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Website with discounts and coupon codes: is it worth it for a business?
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Anyone searching "website with discounts and coupon codes" has usually already run into an uncomfortable question: does adding them actually help sales, or does it risk teaching customers to always wait for the next discount before buying? The answer depends less on how the banner looks and more on how the coupon is shown, communicated and limited.
The coupon field can cost more than it looks like
Whoever designs a checkout tends to put the coupon code field front and center, thinking it's doing a favor to whoever has one. The Baymard Institute, which has run ecommerce usability tests since 2011, found the opposite effect in a guide published October 18, 2021: users notice an empty field to fill in almost every time, and that's exactly what turns it into a problem. One test participant put it in plain words: they felt slightly annoyed by a field that seemed to say "you should have a coupon, you could pay less if you knew this code," when they didn't have one. At that point, the customer who was about to buy starts feeling like they're paying more than some imaginary, better-informed customer would.
The fix Baymard recommends isn't removing the coupon option, it's hiding it behind a secondary link, below the main payment fields: whoever actually has a code goes looking for it and finds it, while whoever doesn't isn't confronted with a doubt they didn't have before reaching checkout.
What the law says when you announce a discount
In Italy there's also a legal constraint worth knowing before writing "20% OFF" on a banner. Since July 1, 2023, the date from which it applies to promotional campaigns, Article 17-bis of the Consumer Code, introduced by Legislative Decree no. 26 of March 7, 2023 transposing the EU's Omnibus Directive, requires anyone announcing a general price reduction to also show the lowest price applied in the preceding 30 days. You can no longer raise a list price on purpose just to "discount" it visibly afterward: the reference is the lowest price genuinely charged over the past month, not one invented for the occasion.
The rule covers generalized codes, valid for anyone who types them in. The Ministry of Enterprises' official FAQ clarifies that personalized vouchers, or ones tied to a specific condition such as a newsletter signup or a past purchase, fall outside this requirement: one more reason, besides margin, to favor a coupon tied to a real condition over one valid for anyone.
What happens when a business drops every discount at once
The opposite extreme doesn't work either, meaning dropping every discount and hoping customers will settle for an honest price year-round. The case of the American chain JCPenney shows this well, with the caveat that its numbers have more than one cause. In 2012 the company replaced coupons and periodic promotions with permanent low prices, as part of a broader overhaul of its store model. In the 10-K it filed with the SEC for that fiscal year, JCPenney writes that during the first year of the transformation, abandoning its former promotional strategy made it difficult to communicate its value to customers, to the point of reintroducing some promotions within the same period. Net sales fell from $17,260 million to $12,985 million, a 24.8% decline: the filing attributes this to the transformation as a whole, of which ending promotions was one component explicitly cited as a source of difficulty, not the one isolated cause.
The guarantee
Thirty days to change your mind.
In more than ten years I have never had a client unhappy with the work delivered. That is why I can afford to say this: you have 30 days from accepting the quote to stop, or until the shop goes live if that comes first. Within that window I refund everything you have paid and we part ways, with no further claim and no argument. There are no conditions to meet and nothing to prove: you decide.
You get me, within one working day.
No switchboard, no support form. If you write or call and I do not answer within one working day, you do not pay that month.
I take the risk at the start. It is the only way I have to say “trust me” and have it mean something.
The code meant for one customer that ends up everywhere
There's one last structural risk that applies only to public, generic codes: a coupon sent by email or on social media can be reposted by whoever receives it to a coupon aggregator site or a public group, and from there anyone who finds it can use it, not just the customer it was meant for. There's no independent, verifiable figure on how widespread this is in Italy, so I won't put a number on it, but the mechanism itself isn't in question: a code valid for anyone, with no other conditions, is the easiest one to leak past its intended audience. A code tied to an account, to a purchase already made, to a single use, or to a minimum spend cuts both this risk and the reference-price requirement covered above.
Where to start
A coupon makes sense when it's tied to something specific: a first purchase, a newsletter signup, recovering an abandoned cart, not a permanent discount open to everyone. If you announce it with a pop-up, it's worth doing so with the same care I cover in website popups: when they help and when they don't: a single message, shown at the right moment, never full-screen the instant the page loads. On the technical side, adding a coupon system is one of the line items that affects the cost of an online shop, which I cover in full in how much does an e-commerce cost. If you're not sure your discounts are communicated the right way, both for checkout and for the law, get in touch and let's look at it together.