Coupons, in our case WooCommerce coupons, can boost sales in your online store. You can sell products faster, sell more products, and even increase traffic to your site using these coupons.
Using coupons also allows you to improve brand awareness, enhance customer loyalty, and can even save you advertising costs.
In this guide, we will explain how to add coupons in WooCommerce stores and give a detailed look at coupon options and settings. If you are interested in a basic guide on building a store with WooCommerce, check out the article Building a Virtual Store in WordPress using WooCommerce.
To get started, if you want to use coupons in WooCommerce, you need to enable the option first. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > General, and under “Enable Coupons” check the option Enable the use of coupons, then save the settings.
You’ll find more details about the “Calculate Coupon Discounts Sequentially” option further down in the post.
Adding a Coupon in WooCommerce Stores
To add a coupon in a WooCommerce store, follow these steps:
- In the WordPress admin interface, go to Marketing > Coupons.
- Create a new coupon by clicking the Add Coupon button or edit an existing coupon.
- Add the following fields:
- Coupon Code – the code that the customer will use to redeem the coupon. This code must be unique.
- Coupon Description (Optional) – information about the coupon, for example – dates it is valid, whether it is a promotional coupon or a compensation coupon, etc.
Under the Coupon Data section, there are three tabs that allow you to add restrictions to the coupon and configure additional settings. These tabs are: General, Usage Restriction, and Usage Limits. Let’s take a detailed look at each of these tabs…
General
The General tab lets you set the discount type, amount, and expiration.
- Discount Type:
- Percentage Discount – a percentage discount applied to the entire cart. For example, if the cart contains three shirts priced at $20 each (total $60), a 10% coupon will discount $6.
- Fixed Cart Discount – a fixed discount for the entire cart. A $10 discount in this type means $10 off regardless of the total items in the cart.
- Fixed Product Discount – a fixed discount for specific products only. The customer will receive the discount on each qualifying product. If you add three specific shirts, each will get a $10 discount (total $30 off).
- Coupon Amount – a fixed number or percentage, depending on the discount type you chose. There is no need to add the currency symbol or percentage sign, WooCommerce handles this automatically.
- Allow Free Shipping – waives the shipping cost when the customer uses the coupon. This requires that a “Free Shipping” method is enabled in your shipping settings.
- Coupon Expiry Date – the date when the coupon will expire. The expiry occurs at 00:00 (midnight) on the defined date.
Usage Restriction
This tab controls when and where the coupon can be applied.
- Minimum Spend – the minimum subtotal (items + tax) required for the coupon to be valid.
- Maximum Spend – the maximum subtotal after which the coupon will no longer apply.
- Individual Use Only – check this if you want this coupon to not be used together with other coupons.
- Exclude Sale Items – check this if you do not want the coupon to apply to items already on sale.
- Products – the products for which the coupon will be valid, or the products that must be in the cart for the “Fixed Product Discount” to apply.
- Exclude Products – products for which the coupon will not be valid, or products that cannot be in the cart when redeeming the “Fixed Product Discount”.
- Product Categories – product categories for which the coupon will apply, or categories that must be in the cart for the “Fixed Product Discount” to work.
- Exclude Categories – product categories for which the coupon will not be valid.
- Allowed Emails – email address(es) that can use this coupon. This is checked against the customer’s billing email address.
If you leave both Products and Exclude Products empty, the coupon will be valid for your entire store.
Usage Limits
This tab lets you control how many times a coupon can be used.
- Usage Limit Per Coupon – the total number of times the coupon can be redeemed across all customers before it becomes invalid.
- Limit Usage to X Items – the maximum number of individual items the coupon can apply to within a single order (relevant for product-level discounts).
- Usage Limit Per User – the number of times a specific user can redeem the coupon before it becomes invalid for that user.
After configuring the coupon to your needs, click Publish and the coupon will be ready for use.
Sending Coupons to Customers
After publishing a coupon, you can share the coupon code with your customers. Simply copy the coupon code and send it via email, social media, or any other channel.
In WooCommerce, you can also apply or remove coupons directly on the Orders screen (WooCommerce > Orders). The order must be unpaid, and you need to know the coupon code you want to apply.
Calculate Coupon Discounts Sequentially
By default, WooCommerce calculates coupon discounts in parallel. This means that if multiple coupons are applied to a cart, each one is calculated based on the original product or cart total – without taking other discounts into account.
Enabling the option to calculate coupon discounts sequentially changes this behavior. In sequential mode, each coupon is applied one after the other, with every new discount calculated based on the amount remaining after the previous one has been deducted.
This approach is useful when combining different types of coupons, such as a percentage-based discount followed by a fixed amount discount. It ensures more accurate and fair calculations.
Need More Options for Managing Coupons?
WooCommerce has several extensions that expand the coupon functionality beyond what the default setup offers. One of these is Smart Coupons which provides advanced options to increase sales. The Smart Coupons extension allows you to:
- Give automatic discount coupons after purchase.
- Provide gift certificates that customers can purchase for others.
- Give customers store credit for purchases in your store.
- Embed styled coupons on your site using shortcodes.
This extension has been tested on thousands of WooCommerce stores and covers almost everything you might need in terms of coupon management.
Bonus – Changing or Removing the Coupon Text
Since it was requested in the comments, let’s see how to change the coupon-related text on the cart and checkout pages. The following code changes the text “Coupon Code / Apply Coupon” to a custom message.
Add this to the functions.php file and change the text in lines 3, 11, and 14 accordingly:
// Change coupon text and link on the checkout page
function woocommerce_rename_coupon_message_on_checkout() {
return 'Have a Customer Code?' . ' <a class="showcoupon" href="#">' . __( 'Click here to enter your code', 'woocommerce' ) . '</a>';
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_checkout_coupon_message', 'woocommerce_rename_coupon_message_on_checkout' );
// Change coupon field on the cart page
function woocommerce_rename_coupon_field_on_checkout( $translated_text, $text, $text_domain ) {
if ( is_admin() || 'woocommerce' !== $text_domain ) {
return $translated_text;
}
if ( 'Coupon code' === $text ) {
$translated_text = 'Customer Code';
} elseif ( 'Apply coupon' === $text ) {
$translated_text = 'Apply Code';
}
return $translated_text;
}
add_filter( 'gettext', 'woocommerce_rename_coupon_field_on_checkout', 10, 3 );To remove the coupon field entirely from both pages, add the following code:
// Hide the coupon field on the cart page
function hide_coupon_field_on_cart( $enabled ) {
if ( is_cart() ) {
$enabled = false;
}
return $enabled;
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_coupons_enabled', 'hide_coupon_field_on_cart' );
// Hide the coupon field on the checkout page
function hide_coupon_field_on_checkout( $enabled ) {
if ( is_checkout() ) {
$enabled = false;
}
return $enabled;
}
add_filter( 'woocommerce_coupons_enabled', 'hide_coupon_field_on_checkout' );The code snippets above work with the classic WooCommerce cart and checkout pages. If your store uses WooCommerce’s block-based checkout, these filters may not apply. For block-based checkout, you’ll need to use the JavaScript-based registerCheckoutFilters API instead.
FAQs
Common questions about WooCommerce coupons:
woocommerce_before_calculate_totals hook to programmatically apply a coupon when certain conditions are met.That’s it, hope this guide helped. If so, feel free to share in the comments. Good luck!
