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Countdown timer with promotion + newsletter (9)

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How do you use countdown timer with promotion?
I mean:

1. Do you use it to all products? Does it matter? Is it better if people see the timer only on a few products?
2. How much time do you set?
3. How much discount? Is it better to use % or $ discount (-x% or -$x)?
4. Do you restart timer when it ends or really give higher price?

Some questions about newsletter (I'm making general store, so I may want to come back to people again):

1. Is it a good idea to display newsletter on mobile? Isn't it annoying?
2. I was thinking about sending a discount coupon for the newsletter subscription, but:

• people need to open their e-mail application to get the code, so they are leaving my store and it's a lot of steps for them (especially on mobile)
• I'm going to retarget people on Facebook by giving people the discount code, so maybe it's not a good idea to give customers the same code for sub (however they can subscribe for the code during an engagement campaign).

Last questions.
1. I have seen an idea somewhere to turn off the header on the checkout page to make it difficult for people to return to the homepage so they can cancel their purchase. Do you think it's a good idea?

2. Do you think it's good to give all customers free shipping? Always free shipping or free shipping for orders over pecific price?

Of course, I know that I should test, test, test, but I assume that you tested a lot of things and some solutions are closer to the success than other.

Thanks!

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As usual, the using of countdown depends on the specific case. As talking in general, it's better to first test it on the several products (which also looks more realistic). Moreover, you can make it in the frame of one related campaing (like the promotion for a specific groups of products - summer edition) .

Regarding the time to set, I would say around 3-5 days max for the beginning. After expiring, stop the countdown and have a look at the statistics. If it was successful, the campaing can be extanded with the appeal "The best prices for your favorite products". However do not keep it always, otherwise it won't look real.

In terms of use % or $ discount, it depends on the amount. Imagine if the discount is 1.5 $, it's not very attractive. But at the same time, it could be 30 % of the overall price, which is much more catchy. Many stores actually use both % or $ discount, not to make lazy ppl to count

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Countdown timer:

1. Yes and yes it does improve conversions in most cases. Haven't tested on whether it would be better to have the timer only on certain products, I would imagine so especially if you have a loyal following.
2. 24-48 hours seems to have always worked best for me.
3. The bigger the discount the better, though it shouldn't be something completely unrealistic. I've seen big dips in conversions if I set an enormous discount right off the bat. As for % vs $ amount it's mostly about which has a higher perceived value to the consumer and whether you're selling cheap or expensive products. E.g. $50 off of $350 sounds better than 15% off of $350, though the latter is technically better. 40% off $25 sounds better than $10 off $25. This should be tested.
4. No

Newsletter:

1. Display it on mobile, you want to squeeze out as much revenue as you can and increase your AOV. People can go nuts over a discount.
2. Get different discount codes yep.

Extra questions:

1. Yes, definitely test this. Turning the checkout process into something more funnel oriented almost always helps, i.e. reduce distractions, objections and focus on 1 single goal.
2. I always give out free shipping, has worked better for me.

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What countdown timer do you use?
Have you noticed that your mobile load speed increases by 2-4 seconds when using the timer?
Do you have just the timer or you do you include other things like "someone in your 'geo' just bought this" or "21 Sold and 4 left at $4.99"

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I've barely noticed a difference in loading times with WooCommerce, though I admit I haven't tested this on Shopify. I'd use any social proof, urgency, scarcity available, with slight tweaks to the copy (beeketing like type of stuff yep).

With whatever I'm running I always follow some basic common sense conversion techniques such as this:

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Thanks!

What theme are you using on wordpress? And what is your load speed on mobile?

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So what do you do when the timer comes to the end if not restart?

Let's say I'm runinng FB Ads and would like to retarget people. I think they will not be happy after entering my store the second time and seeing much bigger price, because timer has ended.

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I'm not running WooCommerce anymore because it was a nightmare to maintain, but I used this theme: https://themeforest.net/item/sink-mi...90799?s_rank=1

More specifically I used the simplest possible layout for all category pages: https://themeforest.net/item/sink-mi...90799?s_rank=1

With pretty heavy mods to the entire theme in terms of CRO - product pages, cart page, customised and heavily tested checkout page etc.

Load times on mobile were between 1.7-2.2s~ if I recall correctly. It took quite a lot of tweaking and testing to bring the loading times under 3s on both desktop and mobile, I'm guessing it's because of the way this theme is coded, it's quite heavy. Basically tried every trick in the book for this haha.

You should just have a session based/resetting/refreshing etc. timer imo - it's what I do and works great.


Also one thing I recall very clearly from my WP site was that having an annoying top bar (e.g. free shipping, special discounts/coupons etc.) that reappears on every refresh after being closed, was devastating for mobile conversions. Tested with Hotjar and the first thing every user would do was to just go for the "X" to try and close it and when it reappeared the majority just left the site straight away.

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As an addition to standard countdown timer, I've seen good results with wording like : till the end of the month, till the end of the week ... valid only in "month" etc ... these worked well across several verticals.

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