item 3 days after the order is placed, ‘+3’ will be your adjustment period. Further, you can exclude the days from the calculations when you don’t deliver.
Use dynamic merge tags to craft a message
In this case, 3 days is the adjustment period. And Saturday, Sunday and Christmas day are excluded from the estimated delivery date calculations.
Step #3: Choose to show this information to only certain visitors based on their country of visit
Further, you can choose to show this information to site visitors coming from a chosen country.
You may want to show this information to only local visitors. Here’s how:
Restrict fast shipping message to a single country with Rule Builder
Sharing this piece of information on your product pages will increase your conversions. Especially during the holiday season!
Pro Tip– If you cannot commit a certain date of delivery, give an estimated date range. Make sure you mention it is estimated. The merge tag allows you to print the date range too.
4. Create Smart Gift Collections At Different Price Points
Shoppers need ideas and guidance. There could be nothing more helpful than being able to view gift collections by price points.
Most people are conscious about spending money and would love to start the conversation with their budget.
Macy’s understands this. They allow visitors to click on one of the three price points and browse gifts accordingly:
This ensures there are no surprises and one can browse items without worrying about the price tags.
Once you click on one of the given prices, here’s what you see next:
All items under $25 are listed on one page.
You too can do this in your WooCommerce store. Let me show you how you can create a dedicated deal page for all products priced under $50.
Step #1: Create a new campaign and schedule it between two fixed dates/time
Set up a one-time campaign with Finale
Select the ‘Product Price’ from Rule Builder and enter the price
Step #2: Select the price point/budget from the rule builder section
This step will select all the products priced under $50.
Step #3: Index the campaign
Indexing allows you to sort and segregate the products as per the chosen rule condition.
Step #4: Select the campaign name and configure its settings/appearance
Select your campaign from the drop-down:
Select Campaign name from drop down and configure settings
Now you can configure different options related to the selected campaign.
Template allows you display the products/deals in different formats. You can choose 3 or4 columns and grid formats. You can further edit the skins of the countdown timer and counter bar.
And also change the appearance of the deal pages – change colors of Add to cart button, enable pagination and more.
Once you have done that press update and grab the short code for the campaign.
Step #5: Copy the short code of the indexed campaign and paste it on a new page
Copy this campaign shortcode and paste it on a new page
Copy this campaign short code and paste it on a new page.
You can change the URL of the page to the name of the campaign for your convenience.
Here’s how the deal page will appear:
Deal Page with curated deals under $50 on one page
You can use this link and offer a direct access to it to your visitors to this deal page.
Pro Tip: Create a banner image just like Macy’s on your store home page during the holiday sales season. And give people access to different pages based on the budget they choose.
Watch this video to see how you can set up these tactics in your WooCommerce store step by step:
5. Use Sticky Header To Inform Shoppers About The On-Going Sale
You may have set up enticing discounts but if your visitors don’t find out about it, there’s no point. Make sure you use the most attention-grabbing space in your store to inform them about the campaign. It’s the little area on the sticky-header that catches the eye. Use it to write short and snappy copy about the offer.
Take a look at the header on Asos.com. They use it inform people about the deal, discount and share the coupon code.
Here’s how you can display the sticky header on your WooCommerce store:
To set this up, you have to schedule a sale (select two fixed dates/time) and then configure the sticky header.
While I have covered how to schedule the sale in the previous points, let me show you how to configure the sticky header:
You also have the options to choose countdown timer skins, enable/disable CTA button and give a specific URL to the button.
6. Create Deadline Bound-Coupon Codes & Display Expiry Time
Creating a coupon code is not enough. You must set a definite deadline to it- the date and time both. This strategy is deployed by popular ride sharing company Uber. They promote their coupon code through emails and messages.
The coupon code offers a discount on rides but the offer is good till the set deadline. They specify the deadline with the offer so that people cash in on the coupon code before it expires. You too must set an expiry date to your coupon code. In addition to that, you can display the countdown timer on the cart pages too.
The timer will run on the cart pages and remind shoppers about the time-sensitivity of the offer. Now let’s take a look at how you can set it up.
Step #1: Go to WooCommerce >> Coupons and add a new coupon
Native WooCommerce allows you to create a new coupon and configure options.
Step #2: Create a new coupon code, name it and select the percentage discount associated with it
This step lets you enter the discount amount associated with the coupon code. You can also choose to allow free shipping with the coupon code.
But a valid free shipping method must be enabled in your shipping zone for the coupon code to work. For the purpose of this example, I’ve named the coupon code ‘ChristmasWith15’ and the discount amount is 15%.
Step #3: Set up the minimum spend amount if any
You may not want to offer a blanket percentage off with the coupon code. So this is the place to enter the minimum spend.
In this case, I’ve set up the minimum spend at $50. The cart total needs to be $50 for the user to qualify for the 15% discount.
Step #4: Schedule a campaign with a start date/time and end date/time as the coupon validity period
Step #5: Go to Finale >> Coupons and configure the extended coupon settings.
As you’ll notice, we’ve selected the coupon code name ‘ChristmasWith15’ from the dropdown.
Further we’ve chosen ‘Automatically’ for ‘Apply Coupon’- the coupon will get automatically applied and users won’t have to remember and enter the code manually.
Next up, we’ve crafted a special coupon success message. As soon as the order total of $50 is hit – users will be shown this message.
When you scroll further down in the coupon section, you can see more options:
We’ve also crafted a cart table message.
This message will display the countdown timer on the cart pages to remind shoppers about the time-sensitivity of the offer.
Now let’s see how these settings will perform on the front end. Once the user adds an item priced less than $50 to the cart – no message about the coupon code will show up:
The Rooster product is less than $50 and therefore there is no mention of the coupon code.
Now let’s add another item to the cart so that the order total becomes more than $50:
The order total is now greater than $50 and the coupon code has gotten activated. The countdown timer begins to appear in the message at the top that informs shoppers about the 15% discount.
When you click on view cart, you’ll notice the discount has been automatically applied. The price is down from $70.20 to $59.67.
Also notice the ticking countdown timer on the cart table page. It says that it’s a one-time Christmas special offer which is due for expiry.
This little message can help you lower your cart abandonment rate because it gives shoppers a compelling reason to keep moving forward.
Additional Resources
- 9 Discounting Tactics for WooCommerce – This article covers some more tactics that have not been covered here.
- 21 Promotional Campaign Ideas For Your Store – If you need a fresh dose of ideas, this article is what you were looking for. Deep dive into different ideas used by high-converting stores to clock more revenue during the promotions season.
- 50+ Point Checklist to Increase WooCommerce Sales – This is the most definitive checklist on the subject. Run your store through this well-researched and thorough checklist to identify the loopholes.
Conclusion
There you go! I shared with you 7 battle-tested ways to run in-store promotions and we also went over step by step implementation of each of them.
I hope this article helped you see the full potential of promotional campaigns and now you’re ready to unleash it yourself.
If you enjoyed this in-depth guide, I’d love to chat with you in the comments.
Leave a comment and let me know which idea was your favorite and you can’t wait to implement.
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