Coupon Code Accuracy Study: Retailmenot, Coupons.com, Groupon, Dealspotr

Shoppers have a love-hate relationship with coupon codes. On the one hand, coupon codes can unlock free money for things you want to buy. On the other, finding one that works can be an exercise in frustration - many websites providing coupon codes display invalid, expired or otherwise non-functioning codes.

Our goal at ZipfWorks has been to create a community-powered platform that solves many of the problems around finding working coupon codes for any retailer. We want to make it easy to find working coupon codes in an transparent, conversational environment driven by real users. Similar to other crowdsourcing sites like Wikipedia and Quora, we feel that this approach is the only way to attain a highly accurate database of coupon codes covering virtually all retailers.

The product of our efforts has been Dealspotr, a community-driven coupons platform where users share, curate, and edit thousands of coupons and promo codes every day. We launched Dealspotr in October 2015 and are still early in our development, but we've had great success to date in building our community and reaching our initial goals of coupon coverage and accuracy.

To see how we're doing, we recently conducted a detailed survey to compare our coupon code coverage and accuracy versus the three leading coupon sites, Retailmenot, Coupons.com, and Groupon. We've compiled our findings as well as accompanying data in this whitepaper, as well as published here in this article below.

Key takeaways from the study

Overall coverage and accuracy of coupon codes

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.

Average coverage of coupon codes per retailer

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.

Unduplicated coverage of coupon codes

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 old school data sources). Since Dealspotr is crowdsourced and has thousands of deal contributors, the database contains working codes you won't find on other coupon sites.

Accuracy / reliability of coupon codes displayed

Generally, the four websites included in the test scored reasonably well on accuracy. Larger, well-funded websites have the resources to monitor invlaid deals and remove them consistently. Dealspotr and Retailmenot scored highest on accuracy, followed by Groupon then Coupons.com.

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 retailer sto 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 can see the complete survey findings, methodology, and backup data below.

Detailed survey findings & full data set

Background

Usage of digital coupons to receive discounts at online retailers is a prevalent and growing activity online. 70% of surveyed consumers report to have used a digital coupon or promotion code within the past 3 months, and there were 121 million online coupon users in the US in 2015, a growth 7.3% year-over-year (Statista.com).

A specific type of digital coupon, coupon codes (also known as promotional codes, or promo codes) are of particular affinity for shoppers. Coupon codes are alphanumeric codes which can be entered on ecommerce sites during checkout and can be used to receive a discount for a wide variety of products sold various websites. Shoppers often seek these coupon codes during checkout to see if they can gain a discount on a product they are already in the process of purchasing.

Finding and applying a working coupon code can be a delightful experience for consumers, saving them money without having to sacrifice on the product(s) they originally intended to buy.

However, finding a working coupon code can be time-consuming and frustrating, as some websites that provide such codes tend to provide a poor user experience. Some of the most common problems with online coupon code websites include:

• False codes: Codes posted online purported to be working discount codes, but which for one reason or another are not valid codes recognized by retailers
• Expired codes: Codes which have passed their expiration date but which are presented as valid codes, causing shoppers to have to try them individually, only to see them fail to provide a discount
• Lack of coverage: Any particular site may not have knowledge of the currently valid and working codes for a given retail site, causing the shopper to have to visit multiple coupon sites while searching for a working code.

As a result of these limitations, shoppers predominantly turn to Google to search for coupon codes during the ecommerce checkout process. Depending on which sites they land on, the process of finding a working code can take several minutes or much longer, and in many cases the entire process ends in failure.

Our proposed solution

We at ZipfWorks wanted to solve some of these problems around coupon code user experience by creating a single database containing the best snapshot of working coupon codes for any given retailer (starting in the US, then expanding to other countries).

Our approach for solving this problem involves applying crowdsourcing at scale by connecting those who are knowledgeable about coupon redemption (in this case, coupon bloggers and extreme couponers) with those shoppers who are looking for a working code at the time of checkout.

We’ve built Dealspotr, a social platform designed to connect these two constituencies. On the expert (content creator) side, we allow coupon experts to create a profile and then share their knowledge about working deals and discount codes for specific retailers. On the shopper side, we distill and format the advice provided by coupon experts into a single page that summarizes the best available working coupon codes for a given store.

Dealspotr is built around the concepts of collaboration and shared rewards. Experts can earn rewards in the form of cash and e-gift cards within the Dealspotr system based on the feedback of a proprietary performance measurement system that estimates their effectiveness in providing high quality information that helps the highest number of shoppers save money. They key innovation in Dealspotr is to enable the app community to participate directly in improving the quality of content in its database while sharing revenues generated from the app directly with its user community.

Our product goals are:

1. Have knowledge of all the available working discount codes for a given store at any given time
2. Minimize the presentation of invalid and expired codes

Dealspotr does a wide range of other things, our larger goal is to create the first modern social platform for sharing and finding deals, but the purpose of this paper is to focus specifically on coupon code accuracy.

