How to create WooCommerce percentage discounts [+ video]

WooCommerce discount percentage

Percentage discounts are a cornerstone of online retail strategies, offering a versatile tool for boosting sales and customer engagement. In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the art of creating effective percentage discounts in WooCommerce.

Our exploration will span several key areas, ensuring you have a well-rounded understanding of discount strategies. We will cover:

  • Simple discounts: Find out how to apply a simple percentage discount to some or all products in your store
  • Bulk purchase discounts: Learn how to incentivize larger purchases by setting up quantity discounts or tiered pricing discounts. This section will guide you on how to offer progressively greater discounts as customers buy more, enhancing the appeal of bulk purchases.
  • Product-specific and category discounts: Discover the nuances of applying discounts to specific products or entire categories. This segment focuses on targeted discount strategies ideal for promoting particular items or product lines.
  • Discounts by order total and discounts by spend: You can apply percentage discounts based on how much the user has spent
  • Discounts by user role: Tailor your discounts to different customer segments by implementing role-based pricing. We will explore how to set up discounts for specific user roles, such as VIP clients or staff members, adding an exclusive dimension to your sales strategy.

Additionally, we’ll delve into practical methods for applying these discounts in WooCommerce. This includes both manual setups and the use of dynamic pricing plugins for greater efficiency and control. By the end of this article, you will be equipped with the knowledge to implement a variety of percentage discount strategies tailored to the diverse needs of your online store.

What are WooCommerce percentage discounts?

Percentage discounts are a way of reducing the price on products. You can apply a simple percentage discount on one or more products, or you can create discount tiers based on how many items the user buys.

Percentage discounts are simply special offers where you reduce the product price by a percentage of its original price. So if a product costs $100 and you are discounting it by 10%, then the discounted price would be $90. Pretty simple.

Some typical examples of percentage discounts that you might use in your WooCommerce store include:

  • 10% off all products
  • 20% off when you buy more than X
  • 30% off to staff members

And you can probably think of your own examples too.

You can use percentage discounts for all kinds of promotions in your WooCommerce store. These might include:

How to apply percentage discounts to WooCommerce

Applying percentage discounts in WooCommerce can be done through several methods, each with its strengths and limitations. Let’s explore these methods to understand why a plugin might be the most effective solution:

  1. Set a sale price: This method involves manually changing product prices to reflect discounts. You just enter the discounted price in the ‘Sale price’ field directly under the ‘Regular price’ field. While it’s simple and direct, it can be time-consuming and prone to errors, especially in stores with numerous products. Plus, if you want to discount multiple products at once and/or create pricing rules based on quantity or user role, the sale price option isn’t going to be sufficient.
  2. Coupon codes: Creating coupon codes for discounts is useful for targeted promotions and easy to track. However, its effectiveness hinges on customers having access to these codes, which might require extra marketing efforts.
  3. Using a plugin (recommended): Installing a dedicated, dynamic pricing plugin provides unparalleled flexibility and control. Plugins are designed to efficiently handle various discount scenarios with automated features, reducing errors and enhancing the customer experience.

Considering the efficiency and advanced capabilities, using a plugin is the most effective way to apply percentage discounts in WooCommerce. It surpasses other methods in functionality and user-friendliness, making it ideal for diverse discounting strategies.

Introducing the Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules plugin

Out of the box, WooCommerce doesn’t offer you a method to create percentage discounts. So to implement the discounts described in this article, you’ll need Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules, a WooCommerce discount plugin:

WooCommerce Fees and Discounts featured image

WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules

Create percentage discounts in WooCommerce now

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Here are just a few of the features it offers:

  1. Dynamic and role-based pricing: Set up complex pricing rules quickly, catering to different customer segments or purchase scenarios.
  2. Diverse discounting strategies: Apply a variety of discounts, including quantity-based, dynamic pricing like ‘Buy One Get One Free’ and total spend discounts.
  3. Payment gateway-specific fees and discounts: Adjust fees or discounts based on the chosen payment gateway, enhancing control over your checkout process.
  4. Versatile application: The plugin allows for applying discounts and fees globally, by product category, or on specific products, aligning with your business goals.
  5. User role pricing: Customize prices and offers based on user roles to cater to specific customer groups such as staff or VIP clients.
  6. Bulk and dynamic pricing rules: Utilize these rules for effective upselling, encouraging customers to increase their order value.

