Discount Code - Incorrect Calculation

John, I admit that I only quickly scanned your post but just in case you don't realize it, the discount is on your markup as an artist only. It doesn't apply to the base price at all.

Do your calculations make sense now?

Hi John,

Like Peggy Said

You can create two different types of discount codes: percentage discounts and/or dollar amount discounts. In both cases, the discount that you are offering is a discount off of your markup (i.e. your asking price). We can't allow members to offer discounts on FAA's base materials (e.g. frames, mats, stretched canvas, etc.) If everyone could offer a 90% discount on our base materials, for example, we wouldn't be in business for very long! Again - your discount code is applied to your markup.

Hope this helps

This is why you should never advertise your own discount to customers as s percentage. They expect it to be off the whole price but it never is.

The page where you apply your discount tells you that it only comes off your markup if you read what it says at the bottom of that page.

Thanks Peggy, David, and Gill.

This is unfortunate news. My fault for not remembering x-amount of years ago that the discounts we may choose to offer is only against our markups. I have a huge mess to clean up as I have been adding a flyer in every product sold on my main website trying to drive traffic to my FAA site with the 20% off. I am so lucky that I have not been yelled at by more customers. Hopefully, they did not simply decide to go away thinking I intentionally cheated them.

A discount coupon using a dollar amount is of no value either. If I choose a $5 discount on my FAA products, while it might be a good deal for buyer on a $30 print, it would result in free note cards, etc.

Yikes. Much for me to address and clean up. Thanks again guys.

because it comes off of your markup only, and not the grand total, you either have to explain it comes off of all of your side. or not tell them the total off, just tell them its a discount. i think its rude that the customer did do the math, they got a coupon.



----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

problem with the dollar amount that if it exceeds the total, it still only comes off your side. so even $5 off, of a $5.00 card, isn't a free card, its $4.00. that's how people will use it, and you can't exclude things with the code.

word it like this -- enter this code for a surprise discount. then you can make it any percentage.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

Thanks so much for the time and idea Mike. I am pretty sure a surprise discount amount would not float with my customers, especially with anything like my first example wherein the buyer gets $6 bucks or so off a $90+ print.

I think I am going to go with a different strategy and lower all of my FAA prices. When I built the FAA page back in the day, I priced everything to actually be more than on my main website. I just wanted more exposure. Now that I am so busy, I would actually like FAA page to take some of the orders off my plate even though the margins are so much lower.

Again, I truly appreciate everyone's time on this matter and all matters that I browse in these discussion groups. It speaks volumes to the integrity of you artists.

the thing is, one shouldn't have to lower their prices if they like your work. you can lower it if you want, but they will have no idea that you did it. i rarely give coupons, it doesn't make it special if you can get it really easily. or makes it seem you increased the price to counter the discount they got. and the lower priced the things are, the lower the discount will seem. charge more and the discount appears larger.


----Mike Savad
http://www.MikeSavad.com

I am lowering prices on FAA only to be more commensurate with my main website and my amazon sister-store prices. bagging any idea of FAA coupons. Thanks.

Could you not raise the prices you have elsewhere to get them more in line. Your prices here seem reasonable. Or raise them half way and only lower prices here a small amount.

Hey Gill: Thanks for the thoughts.

No it would not be feasible to raise prices on my main website for a variety of reasons, just one being free shipping on all orders of $35.00. And I would not want to raise prices on my Amazon sister-store because those prices are already higher to compensate for Amazon's 15% take.

I am still in the process of 'extreme thinking outside the box' for driving more traffic to my faa store to alleviate the work load that I have manufacturing 100 product formats such as wall and desk and mini frames, mugs, shirts, etc. on main site (I'm getting a bit tired :).

With the need to drop any kind of faa coupon program, I am looking at other ways to draw traffic to the faa store. Something radical like offering something (free gift, etc.) from my main website for any faa order. Much to figure out with this type of idea and I really need time for my creative juices to flow.

I'm glad you posted this, John, to remind me. I DID have someone ask for a discount once because she wanted two images, and I remembered at that time that the discount I offered her of 25% would only come off my profit margin, not the base price of the print, and I explained that to her. She was happy with that. As long as you explain it, they will either like the price they see at checkout, or they will decide against it, but again, good to be reminded.

If no one has said it....

You can run a sale as...

Prints up to 25% Off

Or

Save up to 25%

Then you actually set the percentage to what you want. It can be 20% or 27% behind the scenes. Anything.

Dave Bridburg
Bridburg.com
Post Modern Gallery

Hey Mary:

So glad for you that your customer/buyer communicated with you and especially that she was cool with the whole deal.

My two cents worth is to keep in mind that there well may be a larger number of potential customers that walk away and never come back and never tell us artists/owners/store managers when they see something that looks wrong when it comes to their hard earned money. My customer called only because he loves to call and chit chat (and make me crazy :). He thought it was an organized scam and blamed FAA. It was all my fault as I included the 20% off coupon with his initial wall frame purchase from my main store. He was confused and made some initial misconceptions. He was ordering another wall frame, this time from my faa store instead of my main website because he thought he could get a better deal. The faa wall frame was more expensive and did not include free shipping like my main store. Then when the coupon calculation was more like 2% instead of 20%, he lost it.

This customer took up much of my time with his phone calls and over the top questions (will the metal frame be better then a wood frame since the artwork will be hung above an old fashioned iron heater, etc., etc., etc.) thus I was initially frustrated with him. The reality is that he did me a very big favor by taking the time to call for the fifth time that night and complaining about out the discount coupon pricing error. The point is that, from my understanding, most unhappy customers do not take the time to ask questions and just go away,

Hey David:

That is very interesting and clearly in the 'thinking outside the box' arena.

I think there are still too many problems associated with the idea. I just went to our Behind the Scenes page to read/learn more about the Discount Coupon program. I have copied and pasted, directly below, some of the text that identifies the problem. Note that a discount applies to ALL products. One can't differentiate between prints and other product formats.

Your discount gets applied to all of your products that are sitting in the buyer's shopping cart at the time of checkout. If you set your discount to 25%, for example, and the buyer is purchasing a stretched canvas, a framed print, and a greeting card, the 25% discount will apply to all three products.

Important Note - If you offer a dollar amount discount, the total discount received by the buyer will never exceed your total markup. For example, if you offer a $25 discount, and a buyer uses it to purchase one of your greeting cards with a $1 markup, the buyer will receive a $1 discount. The remaining $24 on the discount code would go unused unless the buyer adds additional items to the shopping cart. If the buyer then adds a stretched canvas print with a markup of $75, that markup would then be reduced by $24 to $51.

John, that's a good news/bad news story! A pain-in-the-neck customer, but ultimately jolted you to remember the discount configuration.

Me, personally, I'm horrible at math. I know what my markups are on each size but after 10 years of membership here, I still have no clue what the base prices are on anything except the greeting cards because I've bought other artist's work here but never my own.

I should probably educate myself to the base prices, just in case there's some witchcraft going on occasionally so I can figure it out.

John,

Just my two cent opinion, I think pricing reasonably and marketing widely is as good a bet and adding any verbiage about a discount.

Someone recently said if you own a store and get a factory product in and so does the store a town over then running a promotion will get you a must buy sale.

But if no one else is really competing with you then running a discount does not change whether the buyer moves to buy or not.

We may be competing on some levels, but none of us should be competing much with you on the actual images.

Dave Bridburg
Bridburg.com
Post Modern Gallery