The Benefits of Offering Student Discounts in Your Shopify Store
Offering student discounts is a great way to directly engage with an entire demographic, and can improve brand loyalty and increase conversion on your Shopify store.
67% of students say that they expect student discounts.
83% of students state they’re more likely to shop at retailers offering student discounts.
Now it’s easy for your brand to be one of them.
The Untapped Market: Students (And Student Discounts)
Having spotted a gap in the market to help brands capture the student demographic (and equally, to help students grab some nice deals!), we created our own app, which is available in the Shopify App Store for free.
Easy Student Discounts is our Shopify plugin that verifies student statuses and provides discounts specific to those still in school, college and university. The app is global and can verify students in over 12,000 academic institutions around the world - take a look at the list of over 200 countries.
The Benefits of Student Discounts for Shopify Retailers
Ultimately, student discounts can increase sales - but how? There are more reasons than you probably realise.
More Intent; Less Disposable Income
Students have a high desire to purchase but less capital to do so, compared to those in the workforce. Because of this, it’s likely that students represent quite a large portion of shopping cart abandonment rate. After all, what’s better than a day procrastinating on assignments by online shopping for things you won’t buy? By offering student discounts, you encourage young shoppers to actually follow through with their purchase instead of clicking away from your Shopify store.
Shoppers Appreciate a Discount
Shoppers appreciate brands that give discounts, plain and simple. When shops offer discount codes and coupons for groups like students, it frames a brand as one that cares about the customer. All things considered, student discounts are one of the easiest ways to ensure brand loyalty from a lifelong customer - most notably one whose capital is likely to increase as time goes by.
Increase Brand Loyalty
Following on from that point, student discounts influence future shopping habits. In fact, 85% of students say that the experience they have with a brand during university is likely to influence where they shop or what they buy in the future.
Word-of-Mouth Marketing
Finally, word spreads fast on university campuses. Offering a student discount helps expand your reach within the collegiate community through word of mouth or, more likely, social media. Being student-friendly can encourage buying from university students who wouldn’t have otherwise purchased from your shop. This level of influence and connection between members of the student demographic is simply not found in other groups of buyers to the same extent. All of this to say: it helps you stay on-trend.
Student Discounts Should Be Simple
Having student discounts is the perfect way to boost your business. However, it’s important to keep it simple.
One study showed that when the sign-up process was too lengthy, nearly 70% of student shoppers were unlikely to go ahead with the discounted purchase. That means a difficult student discount process could actually make things worse - which is where Easy Student Discounts comes in.
Easy Student Discounts - Free Shopify App
Easy Student Discounts is a publicly available, free-to-install app available in the Shopify app store. The app lets you set up a student discount program, allowing students to easily sign up and benefit from discounts.
The app uses the university email addresses of the customers to verify their student status and has over 12,000 institutions listed in the database. The app also offers a variety of additional related features including customisable verification emails, manual discount generation and personalised database settings.
How Does Easy Student Discounts Work?
Easy Student Discounts puts the power of student discounts into your store with zero hassle for you or your customers. This plugin verifies students through a pop-up student portal that lets them confirm their place of study without leaving your site or needing any email verification codes. The verification portal lets students log in via their accredited institution, and all information is kept safe and secure.
The app is free to install and charges a small transaction fee of 2.5% of each successful sale made using the app.
It’s really easy to embed your student discount into a student-specific landing page, or add it to your homepage content block.
The app will assign a single-use discount code to students once verified, and automatically apply it to students’ checkouts for their convenience.
Then, you can manage the app from your easy-to-use admin panel to limit discounts, change display settings, and view key ecommerce metrics and analytics. Plus, the app is highly customisable with display settings that you can change and automatic theme matching for fonts and button styles.
Here’s a rundown of the top 10 features and benefits of the Easy Student Discounts app.
Download Easy Student Discounts on the Shopify App Store today for free and start generating better business from a whole new demographic.
How To Set Up Easy Student Discounts
Step 1 - Enable the app
Hit the ‘enable app’ button
Step 2 - Set your discount
Click the ‘discount settings’ button
Populate the discount information (restrictions, minimum price etc)
Save changes
Step 3 - Customise your discount page display
Click the ‘display settings’ button
Customise the display settings (text, titles, buttons etc)
Save changes
Step 4 - Create student discount page template
Click the ‘open theme customiser’ button
Click the pages menu (at the top of the screen)
Select ‘Pages’ from the drop down menu
Select ‘create template’
Name your template ‘easy-student-discounts’
Click the ‘create template’ button
Step 5 - Add student discount to app template
Click the ‘open theme customiser’ button
Click ‘add section’
Select ‘apps’
Search for and select the Easy Student Discounts app
Click the ‘eye’ icon next to Pages.
Step 6 - Create the student discount page in Shopify admin
Click the ‘add page’ button
Give the page a title and save all changes
Step 7 - Add the student discount page to your navigation
Click the ‘view navigation menus’ button
Select the menu you would like your discount to appear in
Click the ‘add menu item’ button
Name the page
Search for your student discount page
Click the ‘add’ button
Click ‘save menu’
Congratulations! You’re now ready to offer your student discount.
We'll be adding a video tutorial below which guides you through everything above, including enabling the app, setting up your discounts and customising how the discounts are displayed on your site.
Easy Student Discounts FAQs
How does the student discount verification work?
The student status of customers is verified through email. Students sign up to unlock a student discount by entering their university email address. The app identifies whether the university email address is valid, before they are able to submit it. This validation is based on whether the email domain (e.g. ac.uk) is in our database. Once they submit their valid university email address, they will receive an email in their inbox, which has a button they must click to verify their student status. When they click this button they will be redirected back to the website and are presented with a unique student discount code which they can copy and apply at checkout.
Ultimately, the customer’s ability to access their student inbox, which they are only granted access to throughout the duration of their student career, is what confirms their student status for us to provide them with discounts.
How much does Easy Student Discounts cost?
The app is free to install and charges a small transaction fee of 2.5% of each successful sale made using the app. You can see key information in the app’s analytics, like how many sales the app is driving for you.
How does the student discount verification work?
The student status of customers is verified through email. Students sign up to unlock a student discount by entering their university email address. The app identifies whether the university email address is valid, before they are able to submit it. This validation is based on whether the email domain (e.g. ac.uk) is in our database.
Once they submit their valid university email address, they will receive an email in their inbox, which has a button they must click to verify their student status. When they click this button they will be redirected back to the website and are presented with a unique student discount code which they can copy and apply at checkout.
Ultimately, the customer’s ability to access their student inbox, which they are only granted access to throughout the duration of their student career, is what confirms their student status for us to provide them with discounts.
What industries are best for student discounts?
It could be a multitude of verticals - from fashion to tech. We’ve put together a list of some of the best industries for student discounts, along with our recommendations and suggestions for how you can implement student discounts on your site.
How can I optimise my Shopify store for Gen Z using student discounts?
With 75% of students planning to spend during Black Friday, and 90% saying they would consider a new brand if they offer a student discount, it makes sense to optimise your store to capture these shoppers. Here are our top 6 tips for optimising your website for the student demographic and once you’ve done that, here are some ideas for how to promote your student discount once it’s all up and running.
