How to create WooCommerce percentage discounts

Percentages are probably the most common way of implementing discounts in online stores. In this article we’re going to look at a couple of very simple ways to create discount percentages in WooCommerce.

The types of discount we’ll cover include creating pricing tiers for bulk purchases so that customers can receive greater percentage discounts depending on the quantity of product they order.

This will include setting percentage discounts on the entire order, on certain products, or on products within specified categories.

We’ll also cover how to set percentage discounts according to user roles.

What are WooCommerce percentage discounts?

Put simply, WooCommerce percentage discounts let the customer get a discounted price when they buy a certain quantity of product. The discount is calculated as a percentage. So a common example would be to buy more than 10 items to get a 10% discount.

Percentage discounts are simply special offers where you reduce the product price by a percentage of its original price. So if a product costs $100 and you are discounting it by 10%, then the discounted price would be $90. Pretty simple.

Some typical examples of percentage discounts that you might use in your WooCommerce store include:

• 10% off all products
• 20% off when you buy more than X
• 30% off to staff members

And you can probably think of your own examples too.

Fees and Discounts plugin

Out of the box, WooCommerce doesn’t offer you a method to create percentage discounts. So to implement the discounts described in this article, you’ll need Fees and Discounts, a WooCommerce discount plugin:

First we’ll look at some examples of how to use the plugin to set percentage discounts.

Later, we’ll look at what can use percentage discounts for and some differences between coupons and sale prices. We’ll also look at setting percentage discounts according to user roles.

Percentage discounts for bulk purchases

The first example we’ll look at is creating discount tiers for bulk purchases, something like this:

• Buy more than 10 items, get 10% off
• Buy more than 20 items, get 20% off

Creating discount pricing tiers for bulk purchases

To create our pricing tiers, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Fees and Discounts and ensure that the ‘Enable Dynamic Pricing’ option is set.

Then click on the ‘Dynamic Pricing’ menu link just below the tabs.

Click the ‘Add Rule’ button to create your discount rules.

You’ll see a new set of options appear:

In the ‘Offer type’ field, choose ‘Bulk Pricing’.

If you’d like to display some information about the offer next to the price on the product page, enter some text in the ‘Label’ field.

In the ‘Applies to’ field, you can select which products to apply the discount to. If you choose ‘All Items’ then the discount will apply to all products in the cart.

Click ‘Add New Tier’ to create the first discount tier.

In the example above you can see that I’ve created two discount tiers, one for 10% off if the user purchases between 11 and 20 items. And one for 20% off if the user purchases 21 items or more.

For each tier, I’ve selected ‘Percentage Discount’ in the ‘Adjustment’ field. And I’ve entered some text in the ‘Label’ field. This label will be displayed in the cart.

Displaying discount percentages on the product page

This is how your product page will look, including a table to display the different percentage discounts available.

You can choose where to display the table on your product page, or to hide it completely.

Note that I’m using the Storefront theme in this example, so your theme may look different.

Displaying percentage discounts in the cart

When the customer chooses a quantity and adds the product to their cart, this is how it’ll look:

Note that the ‘10% discount’ label is displayed under the discounted total.

That’s a simple way to apply WooCommerce percentage discounts. There’s more information on creating WooCommerce bulk discounts here.

Percentage discounts by WooCommerce category

If you only want to apply your percentage discounts to products in certain WooCommerce categories, then select ‘Specific categories’ in the ‘Applies to’ field.

A new field ‘Buy categories’ will appear. Select the WooCommerce categories that you want to apply your percentage discounts here.

Percentage discounts for specific products

If you want to apply percentage discounts to specific products, you can choose ‘Specific products’ from the ‘Applies to’ field.

You’ll see a new field, ‘Buy products’, appear. Just select the products you want to discount here.

What do we use percentage discounts for?

You can use percentage discounts for all kinds of promotions in your WooCommerce store. These might include:

• General sales promotions
• Seasonal promotions
• Staff discounts
• Bulk purchases
• Members only sites (there’s guidance on creating members only stores in WooCommerce here)

Don’t I just need to use WooCommerce coupons?

Coupons are a really useful way of offering users discounts on your products. However, you need to generate and send coupons to your customers; and they need to apply them at the cart to receive the discount.

By using the methods in this article, you can apply percentage discounts to as many or as few products as you like, and make those discounts available instantly to all your customers, or just to a select few.

Don’t I just need to set a sale price for the product?

The easiest way of applying a discount to your products in WooCommerce is to set a sale price. You just enter the discounted price in the ‘Sale price’ field directly under the ‘Regular price’ field.

This works absolutely fine and for many store owners this is going to be all they need when they’re running a promotion. However, if you want to apply a discount to multiple products at once and/or create pricing rules based on quantity or user role, the sale price option isn’t going to be sufficient.

Percentage discounts by user role

An alternative way to apply percentage discounts in your WooCommerce store is by user role. Let’s imagine that you would like to offer all the users with the role of ‘Shop manager’ on your site a generous 30% discount on your products.

To set percentage discounts by user role, go to WooCommerce > Settings > Fees and Discounts and ensure the ‘Enable User Role Pricing’ option is checked.

Then click the ‘User Role Pricing’ link under the tabs. You’ll see a list of all user roles on your site with an ‘Adjustment’ field and an ‘Amount’ field.

Just change the adjustment field to ‘Percentage Discount’ against the user role then enter the percentage value in the amount field.

Now any user with the role of ‘Shop manager’ will receive a 30% discount on all products in your store.

Setting percentage discounts by user role on specific products

If you don’t want to offer your percentage discounts on all products, you can create discounts for specific products instead.

Edit the product that you want to offer a discount on then click the ‘User Roles’ tab in the ‘Product Data’ section.

Just as above, you’ll see a list of all roles with an ‘Adjusment’ field and ‘Amount’ field. Set the adjustment field to ‘Percentage Discount’ and enter the value of the discount in the amount field.

To create your own user roles, you’ll need the Members Only plugin. You can buy Members Only and Fees and Discount together at a discount as the Wholesale Plugin Bundle:

Recap

In this article we’ve looked at how to create percentage discounts in WooCommerce.

We looked at pricing tiers for bulk purchases so that customers can receive greater percentage discounts depending on the quantity of product they order.

And we looked at setting percentage discounts according to user roles, either globally or by product.

To set your percentage discounts, you’ll need the WooCommerce Fees and Discounts plugin: