ECOMMERCE TIPS
How To Use Discounts Effectively: 7 Strategies To Increase Your Ecommerce Conversions
by Lauren
Product pricing is critical in determining your ability to sell. In 2025, it's no longer sufficient to advertise your products as effective and high-quality to attract and convert new customers. Instead, you have to consistently offer the best value for money.
Still not convinced that price is essential in determining eCommerce conversions? Just look at the latest data.
Consumer behavior research from McKinsey shows that most people intend to cut down their spending in 2025 — especially when it comes to discretionary and semi-discretionary items. Moreover, three-quarters of US consumers are trading down to cut costs.
This doesn't necessarily spell disaster for your business, but it could make it more challenging to convert new customers. Fortunately, there's an easy hack you can implement to elevate your target audience's purchase intention — offering discounts.
If you're looking to boost sales this year, here's how to increase conversion rates by using discounts effectively.
1. Use price anchoring
Price anchoring is one of the most popular ways to use discounts to boost sales. And, seeing how effective this tactic is, it comes as no surprise.
This pricing strategy relies on the human tendency to assign a value to a product based on the first price they see. So, by aligning your solutions with a higher monetary value — a reference price — you can establish them as highly desirable. Then, you can offer a discount (or present shoppers with a lower-priced item). This automatically makes them more willing to spend that money, even when it's still a relatively large sum.
You can choose from several methods when trying to implement price anchoring in your ecommerce store.
For example, you can do something similar to WholeWoodPlayhouses and establish a reference value with a high price. Then, use formatting (strikethrough) and color to lower your audience's price sensitivity and make them more willing to spend a large sum by showing they're getting more value for less.
Source: wholewoodplayhouses.com
Or, you might take a slightly modified approach and highlight savings. Amerisleep, for example, points out how much money shoppers can save by opting for one of the brand's promo packages.
Source: amerisleep.com
Another excellent way to employ price anchoring, even though it doesn't directly include offering a discount, is to guide potential customers toward a product you want them to buy.
SaaS businesses — like Klaviyo — do this beautifully. On Klaviyo's pricing page, this brand establishes a high reference value for its solution. Then, it presents prospects with a more affordable (albeit less powerful) solution. The outcome of this tactic is that the brand effectively manages to reduce its audience's price sensitivity. It also boosts the number of customers who opt for a paid vs. a free subscription model, instantly elevating its profits.
Source: klaviyo.com
Lastly, it's also a good idea to use price anchoring as a method of brand differentiation. If you can, why not compare your prices to those of your main competitors?
By implementing this tactic, Quince establishes its product as the more affordable option while using a handy comparison chart to show that its construction and quality significantly outperform much more expensive products.
Source: quince.com
2. Amplify discount attractiveness with FOMO
Once you've identified the ideal pricing strategy to elevate your eCommerce conversions, it's time to start thinking about advanced methods for offering discounts.
Relying on human psychology is, naturally, always a good bet. So, if you're looking for effective methods to use discounts, why not amplify their attractiveness by appealing to your prospects' fear of missing out?
FOMO is a powerful driver of purchase intent. When used correctly, this tactic can encourage consumers to shop sooner rather than later. Check out how Scentsy utilizes FOMO in their this-month-only discount below:
Source: scentsy.com
You could also take FOMO discounts to the next level with countdown timers and other interactive design elements. However, don't take this tactic too far. Although fear may act as a powerful conversion motivator, it can also harm how your prospects feel post-purchase and how they perceive your brand.
3. Use discounts to boost lead-generation efforts
The true potential of using discounted pricing to elevate conversions truly goes beyond just making a sale.
As you probably know, reaching and engaging your target audience with paid marketing can be expensive. The fact that most brands require multiple touches to go from awareness to sale reveals just how resource-intensive the customer-conversion process can be.
However, if you can use discounts to generate leads (even if they don't immediately buy), then you can easily implement free and low-cost marketing tactics — like email — to nurture potential customers into loyal buyers.
For a great example, consider Transparent Labs, a fitness supplement brand. Knowing that the web visitors looking at its Whey Protein Powder page most likely populate the mid-to-low stages of the sales funnel, this brand sets out to convert them into leads — even if they're not ready to buy.
