How to create WooCommerce percentage discounts

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:

  • Bulk purchase discounts: Learn how to incentivize larger purchases by setting up 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.
  • User role-based discounts: 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?

Put simply, WooCommerce percentage discounts let the customer get a discounted price when they buy a certain quantity of product. The discount is calculated as a percentage. So a common example would be to buy more than 10 items to get a 10% discount.

WooCommerce percentage discount

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:

  • General sales promotions
  • Seasonal promotions
  • Staff discounts
  • Bulk purchases
  • Members-only discounts

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 emerges as 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 Fees and Discounts 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 Fees and Discounts, a WooCommerce discount plugin:

WooCommerce Fees and Discounts featured image

WooCommerce Fees and Discounts

Create powerful pricing incentives quickly and easily

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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.

6 methods of applying percentage discounts with WooCommerce Fees and Discounts

In this section, we explore six versatile ways to implement percentage discounts in your WooCommerce store using the Fees and Discounts 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 discount pricing tiers for bulk purchases

To create your pricing tiers, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Fees and Discounts and ensure that the ‘Enable Dynamic Pricing’ option is set.

WooCommerce enable dynamic pricing

After saving your settings, go to WooCommerce > Fees and Discounts and click ‘Add New’ to initiate a new pricing rule. A variety of settings will be presented to you:

In the ‘Rule’ setting, select ‘Bulk Pricing’ from the dropdown menu.

Optionally, input text in the ‘Label’ field to display information about the offer next to the product price on your website.

Choose the scope of the discount – ‘All Items’, ‘Specific Categories’, or ‘Specific Products’. For example, selecting ‘All Items’ applies the discount to every product in the cart.

Click ‘Add New Tier’ to create the first discount tier.

For each tier, specify:

  • The range of quantities (e.g., 5-10 items, 11-20 items).
  • The type of discount (typically ‘Percentage Discount’).
  • A descriptive label for the tier, if desired, to be displayed in the shopping cart.

Finally, review your tier settings to ensure they match your intended discount structure, and save your settings to activate the bulk pricing discounts on your WooCommerce site.

2. Displaying discount percentages on the product page

This is how your product page will look, including a table to display the different percentage discounts available.

WooCommerce percentage discounts pricing table

You can choose where to display the table on your product page, or to hide it completely.

Note that I’m using the Storefront theme in this example, so your theme may look different.

3. Displaying percentage discounts in the cart

When the customer chooses a quantity and adds the product to their cart, this is how it’ll look:

WooCommerce percentage discounts in the cart

Note that the ‘10% discount’ label is displayed under the discounted total.

That’s a simple way to apply WooCommerce percentage discounts. There’s more information on creating WooCommerce bulk discounts here.

4. Percentage discounts by WooCommerce category

If you only want to apply your percentage discounts to products in certain WooCommerce categories, then select ‘Specific categories’ in the ‘Applies to’ field.

A new field ‘Buy categories’ will appear. Select the WooCommerce categories that you want to apply your percentage discounts here.

5. 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.

6. 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.

If you wish to schedule the rule 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.

Related Tutorial
There’s more information on WooCommerce dynamic pricing here.

Pricing SEOM Plugin Republic

Bonus discount method: Percentage discounts by user role

An alternative way to apply percentage discounts in your WooCommerce store is by user role. 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.

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

online payment

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:

Next steps: Elevate your pricing game with WooCommerce Fees and Discounts 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 Fees and Discounts plugin:

WooCommerce Fees and Discounts featured image

WooCommerce Fees and Discounts

Create powerful pricing incentives quickly and easily

Find Out More

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