[OpenAmazing]

It depends.

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.

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).

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.

[EliAndrewC]

I remember an anecdote about a record store with a similar tactic for selling CDs. They'd put out 5 copies of a CD; 4 copies would be marked at $13 and 1 copy would be marked at $11. People browsing would notice the cheaper copy and immediately snatch it up, thinking they had found a good deal (possibly due to a mistake on the part of the store), at which point the store would just go and "mark down" one of the other copies.

[alex_c]

This is my hunch, as well. You can make a 5% coupon easily available for anyone who searches on Google, and bake it into your pricing. Customers feel they got a deal, and you keep the flexibility to use larger coupons for specific promotions.

I haven't tried this yet, but I am planning to give it a shot once I launch the app I'm working on. It seems to work for GoDaddy, at any rate!

I strongly suspect that we wouldn't be reading this post if the author had found a working coupon as the first result when searching for "product X coupon".

[ams6110]

Why even make them go to Google? Put a link right next to the coupon code: Don't have a code? Take our <a href="#">3 question survey</a> and get one now!

Then you can learn a bit more about your customers, and make them happier about buying at the same time.

[cpeterso]

Or just ask the customer to subscribe to your mailing list to receive coupons. You can send them one coupon immediately for their current purchase (possibly even applicable retroactively if email is slow when they are completing their purchase). Then you can send them more email coupons (and personalized recommendations) in the future to keep them coming back. :)

[nhangen]

I once sent an email to my subscribers offering a discount code (this was a very small list) and within a day, the coupon was on retailmenot. I think in the future, I'm going to have a coupon box with codes published in as many places as possible. The buyer feels like they're getting a deal, and the seller gets a new customer.

[rachelbaker]

Testing and finding the right methods for your individual audience is the best thing you can do.

I am just not a fan of showing a distraction to someone willing to give you money.

[OpenAmazing]

Most people looking at your Purchase page are not willing to give you money. A typical shopping cart abandonment rate is more than 75%.

[tedunangst]

Shopping cart or checkout? I pile stuff in shopping carts and walk away from it all the time, but once I get to the checkout page where the coupon box is displayed, the purchase is going to happen.

[trafficlight]

Some sites don't give accurate shipping information until final checkout which is really irritating. I'll go through part of the checkout process so I can get a final price and then leave to compare prices.

[Maxious]

Even Amazon will let you get pretty far before it tells you that product is not allowed for sale in your region. Worst case was a big ticket ASUS laptop I did plenty of research on (there may be warnings on the product pages IF you are logged in while browsing, I was not).

[pbhjpbhj]

>there may be warnings on the product pages [about regional availability]* IF you are logged in while browsing,*

This is the right way to do it. How're they supposed to know where you're from, where you'll be buying, if you're not logged in. The alternative appears to be to ask every visitor to give their location before you show them anything.

[sharpneli]

Amazon tends to just mention that the item is not available to shipping for all countries and only at checkout does it complain that it may not sell it to you.

To add insult to injury they now spam me advertisements of the products I had to abandon, which they naturally still cannot sell me.

[6ren]

Oh, it's a way of doing discriminatory pricing: http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/CamelsandRubberDuckie...

[rmc]

As well as market segmentation, customers might be more likely to purchase if they get a little thrill of accomplishment with getting a discount.

[eli]

...just like supermarket coupons.

[cpeterso]

And when you know which customers use coupon codes, you can entice them with "sign up for our email coupons". Lulu.com sends out a LOT of email coupons (though their emails might be [even] more effective if the emails included personalized links to new books they think I would like based on my previous purchases).

[absconditus]

What about the type of customer that such a scheme attracts?