Since launching in October 2015, we are still in our infancy as a platform and community, but we have made significant headway in building an active community of coupon experts and providing some of the code tools for sharing knowledge and displaying it for shoppers. We felt this was a good time to do an audit of our coupon accuracy versus our major competitors.

So we recently conducted an audit to compare our coupon accuracy versus our three largest competitors, RetailMeNot, Coupons.com, and Groupon.

Goals of this study

The goal of this study is to ascertain and summarize the coverage and accuracy of three of the most popular coupon websites and our site Dealspotr.

We selected coverage and accuracy as our two metrics because these determine the speed with which a shopper can find a working discount code. We consider speed to working code to be the essential user experience goal served by coupon websites.

How do we define coverage and accuracy?

Coverage is defined as a given website presenting the largest number of working discount codes for a particular store at any given time.

Accuracy is defined as the percentage of codes presented which are recognized by the retailer, are within their expiration dates, and are presented with accompanying instructions (such as exclusions and limitations) which enable the shopper to successfully redeem the code

Study methodology

• We conducted our survey on two days, June 13, 2015, and June 17, 2015.
• We analyzed 4 websites in our study:
  • Retailmenot (http://www.retailmenot.com)
  • Coupons.com (http://www.coupons.com)
  • Groupon (http://www.groupon.com)
  • Dealspotr (https://dealspotr.com)
• At the time of each test, we took a snapshot of the coupon codes presented by the four coupon websites for each of 40 major retailers and compared them for coverage and accuracy.
• We selected the 40 retailers based on the following criteria:
  • We tested retailers that serve customers in the US only
  • We selected from the top 250 US retailers based on consumer interest for coupons for those retailers. To measure this, we used data from SEMRush.com and chose from the top 250 brands based on consumer search volume for the term “brand name + coupon” or “brand name + coupon code.”
  • We selected only retailers that honor coupon codes and issue them periodically to customers. We only chose retailers that prominently display a “coupon code” input field somewhere in their ecommerce checkout process.
  • We selected from a broad range of industries and retail segments, including fashion, electronics, food, services, and consumer sundries.
• How we tested:
  • For a given retailer, we visited each of the four coupon sites and tested the coupon codes presented.
  • For each retailer, we visited the retailer website and added items to our shopping cart. We tested each discount code by entering it into the box offered during checkout.
  • If we were able to secure a discount during this process, using the instructions provided by the coupon website presenting that code, we considered that code as working.
  • If were unable to secure a discount based on the information provided on the coupon website, we considered that code as not working.
• What types of coupons we included in the test:
  • We only looked at coupon codes and ignored all other types of sales and deals listed on each website.
  • We included all types of coupon codes, including those that provide a site-wide discount, and those for specific categories, brands and products. We required that the site accurately described any limitations of a particular code to count it as a working coupon code.
  • We ignored all coupon codes that were listed on each coupon site that were clearly marked as “expired” or otherwise marked as unreliable.

Summary of findings

Coverage

Coverage is defined as having knowledge of and presenting the highest number of working codes for a particular store. Broadly speaking, Dealspotr and Retailmenot had the highest coverage of coupon codes for the 40 major retailers in the test by a factor of two. Dealspotr had the highest coverage, with 159 working codes presented for the 40 retailers in the test, compared to 139 working codes for Retailmenot, 79 for Coupons.com, and 70 for Groupon.

Accuracy

Accuracy is defined as the percentage of discount codes presented on a coupon website that are currently valid and working at the time of testing.

Generally, all four websites had similarly high accuracy scores, with Dealspotr having slightly greater accuracy than the others.

• Dealspotr: 82.8% accuracy
• Retailmenot: 80.8% accuracy
• Coupons.com: 79.8% accuracy
• Groupon: 79.5% accuracy

While we only tested the four websites mentioned in this study, our estimation is that these websites represent among the highest performers in coverage and accuracy among coupon websites online. This is due to the significant resources required to maintain a highly accurate database with broad coverage, and the fact that the largest websites likely have the most resources to achieve this goal.

Key takeaways

• Retailmenot, among the most established coupon websites with the highest amount of traffic, has been the standard bearer for nearly a decade when it comes to breadth and depth of coverage of coupon codes. The company outperforms even its largest competitors by a wide margin.
• Dealspotr, a new app offered by ZipfWorks, utilizes a new, more modern system of crowdsourcing mixed with advanced social networking features to produce an even higher quality database of coupon codes with greater coverage and higher accuracy than Retailmenot.
• Dealspotr is still a new project, with a small community that is growing rapidly. As the app continues to grow its community and improve its platform, it is positioned to continue widening its margin to becoming even more comprehensive and more accurate versus competing coupon websites.

Detailed coupon code data from the study