# Using Coupon Codes Online



## ShckByte (Jun 22, 2006)

Hello,

If this has been discussed, please direct me to the right place. 

I am looking to create a physical coupon that I hand out at events and with purchased apparel as an incentive to come back to my site and buy more (obviously. What I would like to know is how COUPON CODE'S work with e-commerce sites, how do you handle them internally so that I don't get the same code by numerous customers, and possibly how you handle printing continuous number codes to be printed.

Thanks!


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## EnMartian (Feb 14, 2008)

How the codes work will depend somewhat on your e-commerce software. 

Basically, what you do is create a coupon code and set up the parameters for that code, start and stop dates, what the coupon code is good for, discount, free shipping etc., and how many times a customer can use it. The code itself can be a random series of letters and numbers, or it can be something that identifies it as being tied to a specific event. This is generally the better way to create codes, as it allows you to track which events bring in more sales. 

As to not wanting the same code used by numerous customers, if you want each code to be specific to a single customer, you'll have to create a code for each customer. That will be pretty time consuming. If you mean you don't want customers to use the code more than once, you can set a deadline by which the code must be used or, with some e-commerce software at least, you can specify that the code can only be used once by an IP address or customer name. That helps eliminate repeat uses of the code.


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## ShckByte (Jun 22, 2006)

Thanks for replying enMartian. That helps when it comes to online coupon codes and I will be using that. Just need to see if my e-commerce software can handle it. 

However, I'm also printing out coupons to hand out. Having said that, I've left a space at the bottom to stamp out codes. Have you had experience with this? If so, how did you go about it? Thanks again.


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## chartle (Nov 1, 2009)

ShckByte said:


> Thanks for replying enMartian. That helps when it comes to online coupon codes and I will be using that. Just need to see if my e-commerce software can handle it.
> 
> However, I'm also printing out coupons to hand out. Having said that, I've left a space at the bottom to stamp out codes. Have you had experience with this? If so, how did you go about it? Thanks again.


How are you printing these coupons? If by computer can you use something like Word Merge to add the codes. I've made tickets on Avery business card stock this way.

Here's an abbreviated description of the process.

You would create an Excel file with your codes either random, sequential what ever you want with one row per code. You then make your coupon in Word and then add the merge field to doc, point to the data file with the numbers and merge.


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## ShckByte (Jun 22, 2006)

I've never tried that before, but will give it a go. Thanks for your time and advice.


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