How to Plan The Best Discount Pricing Strategies for Your eCommerce Business in 2024

Discount pricing offers are one of the most effective ways to turn more potential leads into paying customers, especially in eCommerce businesses.

A study shows that you can sell 73% more if you make special discount offers.

But it’s not as simple as that. The discounts should be planned strategically so that they can generate the highest amount of sales.

In this article, we’ll go over a few proven discount strategies that may help you boost your online sales. You will also get tips on when to use these strategies to get the best results.

So let’s begin.

Why Do Discount Pricing Campaigns Work?

Usually, when a person is browsing through your shop page for products, it is not necessary that he will purchase something. Usually, there are 3 types of potential buyers that may visit your site:

1. Prospects looking for a specific product
   These buyers usually come to your site to search for their desired product on the search bar. In most cases, if nothing shows up, they exit.

2. Potential buyers looking for different offers on a product
   In this case, a buyer has a product he wants to buy, but he is browsing through various online stores to see which one has the most authentic product and the best offer.

3. People that are simply browsing through online stores with no real aim
   These are prospects who love to browse online stores and find out if there is any interesting product or good offer to grab onto.

However, there is a way to ensure most of these buyers end up purchasing from you. And that is “discounts.”

If you can implement a good discount pricing strategy, it will increase the chances of conversion by up to 70%!

This is because people often make decisions out of capacity over necessity. For example, a person may wish to purchase a luxury car. But, based on his wealth, he rather has to go for an ordinary family car.

However, there are many who purchase out of excitement. For example, during Black Friday, people buy a lot of stuff they never planned for due to the huge discount.

But in most cases, people convert more during discount campaigns because of savings. If a $100 product is available at $70, that’s a huge discount with $30 savings.

Most people realize this and often purchase products, which they probably haven’t thought of purchasing at the time, but may need in the future.

In fact, people may even buy more quantities of the same product due to the low price.

In short, discounts make buyers feel like

• The product is now more affordable.
• They are saving a good amount on the price.
• There is more money available to purchase more products.

It makes the customer feel more important and accomplished, while you get to have happy customers, more sales, and more revenue.

7 Proven Discount Strategies To Increase eCommerce Sales

Now that you know why eCommerce discount campaigns work, let’s look at a few discount pricing strategies that can help you boost your revenue.

1. Discount On Higher Quantity

There are many products that people can afford to buy in more quantities. For example, a person may buy multiple t-shirts at once. And you can take advantage of this opportunity by offering discounts on higher product quantities.

Let us look at a couple of examples to understand the strategy:

Example 1:
Suppose you run an online store for men’s clothing products. In this case, you can run a site-wide campaign stating that anyone who buys 3 of the same products will get a 20% off. What this will do is it will trigger a few buyers to try to hit the target to claim the discount.

Example 2:
Let’s say you sell chocolate bars that cost about $10 each. Now, here’s what you can do. When a person purchases a single chocolate bar, immediately after checkout, make an upsell offer to buy 5 of them at $40, i.e., $10 off. This is a handsome discount, and the buyer may go for it if he has the funds available.

As you saw in the scenarios above, a discount pricing campaign on higher quantities is quite attractive and is a powerful conversion trigger.

This strategy works well when buyers may need or want more quantities of a product in a shorter time, such as food items, regular clothing, stationery, toiletries, etc.

2. Discount On A Targeted Amount Spent

This is a great tactic that helps to increase the order values of every buyer. The idea is to give an amount that your buyers need to spend to claim a discount.

For example, you may announce, “Spend $500 or more and get a 15% discount on your total order!”
This will encourage buyers to try and purchase more products to claim this discount.

You may use this tactic all year long or at least at the beginning of each season (Summer and Winter). It will also work really well during Black Friday and Holiday sales when people are excited to spend more on products with discounted prices.

3. Discount On Relevant Products During Checkout

This is a simple tactic that, if done right, can shoot up the average order value (AOV) significantly.

You see, when a person is at the checkout page, he is probably ready to pay for the products he added to the cart. At this point, if you can make a good offer on a product that the buyer can use along with what he is about to purchase, in most cases, the buyer will end up adding this offer to his offer.

The best option here is to make the offer as an order bump at the checkout. This means the offer will be available on the checkout form and can be added to the order with one click.

Now, for this to work, there are two crucial aspects:

1. The product offered has to be relevant to one of the products in the cart.
2. You need to offer a discount that will save the buyer some money.

