How to create WooCommerce quantity discounts

Large quantity of bicycles

Adding WooCommerce quantity discounts (also known as bulk discounts or tiered quantity pricing) to your online store reduces the per-unit price and encourages shoppers to order in larger quantities.

Offering quantity discounts is probably one of the oldest sales techniques there is, but it’s also a very effective one. Shoppers love a good bargain and are more satisfied when receiving a bulk quantity discount on your store.

The core idea of quantity discounts is simple: you encourage customers to buy more by giving discounts on bulk purchases or when customers purchase products in larger quantities. This way, your customers will end up spending more money than they had originally planned to, and you’ll generate more revenue for your business.

In this article, we’re going to dive deeper into WooCommerce quantity discounts to better understand what they are. We’ll also show you the best way to create quantity discounts in WooCommerce using an extra plugin.

What are WooCommerce quantity discounts?

Before jumping into creating WooCommerce quantity discounts, let’s take a minute to understand how they work.

Quantity discounts in WooCommerce encourage customers to purchase more units of a product so they can get a discounted final price per unit. In simple words, this means that you encourage customers to purchase more or spend more money by offering them a discounted price on larger orders.

Example of bulk/quantity discounts
An example of quantity discounts

For instance, customers can purchase a product at:

  • $45 per item if they purchase at least 5 items
  • $40 per item if they purchase at least 10 items

In addition to this, offering quantity discounts in WooCommerce is also a great way to cater to wholesale buyers. Since wholesale customers purchase products in larger quantities, discounts on bulk purchases encourage them to shop from your online store. This is a great way to grow your wholesale customer base.

Quantity-based discounts are often also referred to as:

  • Bulk discounts
  • Tiered pricing or tiered discounts
  • Bulk pricing
  • Quantity brackets or quantity breaks

Perhaps this is confusing, but all these terms mean the same thing: to give a discount when a larger quantity is ordered.

Types of products you can create quantity discounts for

Let’s take a look at a few types of products that you can create quantity discounts for:

  • Apparel. Apparel products such as T-shirts, hoodies, caps, and belts are perfect for offering quantity discounts on. For example, if you sell hoodies at $35 per piece, you can sell them at $32 per piece if customers add at least 3 pieces to their cart. As a result, you will sell more hoodies and generate more revenue for your business.
  • Stationery. If your online store sells stationery products, you can encourage customers to purchase more by creating quantity discounts. For instance, if you sell products such as book covers, pencils, or ball pens, you can offer a 10% discount on the per piece price if customers purchase at least a dozen items. This will encourage most customers to purchase at least a dozen pieces of each product so they can get a good deal.
  • Business cards. Since business cards are normally bought in larger quantities, it only makes sense to offer quantity discounts on them. This way, more customers will be encouraged to order their business cards from your online store in order to get the discount. We’ve got a complete guide on how to create business cards in WooCommerce.

Plain T-Shirts uses a great example of tiered discounts:

Quantity discounts on product page

Benefits of creating WooCommerce bulk discounts

Other than creating attractive sales offers, WooCommerce quantity discounts have a few more benefits. Let’s go over some of them quickly:

  • Encourage more sales. One of the more obvious benefits of creating quantity discounts is that it helps encourage more sales on your online store. This is mainly because quantity discounts help attract more customers and encourage them to place larger orders.
  • Improve the average order value. Since quantity discounts encourage customers to purchase more quantities of products, it helps increase the average order value (AOV) on your online store. By creating incentivized purchase offers, you essentially reward customers for adding more products to their shopping cart. This translates to a higher average order value and increased revenue for your business.
  • Create a unique shopping experience. Offering quantity discounts is also a great way for your online store to stand out. It not only helps attract new customers but also encourages old customers to make repeat purchases.

How to create quantity discounts in WooCommerce

Creating quantity discounts is one of the best ways to grow your customer base and increase the average order value for your store.

However, the core WooCommerce plugin doesn’t have built-in functionality that lets you set up quantity discount tiers for your products. This is why you need to use a WooCommerce quantity discounts plugin such as the WooCommerce Quantity Discounts, Rules & Swatches plugin.

WooCommerce quantity manager, tiered pricing, and layouts
Quantity Discounts, Rules & Swatches

The easiest way to create & display bulk discounts in WooCommerce

Find out more

The WooCommerce Quantity Discounts, Rules & Swatches plugin offers a complete solution for creating powerful discount rules and displaying them in a professional way on your online store.

