Dealspotr: Accurate Coupon Codes Through Crowdsourcing & Community

Update as of 12/6/17. Please see the updated version of this study.

Congratulations! You've just discovered Dealspotr, a website that will save you approximately 7 minutes and 14 dollars each time you shop online.

How? Well, if you're the type of online shopper who can't bear to let that "Promo Code" box go unfilled during checkout, then you are probably well familiar with that annoying, tedious process of trying to find a working coupon code.

We know the story - you go to Google, search for "brand name coupons" then click on the first few sites that pop up. You navigate past annoying popups and flashing ads, click on a bunch of deal codes that promise things like "75% off your order (we promise!)" only to face rejection "Please enter a valid discount code." Sad :(

Per our research, the average discount code shopper spends 9 minutes visiting 2 to 4 coupon websites, entering codes, and mostly missing out on the average $14 savings enjoyed with a successful coupon code redemption.

We asked ourselves, why isn't there like a Google for coupon codes? Or something like Wikipedia for deals? We figured, if we built something like this, lots of people would use it. So last fall, we launched Dealspotr, a completely new type of coupon app that employs modern social networking and search technology, and one which is completely driven by its community of deal enthusiasts. On Dealspotr, real people who are active shoppers and who love coupons, add, edit, and curate all the deals on the site. Also, Dealspotr is run like a co-op - members earn rewards based on how successful they are in helping other members save, so there's a real incentive for everyone to make Dealspotr an easy, comprehensive, and accurate deal resource.

Our theory was that if we created a really fun, intuitive, and beautifully designed website that attracted a large community of deal lovers, and everyone was motivated to make Dealspotr better and better every day, we'd eventually have something like Google or Wikipedia for coupon codes - a tool that you could always rely on for accurate coupon codes for any store imaginable. (In other words, a single coupon site to check in 2 minutes rather than 9 minutes, with the highest chance of saving you 7 minutes and that extra 14 bucks). Since we launched nine months ago, we've received rave reviews and we've built up an amazing community of smart shoppers and couponers which is growing faster by the day.

While we're still in our early days (many exciting features are still in development) our sense was that even today we are already the best coupon site online in terms of coverage and accuracy of discount codes. We wanted to check in and measure how well we perform against the top competing coupon sites, so we conducted a detailed study to test our accuracy and coverage versus the largest, most popular coupon sites: Retailmenot, Coupons.com, and Groupon. We hand-tested 550 coupon codes presented by these three sites plus Dealspotr for 40 top retail brands, and measured coverage (how many codes worked for a given retailer) and accuracy (what percentage of codes presented worked).

So how did we measure up?

You can see the full results data here, but we think the numbers speak for themselves.

Overall, Dealspotr has more discount codes, more valid / working codes, and the lowest incidence of invalid codes on a percentage basis compared to all leading coupon sites.

For any given retailer, Dealspotr has 4.1 working / valid promo codes on average, better than industry leader Retailmenot, and better by around a factor of two over Coupons.com and Groupon.

Importantly, Dealspotr has the highest incidence of unique and unduplicated working discount codes. Many other coupon sites show large overlap in coupons (they source their coupons from the same data sources). Since Dealspotr is crowdsourced and sources coupons from thousands of deal contributors, our database contains a large number of working discount codes you won't find on other coupon sites.

How did we determine coverage and accuracy?

We did it the old fashioned way and hand-tested 550 discount codes across all four sites in our test. We added items to our shopping carts and tried to redeem a discount using each code based on the information provided by each website. We conducted the test on two days, June 13, 2016 and June 17, 2016. On each day, we took a snapshot of the discount codes for a given retailer by each of the four sites, and tested each code. We did this for 40 popular retailers to give us a broad picture.

Here's an example of the data we collected for Foot Locker:

And another example for Kohl's:

And here's another example for Blue Nile:

You get the point, but you can see the complete results of the report and all the backup data for all 40 retailers here.

So, how to save 17 minutes and 14 dollars each time you shop online?

Next time you're shopping online and looking for a discount code, we recommend starting your search on Dealspotr.com. Or you can just Google us directly, like "kohls dealspotr" and you'll see our page as the first result. Given that we already have the best coverage and top accuracy of any coupon site (we beat most by a huge margin) - PLUS we're still in our early days and our community is growing by leaps and bounds so our coverage will get better and better each and every day - we're pretty sure that if you can remember to lookup your coupons on Dealspotr first, you'll save your 17 minutes, save more money, and have more time to waste on more enjoyable time-wasting activities!

Join Dealspotr now and get a free $2 credit

Sign up for Dealspotr today and use promo code "DEALSPOTR" to get a free, instant $2 credit to your account,.