So, if someone is about to purchase a pair of shoes, you may offer 2 pairs of socks at $5 less cost. However, offering a phone cover wouldn’t make much sense.

This tactic will work best during special occasions and at the beginning of a season when buyers are looking to buy more relevant products at once.

4. Planned Discount On Trending Products

Sometimes, it’s best to make less profit per product while selling more quantities to beat competitors. And this is especially effective when you want to promote trending products following a workable promotional pricing strategy.

If your shop is associated with products or a product theme that is trending at the time, offering a discount on such products may get you more potential buyers than other shops.

For example, during a Fifa Word Cup, jerseys from various nations are in high demand.

Now, it does seem lucrative to charge more for jerseys at the time since it’s a big event and people are willing to spend more for them.

However, a wiser thing would be to do a market analysis and set pricing based on your findings. Let’s say you surveyed many shops that are planning to bring in supplies the month before the event and found out they are planning to sell each jersey at $90 on average.

Here, you may decide to embrace the same price but then offer a discount of 20% for your supplies. This will still get you a good profit, but most importantly, you may get almost twice as many buyers than what you would get with the average market price.

However, you really need to keep an eye on social media & trending news on Twitter or Google Trends to see what other businesses are offering & what the prospects are looking for. You don’t want to offer discounts on products that won’t get you more buyers.

For example, during Fifa Word Cup 2022, Argentine and Brazilian jerseys were in the highest demand. So it would make more sense to give a good discount on those, rather than on other jerseys.

Again, it is also very important to use discount pricing only while the product is still trending. Offering this discount after the trend is gone won’t get you more buyers.

5. Special Discount For Returning Customers

A crucial tactic that most eCommerce businesses miss is to try and acquire more returning customers. You see, if you can find buyers that are willing to purchase over and over again from your online shop, you will be able to earn a good amount of revenue without any extra acquisition costs.

One way to attract more buyers to come back and purchase from your site is through special discounts for returning customers.

For example, when a buyer makes a purchase from your shop, you may send an email a week later with a coupon, let’s say, to waive off $20 from his next order.

You may even consider sending a discount coupon to buyers who have not ordered anything for over a month. This could be a higher discount, such as $100 off if $500 or more is ordered.

This will also work with a reverse method. For buyers who have ordered more times in the last 3 months, let’s say more than $800 worth of purchases, you may send a discount coupon to them. This will help to motivate them to continue purchasing on a regular basis.

The main challenge here is to deliver the product on time and with high quality. If the buyer is satisfied with what he bought, then he will definitely think of buying from you again if you offer a coupon.

6. Discount For Abandoned Customers When Necessary

Abandoned cart recovery campaigns are very common out there. It is a great way to win back almost 20% of your lost sales due to cart abandonment.

Whenever someone abandons the site without completing the purchase after adding products to the cart and visiting the checkout page, reaching out to them with a couple of emails to remind them about it usually helps to bring them back to complete the order.

However, in certain cases, it is better to make a little extra investment in bringing back prospects that abandoned the cart.

For example, if a product is worth &100, then giving a 10% discount to bring them back isn’t a bad idea. Instead of nothing, you have a chance to make $90 out of your buyer.

However, for low-cost products, just the usual reminder emails are enough.

If you sell expensive products, then a discount is a must when running recovery campaigns. However, you shouldn’t offer it right away. You should rather plan a series of 3 emails –

• The 1st email will go out in 30mins after abandoning the cart,
  This could be just a reminder email.

• The 2nd email will go out 6hrs after abandoning the cart
  Here, you may offer a discount to go back and complete the purchase.

• And the 3rd email will go out 12/24 hrs after the abandonment.
  In this email, you may use a FOMO copy to claim the discount before it expires.

This is just one scenario. You can get creative with your email series using Mail Mint. The important part here is to choose the discount amount. Too small a discount won’t have any effect, whereas too large a discount would mean a missed opportunity.

7. Monthly Flash Sales On Unique Products

This is a special tactic that helps to bring back buyers on a regular basis.

What you do is, every month, maybe on the second week, you run a Flash Sale, i.e., you single out a few products which will be available at lower prices for the week. If this is a regular thing, many buyers will come back at least once every month to see what offers you have for them. And many will end up purchasing a product on sale or something else that caught their eye.

