Adding a WooCommerce bulk discount (also known as a quantity discount) to your products makes it possible to offer your customers powerful incentives to buy more. Bulk discounts are surely one of the oldest sales techniques known to humanity because they appeal to our love of getting something cheaper.
Bulk discounts are one of the most effective ways of increasing your sales and profit on your WooCommerce store. They allow you to change the WooCommerce product price based on quantity.
In this article, I’m going to show you the quickest and easiest way of creating a WooCommerce bulk or quantity discount in your store, including:
- What are bulk pricing discounts?
- Why use bulk pricing strategies?
- How to create a WooCommerce bulk discount
- How to create a discount for a single product
- How to create bulk discounts for all products in a category
- Other WooCommerce discount strategies
You can check out this article, if you’re looking for further information about WooCommerce discounts.
What are bulk pricing discounts?
WooCommerce bulk pricing discounts (or quantity discounts) are a way of offering your customers a better price based on quantity. Basically: the more you buy, the lower the price per unit.
Examples of bulk pricing discounts
Bulk discounts can often take a very simple form, e.g.:
- Buy 10 or more items and get a 5% discount
Or you can create different discount levels or tiers, e.g.:
- Buy between 10 and 25 items and get a 5% discount
- Buy between 26 and 50 items and get a 10% discount
- Purchase 51 items or more and get a 15% discount
- And so on…
The psychology of this strategy appeals to people’s natural desire to get value for money. Let’s look at one of the scenarios above: if you have 9 items in your cart and you know that purchasing one more is going to earn you a discount, then it’s difficult to say no. Even if you don’t want that 10th item and you know it’s going to cost you more.
Why use a bulk discount in your WooCommerce store?
But why offer bulk discounts in this way? Here are seven good reasons, plus one thing to watch out for.
- Drive volume: by offering cheaper unit prices for greater quantities, you’re encouraging your customers to buy more of your product. Because who wouldn’t be tempted to increase their order size to get a cheaper price?
- Bring in new customers: any kind of deal is always going to attract new customers – because offering price benefits based on volume will help to set you apart from your competitors
- Encourage repeat custom: for many businesses, because having a solid base of returning customers is essential
- Discounts increase customer satisfaction: because everyone loves to think they’re getting a deal
- Clear old inventory: because encouraging your customers to buy more of your product at a lower rate will help you shift more stock. This is especially important if your products are seasonal or you’re introducing a new range
- Break into new markets: because if you’re introducing a new range or just starting out, discounts can set you apart and encourage customers to give you a try
- Fill capacity: because, depending on your production methods, producing goods in larger quantities is often more cost effective. It makes sense to pass some of this on to your customers to help you drive your costs down. It’s a win-win
Don’t forget: Ensure you stay profitable. Don’t sell items too cheaply if you can’t afford to – it’s easy to get carried away with a discount strategy.
For more details and ideas on how and why to use WooCommerce pricing strategies effectively, check out this article by TutsPlus.
How to create a WooCommerce bulk discount
The simplest way to create bulk pricing discounts in WooCommerce is to use a plugin. The WooCommerce Fees and Discounts plugin offers you several ways to create quantity discounts in your store.
In this article, we’ll look at setting up bulk discounts with several tiers. This will allow you to change the WooCommerce product price based on quantity.
Install and activate Fees and Discounts
Once you’ve uploaded and activated the Fees and Discounts plugin on your site, you can go to WooCommerce > Settings > Fees and Discounts. Click on the ‘Licence’ sub menu to enter your licence key.
Create a dynamic pricing rule
Click on the ‘Dynamic Pricing’ sub menu and select ‘Bulk Pricing’ from the ‘Offer type’ field:
There are a few other fields you can complete before entering the different discount levels:
Label
Optionally enter some text to add to the product price label.
Applies to
This fields defines which products the bulk discount will apply to. Choose from:
- All items: choose this option to apply the same discounts to all products
- Specific categories: choose this option to select certain categories where the discounts will apply
- Specific products: choose this option to select certain products where the discounts will apply
Create the discount tiers
Click ‘Add New Tier’ to create your first discount tier. Each tier allows you to apply a discount depending on a minimum and maximum quantity, e.g.:
- Buy between 11 and 25 to get a 10% discount
Each tier allows you to specify the following fields:
- Min quantity: the lowest quantity of product to qualify for this discount level
- Max quantity: the highest quantity of product to qualify for this discount level
- Adjustment: you can choose between fixed or percentage and between a fee and a discount
- Amount: the amount of the discount or fee
- Label: an optional field where you can highlight the discount in the cart
Here’s an example of a set of pricing tiers offering the following discount structure:
- Buy between 10 and 25 items and get a 5% discount
- Buy between 26 and 50 items and get a 10% discount
- Purchase 51 items or more and get a 15% discount
Note that you can leave the ‘Max quantity’ field blank if you don’t want an upper limit for a tier.
Here’s what it looks like in the WooCommerce cart when the customer qualifies for a bulk discount:
In this instance, the customer has added 51 items to their cart so they qualify for a 15% discount. Note the ‘15% off’ label in the Total column. This is optional and can be styled as you wish.
How to create a bulk discount for a single WooCommerce product
Okay, so the guidance above is a quick and simple way to create a single bulk discount rule that will apply to all the products in your store. But what if you only want to enable bulk discounts for individual products?
Easy: follow the steps above to create a discount rule but change the ‘Applies to’ setting to ‘Specific products’. You’ll see a new field appear called ‘Buy Products’. Just start typing the name of the product or products that you want to enable the bulk discount for.
How to create a bulk or quantity discount for all products in a certain category
And now, let’s say we wanted to enable the bulk discount for a certain category of product. All the products in that category will have the discount; other products in other categories won’t. It’s simple.
Again, follow the steps above to create the discount rule, then just change one setting. Update the ‘Applies to’ field to ‘Specific categories’. You’ll see the ‘Buy categories’ field appear – just enter your category name here.
So now all the products in the selected category will have the discount applied.
Other WooCommerce discount strategies
Bulk and quantity discounts aren’t the only WooCommerce discount strategy open to you.
- Dynamic pricing rules: incentivise your customers with offers like ‘Buy One Get One Free’.
- Payment gateway fees and discounts: ensure that customers pay the right price based on their chosen payment method – e.g. charge them a fee for using PayPal
- WooCommerce discount percentages: creating percentage discounts in WooCommerce
- Tiered pricing in WooCommerce: a specific look at tiered pricing
WooCommerce Fees and Discounts
The WooCommerce Fees and Discounts plugin is easy to use but gives you a lot of options to create powerful pricing incentives for your customers. It’s the simplest way to create a WooCommerce bulk or quantity discount or to let you change the product price based on quantity.
Click on the image below to find out more.