How to apply percentage discounts with WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules

In this section, we explore six versatile ways to implement percentage discounts in your WooCommerce store using the Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules plugin. Each method is designed to cater to different shopping scenarios and customer needs.

We’ll start with setting up bulk purchase discounts — for example, “buy more than 10 items, get 10% off.”

1. Creating simple discounts for multiple products

WooCommerce doesn’t allow you to create a simple percentage discount for some or all products from one easy place. However, the Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules plugin will let you create a single rule to apply a percentage to multiple products.

To set a simple percentage discount, go to WooCommerce > Fees and Discounts and click ‘Add New’ to initiate a new pricing rule.

  • Choose ‘Simple’ in the ‘Rule’ field
  • Enter an optional ‘Label’ that will display as a sales flash – e.g. ‘Get 10% off all products now!’
  • Set the ‘Status’ to ‘Active’ if you’re ready your percentage discount sale now. Otherwise, set to ‘Paused’ or to ‘Scheduled’ if you want the sale to run automatically at some point in the future
  • Choose what products the percentage discount will affect by selecting an option in ‘Applies to’. You can choose ‘All items’ for the discount to apply to every product in the store; ‘Specific categories’ for every product in your selected categories; or ‘Specific products’ for selected products
  • Finally, choose the ‘Adjustment type’ – e.g. ‘Percentage discount’ – then in the ‘Amount’ field, enter the percentage that products will be discounted by
Simple percentage discount in WooCommerce

Using the settings in the screenshot above, you can apply a simple percentage discount to all your products in only a couple of minutes.

2. Creating percentage discounts for bulk purchases

A slightly more advanced method of creating percentage discounts is to apply a discount based on the number of items a user purchases. For example, you could offer a 10% discount when the user purchases 10 items or more, 20% when they purchase 20 items or more, etc. This is a great way to encourage users to purchase more.

To create percentage discounts for bulk purchases:

  • Go to WooCommerce > Fees and Discounts and create a new rule
  • Select ‘Bulk pricing’ in the ‘Rule’ field
  • Add a ‘Label’ if you wish
  • Select a ‘Status’: either ‘Active’, ‘Paused’, ‘Scheduled’
  • Choose what products to apply the discount to in ‘Applies to’
  • Create your discount tiers. For each tier, specify:
    • The range of quantities (e.g., 10-20 items, 21-30 items, etc)
    • The type of discount (i.e. ‘Percentage Discount’).
    • The amount of the adjustment for each tier
    • A descriptive label for the tier, if desired, to be displayed in the shopping cart
Bulk percentage discount settings

On the front end, the user can see the available discounts in a pricing table. And the product price will update dynamically when the user increases the quantity.

Percentage discounts on the front end

When the user adds a product to the cart, they’ll see their discounted price clearly indicated.

Percentage discount in the cart

3. Creating percentage discounts by WooCommerce category

If you only want to apply your percentage discounts to products in certain WooCommerce categories, then you can create a ‘Simple’ or ‘Bulk pricing’ rule as above and select ‘Specific categories’ in the ‘Applies to’ field.

You’ll see a new field for ‘Buy categories’. Enter one or more categories here where you want your discount to apply.

Percentage discounts by category

4. Percentage discounts for specific products

If you want to apply percentage discounts to specific products, you can choose ‘Specific products’ from the ‘Applies to’ field.

You’ll see a new field, ‘Buy products’, appear. Just select the products you want to discount here.

Percentage discounts for specific products

5. Bulk pricing rules per product

If you want to set up discount rules at the individual product level, access the product data settings and open the edit page for the product you want to discount.

In the ‘Product data’ section, find the General tab.

Below the regular and sale price fields, you’ll see options for setting up bulk pricing. Select ‘Bulk Pricing’ as the rule type.

To activate the rule immediately, choose ‘Active’ in the ‘Status’ field.

Percentage discounts per product

If you wish to schedule the sale for later, select ‘Scheduled’ and enter the start and end times. If you don’t specify an end time, the rule will continue indefinitely.

In the ‘Tiers’ section, specify how the bulk discount will be applied.

