How to Set Up Dynamic Pricing in WooCommerce (Top 4 Types)

Discounts, promotions, bonuses, and giveaways are popular marketing tactics for instant sales. But not sustainable in the long run.

To overcome this, store owners must think creatively. They need to come up with a pricing strategy that gets them more sales without sacrificing profits.

That’s where dynamic pricing & discounts can help to take your sales to the next level.

This article mentions the top dynamic pricing strategies and how to create them using Smart Coupons.

In addition, you will see other WooCommerce dynamic pricing plugins to consider.

Let’s begin with the question that’s probably on your mind right now!

What is dynamic pricing?

WooCommerce dynamic pricing also known as WooCommerce flexible pricing means selling the same product at different prices to different people based on diverse factors.

These factors can be user role, order total, product quantity, customer’s location, customer’s past purchases, product demand and so on.

Defining and distinguishing prices and discounts can be done best by considering these four types of dynamic pricing:

1. Product pricing: Prices and discounts are based on the product and the quantity of the product.
2. Categories pricing: Pricing is decided as per the category of the products (For eg. in clothes: Ethnic, Western, etc) and offers discounts accordingly.
3. Role pricing: Prices are determined as per the user role/buyer’s profession.
4. Location pricing: Prices are determined as per the user’s location.

Here’s a simple example of selling watches based on dynamic pricing:

• Offer 15% off only on specific products from the fashion category – smartwatches and glares.
• Offer the same smartwatch at 10% off to existing customers and not new ones.
• Offer a 20% discount to buyers who purchase the watch in bulk – assuming it to be fifty pieces.
• Offer a discount on the smartwatch only for customers in Europe and the US.

It is equally important to ensure that each pricing strategy is used wisely to grow your store, multiply profits and manage your business smoothly.

The real motive is to ensure that the customers are satisfied with the perceived value that they receive after the final product price is paid.

How to set up the 4 types of dynamic pricing deals?

As usual, the core WooCommerce does not provide any functionality to set up dynamic pricing deals. You need a plugin for it.

We recommend the official Smart Coupons extension on the WooCommerce marketplace to set dynamic pricing and discounts.

Not just dynamic pricing, but the plugin provides everything you need to boost sales. This includes discount rules, gift cards, store credits, buy-one-get-one (BOGO) deals, advanced restrictions, URL coupons, etc.

So, you don’t need to install and hassle with multiple plugins. You’ll also save $500+ here.

Install and activate the Smart Coupons plugin. Now we see the steps to create dynamic pricing deals with Smart Coupons.

Product pricing: offer bulk discounts or volume-based discounts

Bulk discounts encourage users to buy items in larger quantities. This discounting system offers a discount on a specific product when purchased in bulk or when the total cart quantity exceeds a particular value, irrespective of which product is added.

For example:

• Buy one soap for $4, but buy three soaps for $10.
• Buy more than thirty T-shirts and avail a 40% discount.
• 10% discount per 500 units of fasteners purchased, 15% discount on 1000 units, 20% on 1500 units, and so on. This is a tiered pricing discount.

Let’s create a dynamic pricing deal where only new users get a discount on the purchase of 10 or more products.

1. Go to the WordPress Admin panel > Marketing > Coupons.
2. Create a new coupon or open an existing one. Enter the appropriate coupon code and description. Decide whether you want the coupon to be applied only to new users or all users.
3. Under the ‘General’ tab, choose Discount type. Then select the percentage discount and enter the coupon amount as 10.



4. Now under the ‘Usage Restriction’ tab, scroll down to the Product quantity based restrictions section.
5. Select the Cart option and set the Minimum quantity as 10.
6. Publish the coupon.

Your bulk discount coupon is ready.

Product-category-based dynamic pricing

The offers are valid only in certain categories of WooCommerce products. They influence the buyer to choose a certain brand or product because of the attractive discounts.

For example:

• Get 15% only on Electronic items (simple category pricing).
• Purchase a minimum of 10 items from the Clothing category to avail 25% discount (advanced category pricing).

Let’s create a dynamic pricing deal wherein the user has to purchase 10 products only from the Clothing category to avail of 25% off.

Follow these steps:

1. Go to the WordPress Admin panel > Marketing > Coupons.
2. Create a new coupon or open an existing one. Enter the appropriate coupon code and description. Decide whether you want the coupon to apply only to new users or all users.
3. Under the ‘General’ tab, choose Discount type. Then select the percentage discount and enter the coupon amount as 25.
4. Now under the ‘Usage Restriction’ tab, under Product categories, search and enter the category.
5. Scroll down to the Product quantity-based restrictions section.
6. Select the Product option. Your category name will show up automatically. Set the quantity as 10.
7. Publish the coupon.

That’s it. Your discount coupon for the exact product quantity from a category is ready.

You can also apply restrictions for not the exact but for a minimum quantity of products, or also a range between minimum and maximum like this:

You can also set up a coupon that validates product quantity for multiple categories as well.

