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GoDaddy and the Future of Coupon Codes

Online coupon codes have been a mainstay of the eCommerce world ever since…well….since eCommerce was created!

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An natural extension of the “coupon” section of your local newspaper, consumers frequently seek out coupon codes when they are purchasing products online. Off the top of my head, the highest volume Google searches are: Amazon Promo Code, Macys coupon code, Kohls coupon code, and Godaddy coupon code.

Godaddy this year is trying to change that. GoDaddy, by far the world’s most popular domain registrar, has frequently enticed customers with promo codes for 99 cent domain names and one dollar per month web hosting.

But lately GoDaddy has put the brakes on their coupon codes. Most renewal coupons have all but disappeared. Many existing customers who chose GoDaddy for the long term savings are now having to figure out what to do about this new predicament. The cheapest domain registrar is no longer the cheapest out there.

But one question this brings to mind is this: are coupon codes going the way of the dinosaur?

Even though Amazon’s online shopping cart has a spot for a promo code, Amazon rarely has any promo codes floating around that actually work. Instead the retailer relies on competition within the site to keep prices low and attract consumers that way.

There are browser extensions
that will automatically seek out and find promo codes when you reach an online shopping cart. There are questions as to the efficacy of these browser extensions (as well as security issues).

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Retailmenot.com is the king of online coupon codes, but even they are running into difficult times: a recent Google update reduced their traffic by 20% overall. The Google update (nicknamed “Panda 2.0) was designed to hit low quality or syndicated content on websites. Retailmenot, which uses lots of rss feeds to update their pages, was one of the hardest hit websites.

How much longer will coupon codes stick around? Will Google create a ‘coupon code’ aggregating-program that automatically finds promo codes and tests them out for you? If you’re able to search and find coupons without so much as visiting a website?

People love deals. They will always be looking for the lowest price. If there’s a program that can do all of that for them automatically, will they even bother searching anymore?