How to create discounts for multiple items in WooCommerce

Sometimes you want to reward your customers for buying more product. The simplest way to do this in WooCommerce is to create a discount for multiple items.

In this tutorial, we look at several methods to accomplish this – some for free, some with a plugin.

Create multiple item discounts using WooCommerce coupons

Depending on your exact requirements, you might be able to use coupons to set your discounts for multiple items. The main advantage of this is that coupons are built-in to WooCommerce – so this method is free.

Coupons allow you to set a fixed or percentage discount on the total value of the products or the cart. This means that the discount is triggered by how much the user has spent.

The drawbacks to this method are that the discounts are not based on the quantity of items, but on the value of those items. If you need to create a discount based on the number of items being purchased then you can scroll to the next section.

Set a discount in WooCommerce with a coupon

You can enable coupons in your store by going to WooCommerce > Settings and checking the option to ‘Enable use of coupon codes’. Then, to create a new coupon, go to Marketing > Coupons and click ‘Create your first coupon’.

To create a coupon in WooCommerce:

• Enter the coupon code. This is the code that users will need to enter on the checkout page so best to keep it simple and avoid punctuation or spaces
• On the ‘General’ tab, select the type of discount you would like to apply. You can choose from:
  • Percentage discount: this allows you to apply a percentage discount to the entire cart
  • Fixed cart discount: this allows you to apply a fixed discount to the entire cart
  • Fixed product discount: this allows you to apply a fixed discount to certain products
• Enter the amount. This will be the value of the coupon – either as a percentage or fixed amount, depending on the discount type you’ve selected
• Enter an expiry date if you wish

If you like, you can set certain parameters around the use of the code on the ‘Usage restriction’ tab. You can:

• Enter a minimum and/or maximum spend for the user to qualify for the discount
• Specify whether the coupon can be used in conjunction with other coupons
• Specify whether items that are already on sale qualify for the discount
• Include or exclude specific products or product categories

Finally, on the ‘Usage limits’ tab, you can set some limitations on how the coupon can be used:

• Enter how many times the coupon can be used in total
• Define the maximum number of items that the discount will apply to
• Specify how many times each user can use the same coupon code

That’s an easy way to create a simple discount in WooCommerce using coupons. It’s free and easy to set up – but there are some drawbacks.

Disadvantages of using coupons

As we saw above, coupons aren’t applied based on the quantity of items in the cart. So if you want to set a discount for multiple items, then coupons might not be the best solution. It’s not possible to set different discount amounts based on the number of items in the cart.

Also, note that users need to manually enter the coupon code on the checkout page. This means that, firstly, the user needs to know what the code is. And secondly, they need to remember to enter the code in order to receive their discount.

As such, coupons are not a very flexible way of controlling your discount strategy. If you want to offer quantity-based discounts in WooCommerce where users receive a discount based on the number of items in their cart, then you’ll need an additional plugin.

WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules plugin

Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules is the perfect plugin to create discounts for users with multiple items.

Using Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules, you can:

• Create as many discount rules as you like – either for all products, specific products, or specific categories
• Define multiple discount levels based on the number of products in the cart
• Set percentage or fixed discounts – or assign specific prices to products based on the quantity selected
• Set start and end times
• Apply role-based discounts
• Create messaging to encourage users to purchase more products

Let’s take a look at a couple of examples of discounts for multiple items using the WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules plugin.

Fixed and percentage discounts for multiple items

A key feature of the Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules plugin is the ability to create bulk discounts. This means that you can define discounts for users based on the number of items they have in their cart.

For instance, you can set a 10% discount if the user adds 10 or more items to their cart; then a 15% discount for 20 or more items; a 20% discount for 30 or more items; and so on. This is a great incentive for users to add more items to their cart and increase your average order value.

The plugin allows you to display a table clearly showing the user how many items they need to qualify for the discount.

When they update the quantity on the product page, the product price will update accordingly.

Create a multiple item discount rule in WooCommerce

To create a multiple item discount in WooCommerce:

• Install and activate WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules
• Create a new discount rule at WooCommerce > Fees and Discounts
• Enter a name for the discount
• Choose ‘Bulk Pricing’ as the discount rule
• Set the different discount tiers in the ‘Tiers’ section:
  • Min quantity: the minimum number of items to trigger the discount tier
  • Max quantity: the maximum number of items for the tier
  • Adjustment: choose either percentage or fixed, discount or fee
  • Amount: enter the value of the adjustment
  • Label: enter an optional label to appear in the cart
• You can create as many tiers as you like

Defining which products to apply the discount to

The rule above will use the total number of all products in the cart when calculating the discount. However, if you prefer you can choose specific products or categories where the discount will apply. So if you only want to provide a multi-item discount to items in the ‘Hoodies’ category, you can do so.

To define which products qualify for the discount:

• Update the ‘Applies to’ field. You can choose from ‘All items’, ‘Specific categories’ or ‘Specific products’
• If you choose either categories or products, select which categories/products are eligible for the discount

In the screenshot below, items in the ‘Hoodies’ category will qualify for the discount.

You can also choose whether to use the cumulative number of items or the individual number of each product. For instance, you can choose whether to apply the discount if the user has any 10 items from the ‘Hoodies’ category; or only if the user has 10 of a single item from the category.

To do this, you can change the ‘Count by’ setting.

• Choose ‘All’ to count all products from the specified category together
• Choose ‘By product’ to count each product separately

User role discounts

If you would like to confine your discounts to certain user roles, you can select them in the ‘User roles’ field. Only users in the specified roles will qualify for the discount.

You can also choose to exclude some users from discounts. Just select the user roles in the ‘Exclude roles’ field.

Now all users – except the excluded ones – will be able to claim the discount.

Messaging

An essential part of offering discounts is for the user to know about them. Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules gives you a couple of ways to inform the user about the discounts on your site – and so encourage them to purchase more products.

First, you can add some extra text to the product short description. This will be automatically formatted to match your theme.

To add this extra text, just enter your content into the ‘Message’ field:

You can also add a dynamic message to let the user know how many more items they need to add to qualify for the next discount tier.

To do this, just enter your text in the ‘Notice’ field using dynamic tags if you like.

Scheduling your discounts

If you like, you can create your discount rule in advance then set a time for it to start and finish. Scheduled sales are an easy way for you to plan ahead.

To schedule your sale:

• Set ‘Status’ to ‘Scheduled’
• Enter the start and end times and dates. You can leave the start date empty if you want the discount rule to start immediately; or you can leave the end date empty if you want it to run indefinitely

That’s how to create a discount for multiple items in WooCommerce. Now let’s look at a slight variation on this.

Tiered pricing for multiple item discounts

Instead of providing the user with a fixed or percentage discount based on the number of items they purchase, you can actually adjust the base product price instead.

This is often referred to as tiered pricing. Taking the example above, we could tweak it slightly so that you could set the product to $19 if the user adds 10 or more items to their cart; then to $18 for 20 or more items; $17 for 30 or more items; and so on.

To create a tiered pricing rule for multiple products:

• Edit the rule in the example above, just changing the ‘Adjustment’ type to ‘Tiered pricing’
• Then enter the actual product price in the ‘Amount field

You can use the same options as the rule above when selecting which products this applies to etc.

WooCommerce multiple items discount – recap

In this article we looked at different ways to create a discount when the user has multiple items in their cart. The simplest and cheapest way is to use coupons – but there are limitations to this.

If you want more control over your discounting strategies, you can use the WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules plugin.