Why "Coupon Code" Should Not be a Field on Your Payment Form

It depends.<p>On an older site I ran we discovered the same thing and exploited it. We made it easy to find coupons for our product via Google. Interested visitors would land on our buy page, see the coupon field, search Google, find one and buy the product because they felt like they were getting a great deal. The conversion rate went up. The original price took in to account a lot of users would be using a discount. We split tested having the field and not, and we made more money with the coupon code field and giving out a lot of coupons.<p>Yes, some users that would have paid full price may take advantage of the discount. But, potentially, you will get a lot of customers that only buy because they find a discount. My guess is that this works better for lower cost "consumer" type purchases (not larger, business purchases).<p>Making coupons / discounts easy to find is a marketing strategy. Why do you think half the apps in the app stores have "Limited time discount offer!" as the first line of their description.

I work with a lot of retail stores and yes, if you add "Coupon Code" to the checkout page some customers will stop and start looking for coupons. There are a couple of options:<p>a) Don't call it coupon. Call it "offer code" or "referral code" or something that doesn't immediately scream "Discount!"<p>b) Why try to hide the codes? They will be easy enough to find on Google if they're available so instead, make compelling offers where you provide discounts in exchange for customers purchasing more or taking some other action. Look at rental car web sites. Most offer a "Deals" page where you can see coupon codes because they realized the codes were easily shared anyways.<p>c) Don't use a text box. Instead create referral links with the code embedded so that only people using the links will get the coupon code. This way, people without codes never see the option to enter one.<p>d) Check the HTTP referrer when a visitor first arrives and apply coupon codes as needed OR only display the coupon box when you know a customer has come from an advertiser site.<p>e) Proactively suggest offers that don't require coupon codes at all. For example, when a customer has $97 of items in their cart, display a message box offering a discount if they purchase &#62; $100.

Does anyone out there have an answer from actual A/B testing?

I use NameCheap and they have this field. There's also <a href="http://www.namecheapcoupons.com/" rel="nofollow">http://www.namecheapcoupons.com/</a> though, which is very findable.<p>... which gives me an idea - when you hit a coupon code box, you feel the need to supply a coupon, and once you've found one everything's ok again. So what if the company makes it simple to find coupons for small amounts, say 5%, but has other discount codes as well (for 20%) that it uses. Once you find the 5% one you stop searching, and you're also happy because you've got yourself a discount. Meanwhile the company still has a way of offering deeper discounts when needed

A better alternative may be to frame it differently<p><pre><code> If applicable, please enter your gift card number. </code></pre> This implies it is single use though.<p>Another option is to provide the field when user is already very invested. For instance, he has entered shipping details, contact details etc.<p>I wonder if anyone has split tested "enter coupon" phrases which doesn't encourage shopping cart abandonment?<p>The other option is to offer them notification whenever new coupons are available. It is a good way get people who might have abandoned the shopping cart anyway to opt in.

I had this exact experience that Rachel describes the other day -- was signing up a new startup and saw that, was already feeling like the service was too expensive, then got annoyed at the idea that me (some sucker from the web) was paying more than other people and just ditched the signup process.<p>Granted, I wasn't going to make that startup rich, BUT, I didn't even get past that signup page to experience their product and give them a chance to win me over.<p>With so many choices for every kind of app, I think she brings up a really good point here. Don't make your new customers feel like suckers about to pay sticker-price if they don't have to.

There is academic research that confirms the injustice hypothesis:<p><a href="http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/research/Promo/EconPsych.pdf" rel="nofollow">http://www2.owen.vanderbilt.edu/mike.shor/research/Promo/Eco...</a>

I have to agree, when I see coupon field I know there's a discount I'm not getting so I go and look for it.

Your competitors can also buy AdWords on keywords such as "(your business) coupon codes", sniping your sales at the very end of your funnel.

I agree the Coupon Code field is a taunt, but what if someone has a coupon code and has lost the url for the coupon-specific form, or just ended up at the main form anyway? That could be especially frustrating - to have the coupon and not see any way of entering it.<p>Perhaps another solution is to have a checkbox "I have a coupon" instead (and ask for the code on the next step) or a link. That's less of an incentive, but still keeps the option for coupon holders on the main form.

I have a text link that says "Have a coupon?" that expands into a text field when clicked. I'm not sure how much that helps, but it felt slightly less taunting to me.

Having a click-through example.com/deals page which sets a hidden field or drops a cookie could avoid some of the Sad Missed Deal approach.<p>Then again, it immediately informs your potential customers of all your available deals, without the hassle of searching around, so they're more likely to find some way of optimising their payment downwards. You could (pseudo-)randomly display certain deals, or set rate/quantity caps ("Buy quickly, only 50 coupons remain!") to deal with that.<p>By providing visibility on all your deals, the customer feels more satisfied knowing they got the best possible deal, and you limit the proliferation of all those annoying voucher search sites (and cart abandonment when none of those 3-year old $5 off codes work).

