Coupons versus Discounts

[1bigidea]

While working on a recent shop launch, the client wanted to do some promotions. I was struck that coupons is our only mechanism for "promotion" but it requires some means of communicating the "code" to the customers.

My customer wanted to offer an automatic baker's dozen (buy 12 get one free). I was struck that we needed a better nomenclature for this part of wp-e-commerce. Discounts are automatically taken at checkout. Coupons require action by the customer. Discounts and Coupons need to be able to apply on a per line item or cart-wide.

I would love additional input so I can prepare some UI suggestions in the Coupons panel (which I would probably rename to Promotions)

[JustinSainton]

Love it. This should all be considered in mind with #385

[1bigidea]

I also think this might be a good opportunity to also explore moving the coupons table into a custom post type.

[JustinSainton]

Yep, that would likely be a significant architectural overhaul though, and should be considered as part of a separate ticket.

[pippinsplugins]

How about adding a Cart_Fees class like both EDD and Woo have? The class allows for arbitrary fees to be added to the cart, and fees can be negative, which makes for perfect "automated discounts".

[benhuson]

A Cart Fees class does sound like a good idea to add anyway - can think of many fun uses for that, eg repeat customer discount...

For discounts I guess it would depend it you would want to show the 2 for 1 type discount at a cart line item level (which you probably would)?

[benhuson]

Just while my thoughts are on coupons....

In mind my, coupons, discounts and promotions are separate things so we would need to think how to manage and distinguish between them.

Coupons require a code from the user. Use cases include promotion codes or once time use gift certificate codes etc

Promotions are rules which are automatically applied to your basket based on your purchase. Eg Repeat customer, 3 for 2 offers, Buy x and get y half price.

Discounts to me are more like sale prices and show as discounted price as you are browsing products. The frustration at the moment is that you can only apply sale prices at a product level which is a pain, particularly if you are having a sale through your store. If would be great if you could also do rule-based sale pricing i.e. 10% off all products in category X, 25% off everything in store, 20% off anything over $50 etc and have start/expiry dates for these.

[JustinSainton]

@1bigidea @benhuson Is this something you guys might like to collaborate on for 3.9.0?

[benhuson]

I've been asked a few more times about the bulk-applying sale prices / full-based pricing so that's something I'd be interested in looking at.

If feels like development of this could work quite developed as a plugin and then merged in later like some of the recent WordPress core features. I would have thought we already have hooks most places that would need them and more could be added where needed.

I'm thinking structurally maybe approach this as a "wpec_promotion" post type managed by a WPEC_Promotion class that could be extended for Discounts, Multi-buys, and maybe coupons too in the future.

@JustinSainton @1bigidea What do you think?

[JustinSainton]

@benhuson Totally agree. With 3.9.0 dropping on May 21, it may be a bit unrealistic to get this fully baked by then. But I think the plugin concept would work great. Do you want to lead the charge on this?