Source: transparentlabs.com
By presenting web visitors with a discount offering pop-up, Transparent Labs accomplishes three goals:
It presents potential customers with added value through the price reduction itself.
It captures them as leads it can then target through email and social media marketing.
It collects relevant information about the prospects' wants and needs. This enables the business to personalize its future communications and maximize its chances of converting a new loyal customer thanks to a superior CX.
4. Focus on long-term conversion goals
The natural continuation of the previous conversion tactic is to stop thinking about sales as the end goal and, instead, start looking at them as the beginning of a journey.
Ultimately, customer retention is far more important to your brand's success and growth potential than securing new customers. It's not just cheaper to sell to existing customers. Nurturing loyalty also allows you to create a more stable cash flow for your business, giving you much more room to spend your resources on developing new products.
The good news is that consumers are more than happy to gift their loyalty to brands that meet their needs. But, they expect some attractive perks in return (along with a stellar customer experience).
With this in mind, one of the best ways to use discounts to elevate ecommerce sales is to focus them on encouraging repeat purchases — as Getquip did in the example below.
Source: getquip.com
Subscriptions are exceptionally effective at giving your target audience what they want. They're convenient, helpful in maintaining routines, and usually personalizable. Plus, they're cost-effective.
So, if you know that you're trying to appeal to a price-conscious audience, it's a great idea to call to their attention the fact that they can save money by buying from your brand more consistently.
5. Elevate AOV with shipping discounts
Another excellent method of boosting ecommerce conversions with discounts is to focus on average order value.
The primary method of elevating AOV includes the incorporation of upselling and cross-selling tactics throughout your website. However, these are not the only methods for encouraging web visitors to spend more with your brand.
According to research from McKinsey, consumers' number one priority regarding delivery is cost. So, why not offer the perk while still increasing AOV?
By offering shipping discounts — as Armra does with the banner at the top of its Grass-Fed Colostrum page — you can show future customers that they can get more value by buying a bit more. It's a win-win situation.
Source: tryarmra.com
You could also take things a step further and transform your shipping discounts into interactive webpage elements that gamify the shopping process.
This is what Betabrand does with the calculator feature in its cart, which tells buyers how much more they need to spend to qualify for free delivery.
Source: betabrand.com
6. Generate cash flow with discounted preorders
The reality of running an ecommerce business is that it requires a healthy cash flow. And that's not always easy to come by — especially for startups, small businesses, and family-owned brands.
So, if your business goals include generating the resources you need to grow your business, why not explore the possibility of offering discounted preorders?
For instance, Almond Oak dedicates the entire hero section of its homepage to advertising its latest product, which buyers can get with a discount by preordering.
Source: almondoak.com
This strategy helps you sell more by appealing to your target audience's cost-consciousness, but that's not all. It's also one of the best ways to generate cash flow — especially when you need the funds to bring a product to life.
7. Remember not to go overboard
Don't offer too many savings opportunities to your target audience.
Yes, a sale can boost sales and attract more new customers to your ecommerce store. And, in some cases, they can even be the key to recovering lost conversions. However, if you offer discounts too often, you might start seeing some negative effects.
For one, frequent discounts reduce the perceived value of your solutions. This is the last thing you want to do in a competitive market. Especially knowing that consumers want fair prices but still care about quality and effectiveness.
Secondly, frequent sales can lead to discount fatigue — making your customers always expect to get your solutions for cheap.
A good rule of thumb is to stick to a few sales per year. This can include relevant seasonal sales, a couple of exclusive promotions, and perhaps a flash sale every now and then.
Of course, this doesn't mean you shouldn't reward new leads and loyal customers. On the contrary — doing so will be great for business. But be wary of allowing anyone to get your products for less, as that's likely to hold your brand back from reaching industry leader status.
Final thoughts
There you have it, some of the best tactics for boosting conversion rates with discounts.
You can choose any (or all) of these strategies for your brand. However, remember to continually test their performance and make any necessary tweaks. That way, you'll achieve the best possible conversion rates and prevent any potential negative effects of discounting your products.
Sarah Kaminski
Guest author
Sarah Kaminski is content manager at Unita.co. She works with a number of small businesses to build their brands through more engaging marketing and content.
Twitter - @SarahKaminski10