For starters, you have all the tools needed to create quantity discounts on your WooCommerce site and let customers receive discounts when they buy products in bulk. The plugin also lets you replace the default-looking quantity selectors with beautiful-looking swatches. This not only helps create a unique shopping experience but is also helpful in boosting sales on your online store.

In this guide, we’ll show you how to use the WooCommerce Quantity Discounts, Rules & Swatches plugin to create quantity discounts on your online store.

Step 1: install the WooCommerce Quantity Discounts, Rules & Swatches plugin

Start off by getting the WooCommerce Quantity Discounts, Rules & Swatches plugin and installing it on your WooCommerce site.

Once the plugin is installed on your site, navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Quantity Manager. Enter your license key given to you at the time of purchase to activate the plugin. Click on the Activate and then Save changes button to continue.

Step 2: add quantity discount to your WooCommerce product

To create WooCommerce quantity discounts, it’s important to have a solid strategy behind it. For demonstration, we’re going to offer a 10% discount on a product when customers purchase at least 3 pieces. If they purchase more than 5 pieces, they get a 15% discount.

Bulk discounts on variable products

Navigate to the product’s edit page you want to create a quantity discount for. If you want to offer quantity discounts on a variable product, click on the Variations tab. Then select the product option you want to offer the discount on.

Set up quantity discounts on variable WooCommerce products

Using the Tiered pricing type dropdown menu, you can either select a percentage-based discount or set a fixed discounted price for each quantity tier.

In the Quantity text field, enter the quantity you require customers to purchase to get the discount. Then use the text field beside it to specify the discount amount. Follow these steps to create as many tiers as you need. Repeat the process for all variations you want to create the quantity discount for.

Setting a percentage based discount in WooCommerce variable products

Click on the Save changes button to continue.

Bulk discounts on simple products

Additionally, the same process works for creating quantity discounts on simple products. You can find exactly the same settings under the General tab and set quantity-based discounts for simple WooCommerce products that way.

Add tiered pricing on a simple product in WooCommerce

Step 3: show a discounts table on the WooCommerce product page

We’d like to show our quantity discounts to our visitors. After all, they need to know there’s a good deal going on. To do this, we can display a discounts table on our WooCommerce product page.

Navigate to WooCommerce → Settings → Quantity Manager and select the Show pricing table checkbox.

Enable a discounts table in the WooCommerce settings

Specify where you want the quantity discount information to appear on your single product page using the Table position dropdown menu. You can also set which columns to display using the Table columns and the column titles using the Table titles text field. Click on the Save changes button to continue.

Preview your WooCommerce product

The WooCommerce Quantity Discounts, Rules & Swatches plugin makes it very easy to create incentivized purchase offers for your customers. This works perfectly even for variable products and helps encourage customers to spend more on your site to save big. Here’s what we created so far:

Quantity discounts table preview

Bonus step: add quantity selectors (swatches)

The WooCommerce Quantity Discounts, Rules & Swatches plugin also has another way of visually showing discounts to users. It lets you display quantity selectors in beautiful-looking quantity swatches.

quantity swatches example
An example of quantity swatches

Navigate to the product’s edit page that you want to display quantity swatches for. Click on the Quantity options section. Here, select swatches using the Quantity selector design dropdown menu to create quantity swatches for displaying various quantities of a product.

Using the Design your quantity selector section, you can create as many buttons as required by clicking on the Add row button. You can specify the Quantity, enter a Label of the swatch button, Byline to add additional information, and add a Highlight to display important messages to your customers.

Create quantity swatches in WooCommerce

The plugin also allows you to set custom colors for your quantity swatches by navigating to WooCommerce → Settings → Quantity Manager and clicking on the Quantity settings link from the top. You can define colors for all parts of the quantity selector button. You can also customize how the buttons will appear on your product pages. Once you’re done, click on the Save changes button to continue.

Conclusion

Creating quantity discounts in WooCommerce is one of the best ways to encourage users to spend more money while shopping on your online store. However, WooCommerce doesn’t come with the functionality that lets you do this out of the box. That’s why you need to use a quantity discounts plugin.

That is why we recommend using the WooCommerce Quantity Discounts, Rules & Swatches plugin. It’s the perfect solution if you’re looking to create quantity discounts easily and display them in a beautiful manner. Without having to touch a single line of code! As a result, customers have an easier time making informed purchase decisions.

Ready to start creating quantity discounts for your WooCommerce products? Get WooCommerce Quantity Discounts, Rules & Swatches today!

WooCommerce quantity manager, tiered pricing, and layouts
Quantity Discounts, Rules & Swatches

The easiest way to create & display bulk discounts in WooCommerce

Find out more