User role-based pricing

With WooCommerce role-based pricing, users can receive unique discounts depending on their roles such as customer, wholesaler, retailer, vendor, manager, etc. This encourages them to purchase by looking at the specialized role badge.

For example – Let’s create a dynamic pricing deal wherein you allow customers and subscribers to get a flat 10% discount on the purchase of any five products but no discount to shop managers.

Here are the steps:

1. Go to your WordPress Admin panel. Click on Marketing > Coupons.
2. Create a new coupon or open an existing one. Enter the required details.
3. Go to the ‘Usage restriction’ tab.
4. Look for the field Allowed user roles. Here, you need to choose the user role/s on which you want to allow the usage of this coupon. In this example, the coupon will get applied only if the user role is a ‘Subscriber’ or ‘Customer’.
5. Look for the field Exclude user roles. Here, you need to choose the user role/s on which you want to exclude the usage of this coupon. In this example, the coupon will not get applied if the user role is a ‘Shop manager’.
6. Publish or Save the coupon.

You can also combine other coupon restrictions like location, and payment methods in combination with the user role restrictions.

Location and time-based pricing

As the name suggests, this discount will apply only to the specified location and day.

Let’s create a dynamic pricing deal to apply a coupon only for users on the eve of Independence Day on the 4th of July.

Here are the steps:

1. Go to your WordPress Admin panel > Marketing > Coupons > Add new coupon.
2. Click on ‘Generate coupon code’ or enter your code.
3. Enter coupon description for reference – Independence Day Sale.
4. Select Percentage discount as the Discount type, and enter 15.
5. Set the coupon expiry date and time respectively.



6. Under the ‘Usage restriction’, check the Individual use only option.
7. Scroll down to the Locations option. Search and select the United States.



8. Under ‘Usage limits’, set the usage limit per user to 1.
9. Publish the coupon.

That’s it.

Boost more conversions with these dynamic pricing strategies

We have covered the widely used dynamic pricing strategies above. You may also consider implementing these strategies:

Buy X Get Y

Not only do BOGO or buy one get one deal to convert well, but also buy more get more offers, buy one get more offers and buy more get one offer. You can also combine product offers from various categories to make the deal even sweeter.

• Buy three perfumes and get a 50% discount on the fourth one.
• Buy a formal shirt and get a set of couplings and pens for 40% off.

Here’s how to create Buy X Get Y offer combinations.

Purchase-history pricing

Offer discounts based on the purchase history of the customer – total amount spent on previous orders or the total number of orders placed by the customer.

For example:

• 10% discount for those who purchased items of over $250 in the last two months.
• Flat 20% discount for those who have bought more than 5 pairs of shoes in the last six months.

Membership based offers

Some customers are not eligible for your special products or membership plans. To encourage customers to join, you can provide them with different rates and privileges.

Similarly, you might run different promotions for different members. For example, if you launch a new product, you give a 10% discount to your Gold members but only a 5% discount to Silver members.

Free shipping

Offering free shipping above an order total can work wonders to encourage customers to spend more.

For example, offer free shipping on orders over $150. This way, you can smartly price some of your products for $140 or $145 and then upsell/cross-sell related products for $10.

Customers who need those upsell products won’t mind spending more to qualify the order for free shipping.

Here’s how to set up free shipping.

Order subtotal

This discount is offered at the time of order subtotal, which includes activities like removing the taxes from the discounts. For example:

• 8% discount on the order subtotal above $500.
• Flat 10% discount on the subtotal of today’s orders.

Pros and cons of WooCommerce dynamic pricing

Based on the demand and supply, the pricing keeps fluctuating. But still, you can review the pricing and stay in control of it.

Pros of dynamic pricing & discounts

Best marketing strategy to boost sales
Discounts rescue marketers when they are uncertain about a marketing strategy.

Special price for customer groups
The watch example I mentioned above. Offer more discounts to recent or bulk purchasers compared to customers who buy less or are dormant.

Encourages buyers to spread word-of-mouth publicity
Offering discounts is a fast way to reach unexplored markets and motivate existing buyers to share the news.

Saves money in the long run
In the long run, using plugins and analytics gives WooCommerce owners the right information and data to set the right prices for their products and stay profitable regardless of price fluctuations. This saves time and costs in the long run.

There are pros and cons to everything, so let’s check out the downsides of dynamic pricing.

Cons of dynamic pricing & discounts

Irritated customers
Dynamic pricing can irritate customers if they find out that they are being priced differently than others.

Less customer loyalty
When customers trust a company, they tend to repeatedly buy from it and avoid looking for other deals. However, a company’s dynamic pricing strategy may inspire customers to look at its competitors to ensure that they are not paying too much.

Price fluctuations
Using dynamic pricing can cause significant price fluctuations in the market segment – a competitor may lower their price, planning to make back in volume, in case you increase your prices. A price cut may also backfire if your competitors lower their prices even further.