Here’s how you can successfully use this tactic:

1. Create a separate page called “Flash Sale” and include it in the menu with the special highlight color.
2. On the page, include a timer to indicate when the next Flash Sale items will be revealed.
3. On the home page, include a banner stating that every, let’s say, second Sunday, buyers should get exciting offers.
4. List down products that will be offered at a discounted price one week before the flash sale day.
5. On the day of the Flash Sale, update the page with discounts applied to these products.

To maximize the performance of this eCommerce discount strategy, you may do the following:

• You may offer from 5 products to up to 30 products. Avoid listing too many products, as too many choices may act as a distraction for the buyers.
• If possible, add custom images to highlight the discount amount for each product.
• Maintain the deadlines. Do not extend just because a product is selling more. You want this to be credible to the buyers.
• Avoid running offers on the same product for more than 2 months in a row.
• Include cross-sell products on the sidebar of the page, which could be the most popular products in the previous week.
• You may prepare a quantity-based upsell offer for some of these products that you know people often buy in more quantities.
• Promote this special aspect of your online store on social media, via emails, or even Paid Ads to attract more buyers.

Sure, this does take a little manual work at the beginning of every month. But it is one of the most unique discount strategies that will surely get you more frequent buyers and will work for almost any type of online store.

How To Choose The Right Discount Percentage & Strategy

As you saw above, discounts can impact the decisions of buyers by a great deal, and you may use strategic discount pricing to increase the conversion rate. However, before lowering the prices, there are a lot of factors you need to consider so that you can choose the right amount to waive off.

1. The discount cannot be with 0 profit

You should never make a discount that doesn’t come with a profit. No matter what business you run, your discount should give a profit, even if it’s as low as $1.

2. Stay close to the current market

Make sure to analyze the market before giving out discounts. Search for your products online and see what sort of discounts are being given out by others.

For example, if you find that most shops are giving a 30% off for the same product (priced equally), then you offering only 10% off wouldn’t convince many. Rather, providing 40% off would be a good option here (if it’s within your profit margin).

Again, if you see 10% is a common rate at the time, then offering 40% is too much. Rather go for a 15-25% waiver.

3. Do not run discounts too frequently

It’s never a good decision to run discounts too many times a year because it may develop a habit in the customers to expect lower prices on your site. (The Flash Sale tactic is an exception).

Just imagine. If you visit a store and see that they have a discount running every two weeks, then will you feel the same excitement down the line? Over time, the prices won’t feel special anymore, and you may end up being adamant about only purchasing from that store if there is a discount.

Try to use discounts as a surprise element. Every time a buyer gets a discount, he should feel this is special and should be excited to consider purchasing a product.

4. Have a purpose for every discount you offer

Every discount pricing tactic has to be used wisely. You cannot expect to apply the same tactic for all products and get the same results.

For example, offering a quantity-based discount for a product that is expensive, let’s say $700, won’t get too many conversions.

Again, offering a discount randomly in the middle of February, without any occasion, won’t create much excitement among buyers.

So before using the strategic discount pricing examples, think it through. Ask the following questions:

1. What is the purpose of this discount?
2. Will this discount be exciting to buyers if offered now?
3. Is this tactic right for the products I’m offering?

Try to answer these questions from a neutral point of view, and you will be able to realize if you should or should not offer a discount at the time on the products you are thinking of.

5. Choose the right time to offer discounts

Try to find out when your products or a certain category of products sell more. Depending on that, you may choose which discount pricing strategy may apply.

For example, during winter, winter clothes will sell more, whereas summer clothes may not sell at all. The best option here would be to offer the Summer clothes at a clearance sale discount 1 month prior to stocking your site with winter supplies. At the same time, you may offer a discount on winter products 1 week prior to the start of winter. These will bring in more results.

At the end of the day, your aim is to get the maximum number of sales from every discount campaign you run. It’s pointless if you do not try to make it more fruitful and simply expect buyers to take the offer even at unexpected times.

How To Implement Discount Pricing Strategies In WooCommerce

WooCommere is enriched with a wide variety of plugins that help you to apply various discount strategies for your online store.

Following are some of the tools you may consider using to try and apply the tactics above.

1. WPFunnels

WPFunnels is a unique sales funnel builder that is specialized to help you create funnels for your WooCommerce products. It comes with a visual canvas that allows you to plan the funnel steps and lets you design the funnel pages using your preferred page builder, such as Elementor, Divi, Gutenberg, and Oxygen.

