Target products & regions

By default a coupon applies to the whole cart. To narrow it, use the Product Targeting section of the Create Coupon form, or open an existing coupon's ⋯ → Edit in Form.

Coupons don't have "conditions." Condition-based targeting (cart-value tiers, customer segments, first-order-only, buy-X-get-Y) is a Discount rules feature. A coupon controls which products / categories it discounts, and (on multi-region stores) which regions it's valid in.

How targeting changes the discount

When you set any targeting, the discount is calculated on the matching items only, not the whole cart:

• Include Products / Include Categories mean only items that match are discounted. An include list is a union: an item qualifies if it matches either your included products or your included categories.
• Exclude Products / Exclude Categories remove matching items from the discount, even if an include rule would otherwise cover them. Exclusions always win.

If no item in the cart qualifies, the coupon is rejected. When the shopper types the code into their cart, which is when this nearly always happens, they see "This coupon does not apply to any items in your cart." The wording differs slightly if the cart passed and the order is rejected later at completion: "Coupon not applicable to selected products."

Example. A 20%-off coupon with Include Categories = Outerwear on a cart with a $200 jacket (Outerwear) and a $50 shirt discounts only the jacket: 20% × $200 = $40 off. The shirt stays full price.

Include or exclude products

• Include Products means only these products are discounted. Type 2+ characters to search your catalog, then pick the products.
• Exclude Products protects specific items from the discount (handy for guarding margin on a few SKUs while discounting the rest).

Include or exclude categories

• Include Categories / Exclude Categories apply the same logic at the category level. Include a category to discount everything in it; exclude one to carve it out. This is the fastest way to target a large group of products without picking each one.

An item is discounted when it matches your include rules (products or categories) and isn't caught by any exclude rule.

Stopping a coupon from stacking on sale items

A coupon discounts the sale price, not the original price. If a product's base price is $100 and you set a sale price of $80, the cart charges $80, and a 20% coupon then takes 20% off that, so the customer pays $64. The two discounts compound, and there is no setting anywhere that prevents it.

This surprises people, so it is worth deciding deliberately rather than discovering it on a Monday morning. There is no "exclude items on sale" toggle; the discount engine does not know a price is a sale price.

Two ways to control it:

• Exclude the products by hand. Add the discounted products to Exclude Products on the coupon. Accurate, but you must remember to update the coupon whenever the sale changes.
• Keep sale items in their own category (e.g. "Clearance") and put that category in Exclude Categories. Then moving a product in or out of the sale is a single category change and every coupon that excludes it follows automatically. This is the one worth setting up if you run sales regularly.

The same compounding applies to discount rules, which also work from the price in the cart, meaning the sale price.

Region restriction

Region Restriction appears only if your store has more than one region. It limits the coupon to buyers in the regions you choose; leave it empty to apply everywhere. A buyer outside the allowed regions sees "This coupon is not available in your region."

Notes

• One discount base. Targeting changes which items the coupon discounts; Min Order and the Max Discount cap still behave as described in Create a coupon (Min Order is measured against the whole cart; Max Discount caps the final discount).
• Variants. Targeting is by product (and its categories), so it covers all of a product's variants.

What's next?

• Manage & edit coupons covers editing targeting later, bulk-editing, and setting per-channel overrides.
• Track redemptions shows how a targeted coupon is performing.