Between reading the WSJ article “The Price Isn’t Right” and buying a new accessory from HP, I came to realize a serious design problem with most consumer online shopping experiences — promo code fields (also known as coupon code fields).

Now, I have nothing against price discrimination, but the promo code field seems to me to be a poor design choice for a user experience.  It basically says “this is not the lowest price you have to pay” since its presence implies that all you have to do is type the magic password and voila, a new price will appear.  

At times, I feel like I’m overpaying as a result and come away dissatisfied even if I originally thought the price was okay to begin with.  Sometimes I will just search Google really quickly with “website name + promo code” to see what comes up and more often than not, a decent $5 off or 10% off promo code will appear.  When this happens, I’m happy but really because I beat the company which is probably not the user experience you want your customers to be having. 

Solution #1: Don’t have promo codes and tell everyone that

Zappos.com practically invented this solution.  They have a whole page talking about The Truth of Zappos.com Coupons that basically says why they don’t have promo code fields.   I never feel like Zappos isn’t giving me their best price and so I always check out feeling like the company treated me, as a customer, with respect.  

Solution #2: Do have promo codes but don’t distribute them publicly

If you are going to have promo codes, just don’t send them out to coupon/promo code aggregators.  Try to stop them from being indexed.  You can try to make it dynamic so they are very unique to a customer set and useless to the general public.

The idea here is you don’t want people to easily find this and get upset that they weren’t getting the best deal.  After a few simple searches that yield no results, I feel satisfied knowing I am probably getting the best price. 

Solution #3: Price discriminate subtly behind the scenes

A lot of websites now will change the pricing automatically depending how you get there.  If you click on an ad behaviorally targeted just for you, you may pay $15 for the product you were searching for.  If you get an email (since you are a repeat customer that opt-in), you will need to click on a special link to activate.  If you log into your existing account, you might even get a special offer or free shipping.  I think these are fine from a design standpoint since it’s not blatantly built into the customer experience that they are getting different treatment.

Solution #4: Give everyone a promo code

Okay, I’ve never seen this before and I’m intent on doing this once on my own sites, but I think it would be an awesome idea to put next to promo code fields a public promo code for anyone to use.  It could be like “type FREESHIPPING if you have no promo code” or something more creative like “type ALIBABA if you have no promo code.”  It’s be even more awesome if something unexpected happened.  

This may delight the customer even more than not having a promo code field at all — especially if the reward keeps changing.  Behavioral econ tests have even shown that if people win variable payouts, they’re more likely to try something.  

Bottom line: Don’t give customers a reason to doubt they are getting a good deal!

note: I feel like this applies primarily to consumer facing business. B2B companies cater to a group in which pricing is taken for granted to be negotiable. However, I can’t see how some design tweaks would hurt B2B sites to do.