You may prepare custom checkout pages, offer pages, and dynamic offer journeys for your entire WooCommerce store, thanks to its Global Funnels feature.

You can easily make conditional offers based on products or product prices in the cart and make quantity-based discount offers during or after checkout.

In fact, almost all the discount pricing strategies mentioned in this article can be created with the help of WPFunnels thanks to its exclusive features,

• Custom Landing & Checkout Pages
• Special discounts on specific products or a set of products
• Custom funnel journey for your online store
• Order bump offers on the checkout form
• Upsell offers after checkout
• Integration with automation tools

👉🏻 Get WPFunnels Now

2. YayPricing – WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing & Discounts

When it comes to a powerful plugin to help you create the best discount strategies for your store, it’s irresistible not to mention YayPricing – WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discounts. This plugin is designed to easily set up any type of discount for your WooCommerce store, no matter how complicated it is.

With its easy-to-use interface, YayPricing allows you to customize a variety of discount rules such as percentages, fixed amounts, flat price, bulk pricing, BOGO, buy X get Y discounts, free shipping, discounts on the cart, coupon codes, and much more. 

Here are some of the attractive features: 

• Provide a variety of pricing rules such as bulk pricing, percentages, fixed amounts, flat price, BOGO, buy X get Y discounts, free shipping, discounts on the cart, discounts on total orders, discounts on category/tags, discounts based on user role, coupon codes, discount based on shipping method, free gifts and much more.
• Provide a dropdown list of more than 20 conditions to customize.
• Can set a schedule and countdown timer for each rule.
• Can modify the description of pricing rule and show encourage notice.
• Provide a report table of each rule.
• Can set usage limit.

YayPricing also provides a free version for store owners.

👉🏻 Get YayPricing at the repository of WordPress.

3. Advanced Dynamic Pricing For WooCommerce

Advanced Dynamic Pricing is a brilliant plugin that lets you set up discount pricing rules for your entire WooCommerce store to make unique offers to your buyers.

The plugin lets you define rules to offer

• Category-level discounts
• Quantity-based offers
• Discounts on specific days
• BOGO offers
• Discount on bulk orders

and several other advanced discount tactics.

👉🏻 Get Advanced Dynamic Pricing Now

4. Cart Lift

Cart Lift is a simplified abandoned cart recovery plugin that allows you to create email series to run recovery campaigns for your WooCommerce store.

As you know, a huge number of buyers tend to abandon carts on any eCommerce site. This plugin helps you to try and recover as many of them as possible.

The discount tactics on abandoned customers mentioned earlier in this article can be easily created using Cart Lift.

The plugin not only lets you design and schedule intervals to send out recovery emails but also comes with the option to generate coupons for products on any of the emails you want to sell.

It is a plugin that works for both WooCommerce and Easy Digital Downloads.

👉🏻 Get Cart Lift Now

5. Advanced Coupon

Advanced Coupon is the perfect solution for expanding your WooCommerce coupon features and marketing your store more effectively. Thanks to this fantastic plugin, about 15,000+ store 

owners have taken their coupon marketing game to a new level!

Here are just a few of the indispensable features of the Advanced Coupons plugin:

• Create “Buy One Get One” deals with single products, groups of products, or even whole product categories.
• Incentivize and reward your customers with loyalty program points they can redeem for coupons later.
• A complete store credit system is included right out of the box. Don’t pay for a feature that should be free.
• Check for products in the cart, subtotal amount, final order products, and many other advanced cart conditions.
• Schedule coupons so they’re only used when they’re meant to, and show customers a lovely message.
• Let customers apply coupons by visiting a URL. Great for use in email campaigns, social media, and support.
• Create flexible shipping deals rather than just free shipping. Give a special discount on any shipping method.

Pricing: 

• Advanced Coupons Premium (Single Site License) – $59.50/year
• Advanced Coupons All-In-One Bundle – $119.00/year

👉🏻 Get Advanced Coupons now!

Final Thoughts

Now that you know how to apply discount strategies that will get you more sales, it’s time to get ready for more sales next year. Choose the tactics that you think suit your business and start planning the discount campaigns for next year.

Get WPFunnels to run sales funnel campaigns for this New Year, and prepare a calendar to offer more discounts throughout the year to boost your revenue.