Increases industry competition
Dynamic pricing communicates that a company focuses more on profits than on customer service. This leads to an increase of competitors in the industry believing that they can create a disruptive influence.

These cons of dynamic pricing and discounts don’t mean you should avoid them. If targeted well, the product prices come across as justified, dynamic pricing gets a big thumbs up.

Now, let’s just explore some of the top WooCommerce dynamic pricing & discount plugins that can be used in your store.

Popular WooCommerce dynamic pricing plugins

With hundreds of dynamic pricing cases, one plugin can’t cover them all. WooCommerce has great tools available that can help you set up a robust dynamic pricing strategy.

But here, we list some plugins that cover most of the widely used cases of dynamic pricing and discounts, ones which you need to implement in your store.

Offermative

Offermative is an AI-based plugin that automatically runs offers and discounts on your WooCommerce store.

Product selection, targeting rules, offer copywriting, designing, conditional logic…everything is automated.

Select offer campaigns, run them and see your sales soar.

Here’s an in-depth Offermative review.

Top features:

• Smart algorithms help you show campaigns to visitors, keep converting them to customers, and maintain track of results.
• All the offer types – WooCommerce upsell, cross-sell, order bump, cart bump, percentage /flat coupons discount, percentage /flat coupons discount, Amazon-like frequently bought together, sitewide sale, and more.
• High converting, beautifully designed, mobile responsive offer message design templates: inline, header/footer bars, slide-ins, overlay popups and more.
• Run highly targeted offers on hundreds of products. You may never know what can convert.

Get Offermative

Smart Offers for WooCommerce

Smart Offers is designed to specially meet your goals of running offers based on powerful targeting rules. Set up powerful WooCommerce upsell, cross-sell, BOGO, order bump and other offers.

Essentially, you can’t directly set up a dynamic pricing offer or discount on the product, but you can set the discount on products you offer as an upsell or cross-sell.

Top features:

• Set up a buy one get one (BOGO), buy more get more offer.
• Show an offer only when the cart order contains X number of products.
• Show an offer only when the order total or subtotal is less or more than equal to X amount.
• Show offer only when the user has previously placed more than X orders or purchased more than Y amount.
• Show offer if a user is registered past ‘X’ number of months.
• Time-based offer during Black Cyber – Run an offer only from 27th Nov to 30th Nov.
• Show a product at 25% off when a product from the same or another category is added to the cart.
• Enable direct checkout or one-click checkout using Buy Now buttons/links.

and many other possibilities.

Pricing: $149

Get Smart Offers plugin

WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing

Dynamic Pricing plugin can be purchased from the WooCommerce marketplace. It allows you to set prices for your store based on four factors:

1. Advanced product pricing – It offers bulk discounts by clearly showing how much the amount is reduced in the form of a discount against the quantity of the product. Also, it can be applied to members having specific tags like ‘Gold Members’.
2. Advanced category pricing – It is useful when you must offer discounts on the product based on the same category the customer is purchasing. For example, get a 15% discount on all handmade items if you purchase 3 or more items from the handmade category.
3. Simple category pricing – As the name suggests, a discount is applied to a specific category of the store. For example, A flat 8% discount on all mobile phones today.
4. Role-based pricing – These discounts are allotted to specific role users or simply on all store products. For example – all the members with Platinum Membership get a flat discount of 10% on all the store items today.

Pricing: $129

Get WooCommerce Dynamic Pricing plugin

WISDM Customer Specific Pricing for WooCommerce

By bridging the gap between you and your customers, the plugin transforms your relationship with them. It offers meaningful and useful discounts to your customers.

The plugin stands out with its uniquely useful benefits that help its customers take the eCommerce store pricing to the next level.

Top features:

• Creating a special page having their personalized discounts listed.
• Attracting customers by offering role-based discounts.
• Encouraging customers to shop by setting customized pricing for their group or segment.
• Offering Buy One Get One & Bulk Discounts to bulk quantity purchasers like wholesalers, managers, etc.
• Conducting store-wide discounts on special occasions, festivals, or during holidays.

Pricing: Starts from $80

Get Customer Specific Pricing plugin

Ready to boost your sales?

Seems like you are all set to implement dynamic pricing and discounts in your store. Keep on experimenting with the various pricing types mentioned, track performance and identify what works best for you.

There are already the best plugins for it listed, so all you need to do is choose.

Do you have any suggestions for the article? We would love to hear what you think.

FAQ

How do I set the same price for all variations in WooCommerce?
You need the Smart Manager plugin. Select all the product variations and use the Bulk Edit option to set the same price at once.

How do I add a 10% discount on WooCommerce?
Go to your WordPress admin > Marketing > Coupons. Add a new coupon, set coupon code, discount type and other details and publish it. Check this documentation to get a better understanding of how to do it.