It’s not just grocery brands that are trying to entice you to buy, with more coupons and deals lately. Online retailers are as well. There’s just been no way to know that for sure – until now.
The number of grocery coupons offered each year is closely watched and documented. But there are no central coupon processors to tally up online coupon codes, which instead are generated, tracked and redeemed by the individual retailers who offer them. So there’s no real way of tracking the number of coupon codes available across the entire online marketplace.
But the savings app and coupon browser extension SimplyCodes is giving it a shot. It analyzed offers on its platform from nearly 400,000 retailers so far this year, compared them to the offers available at this time last year, and discovered there’s been a 31% increase in the number of coupons available to online shoppers.
On average, SimplyCodes found that retailers issued nine unique coupon codes during the first half of the year. And the discounts are more valuable, too. The promo codes that SimplyCodes analyzed provided an average discount of 17.6%, up 2.6% from this time last year. And the average dollar amount off has increased to $33.25, up 22% from last year.
“The data underscores a growing reliance on these incentives by both consumers and retailers amid competition and economic factors such as inflation and cost of living,” SimplyCodes concluded.
The challenge for some online shoppers is how to find all of these coupons. You can try Googling for them. You can use a coupon browser extension, like Honey, or Capital One Shopping – or SimplyCodes.
Or you can just take your best guess. SimplyCodes’ analysis showed that a few common words and phrases are most frequently used in coupon codes, making it easy to simply type one in when you’re checking out, to see if it works. The most common of all, consists of variations of the word “OFF,” with “10OFF” being the most popular. SAVE is second, with SAVE10 the most common variant. And WELCOME is next, with – you guessed it – WELCOME10 the most frequently used.
So 10% discounts seem to be among the most frequent discounts that most online retailers offer, and that most coupon hunters can expect. But SimplyCodes discovered that those numbers at the end of OFF, SAVE and WELCOME can often go as high as 50. So if you’re going to type in one of those common phrases hoping for a discount – be sure not to sell yourself short.
That said, many retailers are onto discount-seekers’ tricks. SimplyCodes also found there’s been a 47% increase in single-use codes that you can’t find online or redeem simply by guessing. “These unique codes are given directly to customers, often through email, and can only be used once,” SimplyCodes noted.
Single-use codes are often seen as the solution for retailers who’d rather not have their coupons aggregated by online coupon sites or browser extensions that apply them automatically. Some services have emerged in recent years, promising to help retailers protect their coupon codes from overuse. clean.io’s “cleanCART” service offers online retailers the ability to “block injection of unwanted discount codes from coupon extensions,” and offers advice on which coupon codes are being overused and ought to be retired. Social Snowball’s “Safelinks” goes further, allowing Shopify sellers to create coupon links that, when clicked, automatically generate a unique code that can’t be shared or “leaked” online.
Online retailers may be offering more coupons lately, but they still want to make sure they’re not giving away discounts to shoppers who are willing to buy without them.
But then the whole takeaway from SimplyCodes is that more shoppers aren’t actually willing to buy without a coupon. Its earlier “2024 Coupon Codes Sentiment Study” found that 62% of shoppers said they actively seek out and use coupon codes for online purchases, with more than half saying they’re using them now more than they used to.
So the next time you’re looking to buy something online, know that there are plenty of coupons out there. You just need to know where to find them. Or, now that you know the most frequent phrases used in coupon codes – your best guess could turn out to be best for your budget.
Image source: SimplyCodes
