A recent study (registration required) showed that buyers are spending more time researching online, but spending less money. No doubt, most of these consumers are searching for better deals, and in particular voucher codes.

Voucher code sites aggregate discount codes submitted by users and therefore made aware to the general public. As consumers have latched on to the challenge of searching for a code to enter into the ‘Enter Promotional Code’ box on the checkout form, retailers have found that their promotions have on occasions spread much further than anticipated. Consumers are more likely to abandon their shopping cart as a result if they can’t find a promotional code online.

Macy’s Voucher Site

At the xChange conference I chatted with a colleague at Macy’s and discussed how they address voucher codes I was quite surprised not only at their solution, but also their results.

Due to the widespread nature of these sites, Macy’s now publishes their own special offer site that lists only Macy’s voucher codes. Their logic was simple: ‘Our buyers are searching online for Macy’s vouchers, some of which will work, some of which will be dead links, and it takes them offsite to search.’

By creating their own voucher site, Macy’s acknowledges the challenge, and by making their codes relatively public, they are not only avoid the affiliate fees of aggregate sites but also keep control of their promotions.

It’s an interesting development, since the traditional approach has been to try and ignore the voucher sites as much as possible. Macy’s have taken back control of their promotions, calculating that any additional discounts that are given will be offset by a reduction in affiliate fees or (in their case) paid for by the manufacturers.

What’s interesting is that 40 percent of Macy’s voucher code page visitors go on to convert and become customers. It’s effective because it recognizes that customer behaviour has changed: if visitors are searching for vouchers online, why not keep them on the site and make it easy for them to complete their purchase as planned? The converse is a scenario where customers abandon specifically because they are unable to find a voucher code that works.

The OfficeMax Approach

Another approach I like has been adopted by OfficeMax, where they’ve put a hyperlink under the Promotion code box to encourage you to sign up for a newsletter.

While this is a great way to get more newsletter sign ups, it won’t stop shoppers from surfing to find promotion codes.

Perhaps the ideal treatment would be to combine these two different tactics and have a hyperlink under the promotion code box (OfficeMax) which takes you to the promotion code page (Macy’s).

Of course, even if you’re achieving a 40% conversion like Macy’s, that still means that 60% are abandoning. When they do abandon, remarketing is a very effective way to recover these lost shopping carts, but given that one of the potential causes was that the visitor was unable to find a promotional code online, you need to take this into account. The challenge here is to try and determine when to make a promotional offer.

If you’d like to find out more about remarketing, and when and when not to use promotion codes, then take a look at Seewhy Abandonment Tracker Pro here.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, September 30th, 2009 at 11:20 am and is filed under Blog. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.