The coupon code field is only intended to be seen by people who <i>already</i> have a coupon code. Solution? Make the coupon code field inconspicuous and hard to find. Make it an accordion dropdown in small text somewhere in the corner, for example. Those holding a coupon code will not give up trying to find that place to type in their coupon code, while those who don't have a coupon code have minimal chance of being thrown off by the taunting "coupon code" field.

Allmenus.com yesterday launched a new feature that somewhat solves this issue. In the shopping cart, we have text reading 'Discount Code' with a link 'Apply'. If you click the link, we reveal an input box with a button to submit a coupon code.<p>I believe that by removing the text box, less visual attention is stressed to go out and find a coupon. If a customer has come to our site with the prior intention of redeeming a coupon, I believe they'll navigate our interface without a problem.<p>See what i'm talking about, just add an item from the menu to meet the order minimum to see the text appear:<p><a href="http://www.allmenus.com/ny/new-york/280265-yorganic/menu/" rel="nofollow">http://www.allmenus.com/ny/new-york/280265-yorganic/menu/</a><p>Sidenote: Yes, we'll test the lingo to determine what preforms the best and monitor campaign results for changes in usage patterns.

On the other hand, I was once told by a savvy marketer "You know you've got them when your customers think they're fucking you."<p>Make the codes easy to find (put them on Twitter and they'll get scraped by coupon sites), and you can get some traction out of this sort of thing.

I generally agree (especially for startups and other less established / unfamiliar-to-the-user vendors).<p>That being said, I've seen at least two companies cleverly use the visible coupon code field: Lenovo and Dell. They use it to establish at least 3 tiers of pricing:<p>1. People who don't use the coupon code at all anyway and get the standard "sale" 2. People who Google for a code and find a 5-10% coupon 3. People who get a better coupon through "less public" means (e.g. newsletter, limited-use coupon, etc.)<p>On top of that, I suspect Lenovo and Dell have their standard "sales" because they want higher "list" prices that make the corporate volume purchasing discounts look better.

I was briefly thinking about this the other day and my quick fix was to de-emphasize the coupon/gift card fields by using progressive disclosure. Screenshot of mockup: <a href="http://d.pr/KxJe" rel="nofollow">http://d.pr/KxJe</a>. Although this doesn't completely remove the fact that the site accepts coupons, it helps with the 'empty field' issue described in the original post. Thoughts on this? Anybody run across any other solutions?

A better alternative is to pre-fill the form with a "standard" discount, or have that code somewhere nearby. Coupon codes work wonders for tracking off site promotions. Are people finding you from a blog, a magazine article, a special event, or what? Having specific coupon codes for each let's you measure the effectiveness of campaigns you otherwise wouldn't be able to accurately measure.

The funniest thing here is that often all it takes to look up coupon code is tho view page source, where coupon code is hardcoded in javascript.

Our product is featured a lot on daily deal sites so we have to show a coupon code box. What we also do is include the logo of the daily deal site (Groupon, Zulily etc.) as a visual hint to the customer as to where the coupon might come from. That way, I hope, we eliminate the curiousity. Haven't ever heard from a customer asking for a coupon.

When I purchase something on Amazon and GoDaddy, I usually spend 3 minutes to google a coupon to save $5. It feels good.

I get distracted by those fields too, especially with car rental companies where I KNOW there are lots of coupon codes out there. Even after I find one part of me is still wondering if I could have gotten a better deal if I'd just searched a little bit longer.

At Trafficspaces, we include a coupon code called LUCKYDAY right there on the payment page of all our plans. Saves the Google search and increase conversion rates to over 30%.<p><a href="http://www.trafficspaces.com/plans/" rel="nofollow">http://www.trafficspaces.com/plans/</a>

If you need this field, try calling it "Gift Code" or something more cryptic like that. People will be less likely to assume it's something they'll find on RetailMeNot.

I'm almost done with savable.net, I'll be developing a large database of coupon codes that you can us when facing the empty coupon code box.

<a href="http://xkcd.com/837/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/837/</a> How I wish this was a real thing. :(

That is why RetailMeNot exists.

Idea for a browser plugin: find coupon codes when such a field appears on a form

When I see Coupon Code the first thing I do is look on Twitter Search.

Wow, a generalisation based on a single anecdotal data point!<p>You could sink the titanic over again with holes that large.<p>Guys (and gals), please resist the temptation to take a single personal anecdote that you care about and blow that up into some kind of authoritative advice such as:<p><i>Do not show the Coupon code field unless you absolutely need to do so. When sending marketing and promotional materials, send them to a different version of your payment page that reflects the discount you are offering. Having the same payment page for your discounted and full price purchases just invites Google searches for “(app name) coupon code” and resulting abandoned cart.</i><p>Those arguments are no better than <a href="http://xkcd.com/605/" rel="nofollow">http://xkcd.com/605/</a>