The hidden nature of coupons
By: Devang Agarwal
Tags: Coupon, User Experience, User Interface Design, Design For Business, Information Design

Coupons — Why Do you Hide ?

Ever missed on adding coupons/discount offers while shopping online ? Why applying a coupon is not as easy as making the final payment? Do you also feel that coupons hide from us?

Before you read further — a word of caution — this article in no way justifies or supports poor UX design, this is just an observation and a possible explanation for adopting a compromised UX design.

The hidden nature of coupons

Coupons are hidden in the following ways -

Low Visibility — Coupons are displayed in a small font so that the user will most likely not notice them. Remember — The user is expected to remember the coupon code and type on the payment screen. Confusion of Plenty — The other way is to choose the applicable coupon from a list of coupons.

Discoverability — The UX design flaw with coupons

The hidden nature of coupons violates a very important principle of User Experience design — Discoverability. Its not a user mistake if they miss adding the coupon, it is a poor UI design (or perhaps clever, we will see next).

Invisibility and low accessibility seems to be the very nature of coupons.

One really has to spend time and energy to apply a coupon instead of the coupon being a suggestion or auto-applied which makes the user experience frustrating .

In many cases the user may skip applying coupons. Come to think of it, is that what the business really want ?

The Business Rationale behind hiding coupons

How does one explain the hidden nature of coupons? Is the hidden nature of coupons really a poor UI design, that most online shopping platforms miss on improving the user experience for or the hidden nature is an honest mistake that all the platforms deliberately commit ?

Is there a business need that needs to be accomplished at the cost of a poor user experience?

The business challenge

Every online shopping platform offers coupons/discounts, and all seem to be offering a better deal than the other. So as an online e-commerce company, one cannot afford to not have any discounts. The challenge here is how do you strike a balance between the following two conflicting business goals —

Maximize profits — Companies want to maximise their profit while coupons incur loss for them on the order. Increase customer base — Companies want to increase their customer base by providing lucrative coupons that attract customers.

The Clever Design Solution — An Honest Mistake

How does one go about formulating a clever design solution for this? For starters, one must have an understanding of the kind of users using the platform. On a qualitative basis the users can be broadly classified into two types—

First Time User — A major attraction for new customers for onboarding on app X is that it offers better discounts than app Y.

Chief Characteristic — These kind of e-shoppers seem to be comfortable in putting in the effort to explore around and avail the discount. Loyal/Returning User — A returning user who is on the platform simply to order stuff from the comfort of their home.

Chief Characteristic — These users do not care about discounts much.

Now that we broadly understand our customers, how can clever design help reduce loss per order but also attract new customers?

The answer lies in making the coupons available yet not easily accessible, forcing the customer to put in effort to use them.

What this accomplishes, are 2 things —

Attract Discount Seeking Users — Companies still manage to attract more customers by providing lucrative discounts — many users are resilient enough to spend their energy to avail the discount. Reduce Losses — The hidden nature makes it difficult for a user not caring much about discounts to be reminded of adding the coupon, thereby helping the company to reduce loss incurred because of the coupons.

Conclusion

When it comes to accomplishing business needs, offering a better user experience by suggesting a coupon through a better user interface design is not a feasible exercise for the company especially if that design component not only incurs loss on the order but also consumes resources (budget and time) from a product development perspective.

A Win- Partial Win situation where the company is definitely getting benefited by acquiring more and more new customers, and the customer may or may not benefit depending on how resilient and patient the customer is to avail the discount.