How to Create Coupons with WooCommerce

Written by Samuel Gomes on September 18, 2018 Blog, Marketing.

Coupons are a great way to attract new customers and get loyal ones to come back for more.

WooCommerce includes simple yet powerful coupon functionality that fits most stores’ needs right out-of-the-box — which means you can start offering coupons with WooCommerce in just a few clicks.

How to set up a new coupon in WooCommerce

First and foremost, we’ll set up a coupon you can use right away to make your customers happier.

Let’s say your bookstore’s anniversary is in October. To celebrate another successful year, you want to give your customers a 50% discount on books for the entire month — but only for the first 200 customers.

To add a new coupon, go to Marketing → Coupons and click Add coupon. The opening screen will present you with the Coupon code and Description fields:

coupon code creation screen

Coupon code is the code customers will enter to apply the coupon to their cart. Description is an optional field that’s not visible to customers, only to merchants.

Below these fields, you’ll see the Coupon data block. It has three sections:

  • General
  • Usage restriction
  • Usage limits

Let’s take a closer look at each one.

1. General

Choose from three discount types, set a discount amount and expiry date when creating a new coupon
General section

By default, WooCommerce comes with three discount types:

  • Percentage discounts apply a percentage discount to the entire cart.
  • Fixed cart discounts apply a fixed amount discount to the entire cart.
  • Fixed product discounts apply a fixed amount discount to selected products only. The discount is calculated per item and not for the whole cart.

Use the Coupon amount field to set the amount of the discount, the Discount type field to set the type, and the Coupon expiry date to set an expiration date. You can also offer free shipping to customers using the coupon. In the example above, we’ve created a coupon that gives a 50% discount to the entire cart and that expires on October 31, 2018.

2. Usage restriction

Setting usage restrictions on a new coupon
Usage restriction section

If you don’t select any restrictions, anyone can add the coupon to their cart at any time, which probably isn’t what you want.

You can apply the a few different restrictions to your coupon:

  • Set a minimum or maximum order subtotal (that is: the sum of the cart subtotal + tax).
  • Include or exclude selected products or categories.
  • Limit by ‘allowed’ emails (verified against the customer’s billing emai)l. WooCommerce 3.4+ also allows you to include a wildcard character (*) to match multiple email addresses, for example, `*@gmail.com` would make any gmail address.

In our example, we’ve restricted the discount to the Books category by using the Product categories field.

If you find you need to add further limits – for example, restriciting to new customers or by country – check out WooCommerce Coupon Restrictions.

3. Usage limits

Specify how many times the coupon can be used per customer, or in total
Usage limits section

Here, you can specify how many times the coupon can be used per customer and in total. You can also define the number of products it can be applied to at once. In the screenshot above, you’ll see that we’ve specified that the coupon once by customer, and by 200 customers altogether.

Now, if our shoppers add the “LUCKY200” coupon to their carts, they’ll get 50% off all products in the “Books” category as long as they’re one of the first 200 customers. Any other products are in the cart will remain full price.

A coupon successfully added to a cart total
Coupon applied

And if you want a more detailed explanation of coupon fields, you can always refer to the official WooCommerce documentation (or hover over the “?” icon!).

Boosting coupons with Smart Coupons

The Smart Coupons extension for WooCommerce is a great addition to the built-in functionality.

The extension adds new fields and sections to the coupons area, which you can spot easily by their green background color. With Smart Coupons you can, among other things:

Display available coupons on Cart and My Account pages and apply them with a single click

Displaying an available coupon on a page

This functionality is amazing! It’s an easy way to market your coupons. It also makes customers happy when they discover discounts they can use right away.

Store credit/gift certificate

Displaying a coupon for store credit

Store credits work as a fund balance on the customer’s account to use on their purchases. If not completed used, the difference remains for the next purchases. This can be a nice treat to the most loyal customers!

Bulk generate coupons and send them via email

A coupon for store credit sent in an email to reward a customer

Smart Coupons allows you to bulk generate coupons and store credit, then send them right to your customers’ email box. With this functionality, you can create and promote your coupons in minutes.

We hope these tips will help you get started on the creation and basic marketing of your coupons. The fastest way to learn is to get in there and do it, so don’t be shy.

Did we miss anything? How do you market your coupons? Make sure to tell us in the comments.

Reward your customers with Smart Coupons

14 Responses

  1. sunshinecbdoil
    September 20, 2018 at 3:18 am #

    Is there a good way to share your coupons on the internet? so people can find them on google?

  2. Lena
    September 20, 2018 at 2:05 pm #

    thank you for sharing this..we will try it with our project http://essaytyper.pro/ and hope this will help our app get a better social presence..
    cheers

  3. EPF India
    September 21, 2018 at 5:57 pm #

    This is the pretty clear tutorial on creating the coupon using woocommerce. I wasted around an hour figuring out how to share a coupon with the followers of my product. Thank you soo much team. Great job.

    • Marina Pape
      September 27, 2018 at 5:12 pm #

      Sure thing! Good luck 🙂

  4. bestpowerstrips
    September 26, 2018 at 8:51 pm #

    How to Create Coupons with WooCommerce Thank you for post

  5. codecaste
    September 27, 2018 at 9:52 am #

    Samuel Gomes great article for coupons. It plays a major role to acquire a customer to the site and selling prospect.

  6. airpurifiers-review
    September 29, 2018 at 8:51 am #

    How to Create Coupons with WooCommerce Nice post

  7. irsan.widyawan
    September 30, 2018 at 9:52 am #

    where can I find the coupon in woocommerce tab ?
    I already looking around and only found in tab customizer, only coopon text but not setting the amount of discount.

    Is there something wrong with my woocommerce?

    • Samuel Gomes
      October 1, 2018 at 4:20 pm #

      Hey irsan.widyawan. You can check the first images in the following link. They will point you exactly where you need to click to get to the Coupons page.

      https://docs.woocommerce.com/document/coupon-management/

      Let me know if it worked now 😉

      • irsan.widyawan
        October 2, 2018 at 3:14 pm #

        thank you very much for your info. I totally confuse what happen but now already solve

        • Samuel Gomes
          October 2, 2018 at 6:55 pm #

          Good to hear that!

  8. howtoandroitroot
    October 1, 2018 at 2:51 am #

    How to Create Coupons with WooCommerce Cool post

  9. oxibase
    October 4, 2018 at 9:53 am #

    Very useful Information