The status quo of ecommerce discounting is broken.
A pop-up offering 10% off before you’ve even looked around. A banner shouting about today’s limited-time deal (limited or not). Indiscriminate abandon cart emails. If you’ve ever shopped online you’ve seen these tactics. If you work in the industry, you’ve likely done at least one of them.
Discount codes are everywhere. Retailers use them to drive urgency, clear stock, reward loyalty and, more often than not, to hit this week’s revenue target.
But, despite its shortcomings, discounting itself is a strategic choice. Discount codes themselves aren’t the problem. The way we use them is.
We recently shared the floor with retail professionals to hear the in-house view on ecommerce’s discount dilemma. This is our perspective. One that reframes why discounting, as it stands, is failing both customers and brands.
Why online retailers rely on discounting
It’s not hard to understand why discounting is so widespread. Ecommerce teams have a limited set of levers they can pull. When the goal is fast execution and short-term impact, discount codes often win by default.
They’re fast to deploy. Easy to measure. Valuable to customers. And they usually produce some sort of lift.
But that default setting is precisely the problem. Discounting isn’t being used strategically, it’s being used generically.
Most retailers still rely on a narrow set of triggering rules. Things like page type, category or product viewed, basket value or visitor type (e.g. new vs. returning).
These are blunt instruments. They don’t reflect how someone is behaving. They don’t consider their mindset. And they certainly don’t factor in what stage of the buying journey that visitor is in.
So when these rules are used to trigger promotions, it means most discount codes are offered to the wrong people, at the wrong time.
The immediate problem isn’t that retailers are defaulting to discount codes for short-term revenue gains. The problem is that these discount code campaigns aren’t run effectively due to the current limitations of triggering rules that retailers have at their disposal. And this leads to issues.
Let’s be honest. Blanket discounting does one thing really well: erode margin.
Need more proof? The Intent Gap report found that 83% of online shoppers have used a discount code even when they were ready to pay full price. That’s not incremental. That’s revenue left on the table.
Mass discounting also trains customers to expect a deal. It teaches them the rules to trigger offers. It hurts brand perception. And makes it harder to measure what’s actually working. After all, not every abandonment is price anxiety. Not every visitor needs a financial incentive.
If you can't time your discounts to context, you're not optimising their delivery. You're often just giving them away. This is something intent can solve.
Why intent data changes things
People don’t buy in fixed journeys. And they definitely don’t all behave the same just because they’re on the same page.
But today’s discount logic doesn’t recognise that. A new customer on a PDP gets the same code as a casual browser with no interest in buying. A focused, high-intent visitor gets the same popup as someone barely engaged.
This is the real issue: discount codes are being fired without understanding what the visitor actually needs. What the context behind their actions is.
Starting to think in terms of customer intent fixes that, by letting you understand not just who the visitor is, but what they need in that moment. Regardless of where they are on site.
This is what our real-time intent agent unlocks for ecommerce teams. But I’m here to cover the change in thinking, not our product.
With intent data, you can make predictions on your visitors’ likely actions. You can identify not only the current stage of their purchase journey and what you need to do for them, but behavioural signals on whether they’re focused or struggling.
By starting to think about discount codes through this lens, you can move from fixed experiences. You can start to:
- Identify which visitors are likely to abandon but are also likely to convert if nudged
- Spot hesitation in real-time and respond with the right incentive
- Avoid discounting visitors who would have bought anyway
While the possibilities vary by brand and category, this unlocks some fairly universal opportunities. If you are going to do discounts, there are a couple of moments you really should be targeting. And they aren’t linked to page type or other retrospective data.
Two real-time moments where discounts works wonders
Discounting becomes impactful when it's tailored to real-time visitor context. We’ve seen this play out again and again across brands, and across shoppers’ journeys.
With this in mind, two of our Intent Segments are not only popular with our customers, but effective targets for discounting:
Convert | Abandon
- These are visitors deep in the journey, showing signs of exit
- They’re likely to buy, but not guaranteed
- A timely incentive here can rescue revenue
Maintain | Abandon
- Visitors who’ve built intent but are showing abandon signals
- They might be looping, hesitating, or comparing
- If their likelihood to return to the site is also low, a discount here protects the sale
These are moments when a discount can pay off incrementally. And while they are informed by visitor actions, they are not triggered directly by them but the context behind them.
While our product buckets visitors into Intent Segments from our framework, it’s just a starting point. Intent data can give ecommerce teams an abundance of datapoints to combine with their existing insights, from affinities to specific behavioural predictions.
This gives retailers the flexibility to trigger discounts for the most appropriate segments to maximise incrementality. All based on where they are in their buying journey and how they are feeling in real-time.
This approach isn’t theoretical. Appliances Direct used this logic to save 42% in margin by only offering discounts to visitors with high purchase intent showing abandon signals. Seasalt Cornwall saw an 89% uplift in conversion by combining these segments with affinity data.
Flipping the traditional discount logic
Let’s take things further and rethink three common discount triggers based on the typical rules.
New customer discounts. Just because someone is new doesn’t mean they’re unsure. Instead, look for signs of struggle. Not all new visitors need a discount to convert.
Product-based discounts. Some people are already sold. Others never will be. Target hesitation, not just product type. Sell the value, not the price.
Time on site discounts. Time alone isn’t a sign of purchase intent. Look for signals like repeated views, erratic navigation or clear signs of exit.
To summarise, discount codes aren’t evil. The way we do them is often just…a little lazy.
Discount codes should be used to influence behaviour, not to cover for a lack of understanding. They should incentivise action, not act as a tax on uncertainty.
The good news? Most ecommerce teams don’t need different discounts. They just need better timing. Smarter triggers. And a shift in mindset.
Rethinking retail discounting doesn’t mean giving it up. It means doing it with more precision, more relevance, and more respect for the customer journey. It means delivering them with intent.
Want to see what discounting with intent looks like in action? Learn more about how Made With Intent makes it possible.