After setting up the tiers and rule status, save your changes. The bulk pricing discounts will then be applied to the product according to the rules you have set.

6. Percentage discounts by spend

Instead of defining percentage discounts based on the quantity of product in the cart, you can define them according to the amount spent by the user.

For instance, you can set a percentage discount if the user spends more than $100 on a specific product.

To do this, just choose ‘Discount by spend’ in the ‘Rule’ setting, then create pricing tiers based on the amount spent rather than the quantity.

Discount on spend rule

In the rule above, the user will receive a 10% discount if they spend $100 or more on polo shirts. And they’ll receive 20% off if they spend over $200.

7. Percentage discount by order total

Using the order total is another popular method of applying percentage discounts. This is very similar to the ‘discount by spend’ method above, the only difference being that the tiers are based on the total value of the cart rather than specific items within the cart.

To create percentage discounts by order totals, just use the ‘Order Total’ rule type. Your tiers will then set discounts based on the overall value of the cart.

Role-based percentage discounts in WooCommerce

You might need to set percentage discounts for specific roles. For example, if you have a wholesale store, then you can give your wholesale customers discounts but not your retail customers.

Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules offers several ways to do this.

1. Specify roles for your discount rules

Firstly, you can restrict any of the rules above to specific roles. Just enter the role(s) that the rule should apply to in the ‘Roles’ field:

Roles setting for Fees and Discounts

You can use this method on ‘Simple’ or ‘Bulk pricing’ rules. You can also create different rules, with different percentage discounts, for different roles.

2. Exclude roles from your discount rules

A useful alternative to applying rules to specific roles is to exclude certain roles from rules. For example, you might want to apply a 10% discount on all products – except for your wholesale customers.

Exclude roles setting

In the example above, the discount rule will apply to all users – except those with the ‘Wholesale’ role.

3. Set global percentage discounts by user role in WooCommerce

The simplest way to set a role-based percentage discount on all products is the ‘User Role Pricing’ feature in Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules.

Let’s imagine that you would like to offer all the users with the role of ‘Shop manager’ on your site a generous 30% discount on your products.

To set percentage discounts by user role:

  1. Go to WooCommerce > Settings > Fees and Discounts and ensure the ‘Enable User Role Pricing’ option is checked.
  2. Click the ‘User Role Pricing’ link under the tabs. You’ll see a list of all user roles on your site with an ‘Adjustment’ field and an ‘Amount’ field.
  3. Change the adjustment field to ‘Percentage Discount’ against the user role, then enter the percentage value in the amount field.
WooCommerce user role discount percentage

Now any user with the role of ‘Shop manager’ will receive a 30% discount on all products in your store.

For more information, you can take a look at this article on user role pricing in WooCommerce.

4. Setting percentage discounts by user role on specific products

If you don’t want to offer your percentage discounts on all products, you can create discounts for specific products instead.

  1. Edit the product that you want to offer a discount on, then click the ‘User Roles’ tab in the ‘Product Data’ section. Just as below, you’ll see a list of all roles with an ‘Adjustment’ field and ‘Amount’ field.
  2. Set the adjustment field to ‘Percentage Discount’ and enter the value of the discount in the amount field.
WooCommerce percentage discounts by user role on specific products

And that’s it! By following these steps, you can selectively apply percentage discounts for targeted promotions that align with your store’s strategic goals.

For additional insights on setting multiple prices for individual products in WooCommerce, and enhancing your discount strategies, explore this detailed guide on setting multiple prices per product.

To create your own user roles, you’ll need the Members Only plugin. You can buy Members Only and Fees and Discount together at a discount as the Wholesale Plugin Bundle:

There’s more information on WooCommerce dynamic pricing here.

WooCommerce percentage discounts video

Take a look at this video tutorial on creating percentage discounts in WooCommerce.

Next steps: Elevate your pricing game with WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules recap

In this article, we’ve looked at how to create percentage discounts in WooCommerce.

We looked at pricing tiers for bulk purchases so that customers can receive greater percentage discounts depending on the quantity of products they order.

And we looked at setting percentage discounts according to user roles, either globally or by product.

To set your percentage discounts, you’ll need the WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules plugin:

WooCommerce Fees and Discounts featured image

WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing and Discount Rules

Create percentage discounts in WooCommerce now

Find Out More

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