Cyber Monday Sneak Peek: Coupons! (UPDATED)

Saturday Night Update: Coupons are now online. You can set them up by visiting Sell -> Advanced Options and then filling out the area that says "Coupons" (near the bottom of the page). Don't forget to click the "Save All Options" button when your coupon is filled out. I have run it through a fair number of tests locally, but I don't rule out the possibility their might be another kink or two in it. That's why it's going up the day BEFORE Cyber Monday :) If you find any issues with it, report them to [email protected] and we'll aim to get them worked out by Monday. But hopefully all will be hunky dory. Oh, I also ran a test to verify that you CAN put spaces in the coupon code you use. Original Post Follows... Just wanted to give those of you who are getting ready for "Cyber Monday" a quick heads up about a new feature that will be going online at Bonanzle on Sunday morning: booth coupons. Many of the savvier sellers have noticed that there's nothing buyers like more than feeling like they're getting a good deal on items, and in economic times like this, buyers' focus on price has never been greater. Thus, starting Sunday, you'll be able to specify booth coupons that give sellers a discount on items that they buy from your booth. I'm writing about it now in case you want to get a head start on advertising your coupons over the weekend. Here is the basic rundown of how coupons will work:

1. A coupon is an alphanumeric code of your choosing that can give buyers either a percentage discount or a dollar discount on all items they buy from your booth. For example, I could create a coupon with the code "BHARDINGDISCOUNTZ" that gives users 10% off all items in my booth. When the user goes to checkout, they have the option to enter a coupon code for items in my booth. If they enter in BHARDINGDISCOUNTZ, the price of all their items (before shipping) is discounted 10% (so if they were buying $100 of stuff, they get $10 off). If I have "buy now" setup, they don't even have to send me an offer, they can just buy the items immediately for $90 plus shipping.
2. Alternately, I could create a coupon that gave anyone $5 off of items from my booth. But you want to be a little careful with a coupon like this, since if they bought one item that cost $3, they would get the item for only the cost of shipping. There isn't yet a way to specify that a coupon is only valid with certain items, so at this point, flat rate discount coupons are probably only for sellers with exclusively expensive items.

Anyway, that's the idea. You can create as many coupon codes associated with your booth as you want and give different coupons different discount rates. You can delete a coupon at any time, so you could create a coupon on the morning of Cyber Monday and delete it that evening. If someone made an offer to you during the day, the offer would still reflect the coupon they used. A user can only use one coupon per transaction. In the future, coupons will surely be given more option (such as the ability to specify which items a coupon is valid with), but for now this should be a good beginning to a powerful promotion tool to boost your holiday sales. In response to inevitable questions: the limit on coupon code length is about 200 characters, and I believe that you can have spaces in the coupon code, but I haven't tried it yet, so if you want to be on the safe side it'd be best to choose a one-word code for the time being.