How To Create Coupon Codes for Holiday Season in WordPress

Are you looking for effective ways to attract new customers and retain existing ones during the busy holiday season? Discount coupons can be one of the most powerful strategies to encourage shoppers to make quick purchasing decisions. They not only help you shoot up sales but also build customer loyalty.

According to statistics, 92% of consumers in the U.S. used coupons when making purchases last year.

To get the best results, it’s important to use the right coupon codes at the right time. They can incentivize first-time buyers, reward loyal customers, and significantly boost your eCommerce revenue during major shopping events like Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and other seasonal occasions.

Whether you manage a single online store or a multi-vendor marketplace, knowing how to create and manage coupon codes effectively is essential for maximizing sales. Here we've written a step-by-step guide on how to create coupon codes in WordPress.

In two different parts, we've covered the entire process – first for a single eCommerce store and later for a multivendor marketplace. Let's begin!

1st Part: How To Create Coupon Codes in WordPress (For Single WooCommerce Store)

Pre-requisites to create coupon codes for your WordPress site:

1. A WordPress site
2. WooCommerce

Suppose your online store's anniversary is later in November. Now you want to celebrate this moment with your users by offering a discounted coupon code. Using this code, the first 200 customers will get a 50% discount on every product purchase for the entire month.

Let's go through the steps-

Step 1: Create a New Coupon

First, navigate to the Marketing→ Coupons→ Add coupon.

The opening screen will show you the Coupon code name & Description fields. Give a coupon title and add a description so that the user can understand how to use it or the benefits.

Slightly scroll down to the coupon data. Configure the setting options to run your coupon codes smoothly. Here you find 3 options in the left menu:

• General
• Usage restriction
• Usage limits

Step 2: Customize General Coupon Settings

Here you can configure some initial settings for coupons. Select the discount type, amount, tick mark free shipping or make it available, and the coupon expiry date.

There are three types of discounts you can use for your coupon:

1. Percentage discount: It depends on the percentage that you want to give for each product
2. Fixed cart discount: Basically works on the total amount of the cart
3. Fixed product discount: You can fix the amount for a specific item

Now enter the coupon discount amount that you want to offer:

The same process for all other discount types. You can allow the free shipping or keep it unchecked if you don't want your users to avail of the free shipping facility. Lastly, add an expiry date so that customers can notice the coupon on the website.

Step 3: Configure User Restriction Section

Under the General tab, you'll find the User restriction section. Here you can configure more settings of your coupon:

• Minimum spend: It's the amount to be spent for the coupon to apply
• Maximum spend: It'll work to be spent on the coupon after applying
• Individual use only: Check if other coupons cannot coexist with this coupon
• Exclude sale items: Check if the coupon does not apply to items on sale
• Products: Select the products on which the coupon applies
• Exclude products: Select the products on which the coupon does not apply
• Product categories: Select the categories on which the coupon applies
• Exclude categories: Select the categories on which the coupon does not apply
• Email restrictions: List of emails that have access to the coupon – separated by a comma

Depending on the data you put into these fields, your coupon will work. So once you have filled out the above-mentioned fields, move on to the next section.

Step 4: Set The Usage Limits

Under the restriction section, you'll find User limits. It lets you define the number of times a person can have permission to use WooCommerce coupons. The same thing goes for the limit on the number of products.

• User limit per coupon: It defines how many times a user can use it
• Limit usage to X items: Apply to all qualifying items in the cart or select specific items
• Usage limit per user: It defines how many users can use it at a time

Once you're done with the rune, all the coupon settings will be applied according to your setup. However, you can apply the same process for all discount coupon types.

How Does a Coupon Work on Your WooCommerce Store (% Percentage discount)

We already know that you can define three types of discounts for your coupon. So, we're showing how (%) percentage discounts work on a coupon code for certain products/categories/carts.

Back to the discount that we're intending to create. It's about your online store's anniversary, where you want to give a 50% discount to the first 200 users.

The rest of the settings are almost the same. Just set the usage limit per user to 2 (depends on how many times you want users to apply this coupon)

Now, hit the published button to make the coupon live on your store.

How the Coupon Will be Calculated

As a customer, navigate to the store and select any of the products. Once you add the product to your cart, apply the coupon code Anniversary2021 in the Apply coupon field.

It will automatically cut the 50% discount from the total amount.

This is how you can customize coupon codes for your online store. However, if you want to get a detailed idea to apply all the techniques to your coupon, you can check out how to use coupons for better outcomes from here.

2nd Part: How To Create Coupon Codes in WordPress (For Dokan Powered Multivendor Marketplace)

Above, we've created coupons for a WooCommerce single store. Now we'll show you how you can allow your marketplace vendors to create coupons for their customers. You can use the Dokan multivendor marketplace solution for this purpose.

Dokan helps your vendors manage their own coupons right on their dashboard. As an admin, you just need to configure the settings from the backend. Here you can create coupons and apply them to any specific vendors, products. Or exclude vendors, products as well.

Pre-requisites to create coupon codes for your multivendor marketplace:

• Dokan Lite
• Dokan Pro

Install & Activate Dokan

To get started with Dokan, first install it and then activate the plugin on your site. Here is our official documentation to learn how to install Dokan on a WordPress site.

Here are the steps to create a coupon for vendors:

Creating a Coupon for Vendors

After installing Dokan, navigate to that same coupon page, and this time you'll get an extra section called – Vendor limits.

Once you click on the section, you'll get some options:

• Enable/Disable for All Vendors: By clicking on it, you can allow your vendors to use this option
• Coupon Price Deduct From: Three types of options are available in this section – vendor earnings, admin commission, and shared
• Exclude Vendors: This option will activate if the admin checks the “Enable all vendors” option
• Products: You can have this if you want to add the capability for a specific product
• Exclude: Add the product name if you don't want your vendors can use the coupon for that particular product
• The last two options are Show on stores & Notify vendors. If you want to show your coupon at the vendor's store, tick the option. And if you want to notify your users about the coupon after you create it.

Let's fill out the blank areas with relevant options. Once you're done, click on the update button to make it live on the vendor store.

Important Note: After the admin adds the coupon, vendors will get all the updated news in the announcement section. To get there, navigate to Dokan→ Announcement

This is how an admin can create a coupon for vendors. If you want to know how it will work for vendors and customers, check our official documentation on how to create coupons for vendors.

FAQ About How To Create Coupon Codes in WordPress

Accelerate Your Business Growth Using an Effective Coupon Marketing Strategy

Creating coupons for an online store is an easy method for increasing store sales and profit margins. Just keep in mind, coupon marketing strategies perform splendidly if your coupon management system is remarkable. Also, be careful while sending promotional emails to random audiences. It could create a bad impact if it's being utilized incorrectly. So there is a high chance that users might find other shops to purchase products.

Hence, sincerely follow the tutorial part step-by-step. Plus, if you're running a marketplace, Dokan helps you earn a handsome commission for each purchase by the customers.

So, are you ready to utilize Dokan's features & modules?

For any further concerns, please feel free to share them with us in the comments below.

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