Smart Coupons Review – Best Coupon Plugin For WooCommerce?

Offering coupons is integral for the growth of any eCommerce store. Having a built-in coupon system is a great plus of WooCommerce. But are WooCommerce coupons created using default WooCommerce options capable of attracting people to your store?

If your answer is no, how do you create compelling coupons at your store? Of course, using a coupon plugin. This article is a complete review of the Smart Coupons for WooCommerce plugin – one of the best coupon plugins for WooCommerce. Let us look at how it’s a better option in terms of its features and usability.

 

Smart Coupons Review Features

This WooCommerce Smart Coupons plugin comes with many interesting features. With the free version of the plugin, you can:

• Configure auto-apply of coupons – It saves your customers from applying coupons manually.
• Apply checkout-based coupon restrictions – It lets you apply coupon restrictions based on shipping methods, payment methods, and user roles.
• Offer BOGO (Buy one Get one) deals.
• Configure giveaway products – Embed giveaway products with coupons.
• Style coupons – Customize coupon styles of expired, used, and active coupons.
• Duplicate coupons – Duplicate coupons with the exact restrictions and data.
• Exclude products – You can select products to exclude them from applying for specific products.
• URL Coupons Add-on – You can use the plugin to create URL coupons in your store.
• View coupons for the ‘My Account’ page – You can let your customers view applicable coupons from their My Account page.

The premium version of the Smart Coupons plugin offers some more interesting features that make coupon management much more straightforward and flexible for store owners:

• Offer store credit/gift cards – You can create and sell store credits or gift cards in your store.
• Bulk generate coupons – Create coupons in bulk, export them to CSV, send via email, or add them to your store.
• Multiple giveaway products – Giveaway multiple free products with coupons.
• Purchase history-based coupons – Configure customer purchase history-based coupons.
• Restrict coupons on a country basis – Restrict the usage of coupons to specific countries.
• Offer sign-up and cart abandonment coupons – Configure sign-up and cart abandonment coupons.
• Import coupons – Import coupons to your WooCommerce store via CSV.
• Count down discount sales banner – Display a countdown discount sales banner in your store using a shortcode.

Now let us have a closer look at some of the best features of the Smart Coupon for WooCommerce plugin.

 

Applying Checkout Based Coupon Restrictions

You can allow checkout based coupon restrictions using this plugin. While creating a payment gateway, shipping method and usage restriction based coupons are possible with the free version. You can create country based coupons with the pro version of the plugin.

With this feature’s help, you can create coupons applicable to selected payment methods, shipping methods, user roles, and even country.

To create such coupons, you can install the Smart Coupon plugin for WooCommerce and go to the plugin dashboard. Then you can navigate to Coupon data > Checkout options.

Following is the checkout option window for the free plugin. You can see all three methods listed within it. You can select single or multiple shipping methods, payment methods, or user roles from the coupon drop-down to apply.

 

 

The pro version adds one more option to the list, a country-based coupon restriction feature. This feature allows you to apply coupons to selected countries based on the billing or shipping address. You can configure whether it should be based on the billing address or shipping address.

 

 

If you are running a local store, the free version would be enough, but if you wish to expand your market internationally, this paid feature will benefit you.

 

Customization & Styling Coupons

Both free and premium version of the plugin allows coupon styling options. You can add different styles for available coupons, used coupons, and expired coupons in your store.

While the free version offers only a single template for each category of coupons, you can avail of multiple templates with the plugin’s paid version to give coupons a unique look.

The following is a screenshot of the plugin’s coupon styling page in the free version.

In the customization part, you can choose a background color and foreground color for each coupon type. You can also choose whether you wish to display the used coupons and expired coupons in the “My Account’ page of your users.

 

 

The below screenshot is of the corresponding window of the premium version of the plugin.

 

 

You can choose the coupon type from the drop-down and customize it by selecting a style and color, etc.

 

Embedding Giveaway Products With Coupons

The product giveaway feature is common to both free and premium versions. The only difference is that while the premium version supports offering multiple products for the giveaway, the free version supports only a single product.

Following is a screenshot of the free version giveaway products window. You can choose one product for a giveaway with a coupon.

 

 

In the below screenshot of the corresponding window of the pro version, you can choose the number of free products (to be added to the customer’s cart), select the name of the products (in case the selected products exceeded the below-specified quantity, customers will be able to choose from free products).

 

 

You can also giveaway products at a discount and apply tax on the discounted value (optional).

 

Store Credit/Gift Cards

Store credit option is only available in the pro version of the plugin. Using this feature, you can configure store credits of different denominations for your customers to choose from. Customers can either use it for themselves or use it as a gift option. They can email the gift card containing store credit to their loved one’s email from your store itself.

Apart from it, you can use the store credit option to manage refunds for order returns. Instead of issuing refunds, you can offer them a store credit of equivalent amount. This way, you can divert all the lost sales back to your store.

Following is the setup window for creating store credits in your store. You can create store credits by associating a product and adding other relevant details.

 

 

Along with it, there is another window where you can manually enter an email address to send store credits to a specific email address.

 

 

Purchase-History Based Coupons

It is another exciting feature offered by the plugin. Using this feature, you can allow coupons based on people’s purchase history. Some of the common coupons created with this feature are first-order coupons, next order coupons, etc. But you can create coupons for any number of orders using the plugin.

The below screenshot shows the configuration window of purchase history based coupons. You can choose the order number past orders for the coupon to be applied along with adding order amount and order status.

 

 

This feature is great for encouraging repeated purchases in your WooCommerce store.

 

Countdown Discount Sales Banner

Another great feature exclusive to the plugin’s premium version is the countdown discount sales banner. You can free yourself from hiring a developer to display a count-down discount sales banner on your WooCommerce store during every festive/holiday season with this feature of the plugin.

With a few button clicks, you can have a beautiful sales banner displayed on your website. The following is a screenshot of the coupon banner settings page.

 

 

You can see the options for customizing or styling the coupon banner on the right side of the window as per your website’s specifications.

 

 

You can use the coupon shortcode mentioned on the page to display the coupon banner to any page on your WooCommerce site.

 

Sign Up & Cart Abandonment Coupons

These two coupons are only available with the premium version. Enabling these coupons in your WooCommerce store can bring a huge increase in your store’s sales. While Sign up coupons help turn your store’s casual visitors into customers, the latter help reduce cart abandonment.

For creating a sign-up coupon, you first need to create a master coupon with all the coupon rules and configurations the sign-up coupon should have. You can subsequently associate the master coupon with it.

 

 

For the abandoned cart coupon to work in your store, you need to associate a master coupon to it just like you did with the sign-up coupon.

 

 

You need to configure the minimum time the item should remain in the cart for the customer to be eligible for the coupon and specify the duration after which the coupon will be mailed to qualified customers.

 

Why Should You Choose Smart Coupons?

Coupons are indeed great sales boosters, only if we used them correctly. If you offer coupons without a great strategy in mind, it can affect your store’s revenue and profit.

To help you create great strategies, the plugin comes with several coupon restrictions. Using them, you can create coupons that satisfy all kinds of customers.

You can create coupons targeted at new customers, existing ones, people in a specific region/country, using specific payment methods, and more.

It doesn’t have to be customer-specific either. You can apply coupons on selected products in your store to encourage its sales, on subtotal purchases to make customers spend more so they can earn the coupon, etc.

You can come up with endless possibilities to boost your sales using the plugin. Using them wisely will definitely help you grow your business at a  faster pace. If you are interested in alternative option, there is another coupon plugin for WooCommerce also called Smart Coupons from StoreApss authors.