Savvy wholesalers like you seek every opportunity to maximize your store’s profit potential. One powerful way to set your store apart and provide tailored purchase experiences is by leveraging role-based pricing for WooCommerce.
Role-based pricing entails customizing pricing structures based on different user roles, right within WooCommerce. By segmenting your customer base and offering personalized pricing, you’re better able to cater to their unique needs. This is key to maintaining competitive advantage in today’s fierce marketplace.
In this guide, we’ll walk you through everything you need to know about role-based pricing. We’ll help you determine if it’s the right fit for your business, and how you can implement it effortlessly for your WooCommerce store. Without further ado, let’s begin!
Understanding Role-Based Pricing For WooCommerce
If you’ve been using WooCommerce for your online business for a while, you’re likely familiar with its default user roles. Upon installation, WooCommerce automatically adds two user roles for you: Customer and Shop Manager. You can assign the Shop Manager role to give users the ability to manage your WooCommerce store without Administrator privileges.
On the other hand, the “Customer” role is granted to shoppers who register on your online store, be it through checking out or by your sign-up page. While these roles may suffice for typical online stores, you’ll want to provide more options if you serve wholesale customers. Wholesale clients typically expect tailored pricing, exclusive product offerings, and specialized deals tailored to their bulk purchasing needs.
Powerful plugins like Wholesale Prices Premium enable you to address these needs. With this plugin, you can create multiple wholesale user roles and define different pricing structures for each. This is the essence of role-based pricing for WooCommerce.
Benefits of role-based pricing for WooCommerce
Let’s check out some key advantages of incorporating this strategy in your WooCommerce business:
- Enhance customer satisfaction: Tailoring pricing based on the needs of your B2B clients creates a personalized shopping experience that enhances their satisfaction.
- Boost sales: Offering targeted pricing and promotions to different customer segments also incentivizes bulk purchases, which can drive greater sales volume for your business.
- Gives you a competitive edge: Finally, exclusive deals and discounts for different wholesale customer segments give your customers more reasons to choose you over competitors.
When To Implement Role-based Pricing For WooCommerce (Factors To Consider)
Role-based pricing for WooCommerce is a powerful strategy that offers several advantages to business owners. However, you might wonder: when does it make sense to implement it for your business? No worries, we’ll help you find out if it’s the right move for you! Let’s review key considerations for you to evaluate:
1. Customer base
Firstly, evaluate your current customer base. If a significant portion of your current clientele are wholesale customers, then it’s essential to implement role-based pricing for WooCommerce.
Wholesale clients expect customized pricing structures and the best deals for their bulk purchases. By providing them with personalized bulk discounts, you showcase your commitment to meeting their preferences. As a result, they’re more likely to choose you over other suppliers.
This is even more important if you have a continuously growing customer base. As time goes by, you’ll also find that different segments have varying purchasing behaviors. With role-based pricing, you can reward B2B customers based on their order frequency, purchase volume, or commitment levels.
2. Pricing flexibility needs
It’s also important to evaluate the level of flexibility required in your pricing structures. For example, do you find yourself manually adjusting prices or negotiating deals with B2B clients frequently? You can streamline the process and save time by implementing role-based pricing for WooCommerce. Aside from reducing the administrative burden for you, it also ensures consistency and accuracy in pricing across your store.
3. Business goals
Likewise, consider your current business goals. Take a moment to reflect on your current objectives and identify areas where role-based pricing can support your endeavors. Maybe you’re planning to expand your reach by catering to wholesale customers, or are aiming to improve customer satisfaction. Role-based pricing for WooCommerce offers a targeted approach to pricing that can help you retain wholesale clients and drive more revenue for your store.
4. Competitive landscape
It can also be helpful to assess your competitors’ pricing strategies. If similar businesses offer role-based pricing, then it’s crucial to adopt the strategy to stay relevant and competitive in the market. You can still differentiate your business by experimenting with different kinds of pricing strategies. For example, you can implement quantity-based discounts, percentage discounts mapped to loyalty levels, or even personalized promotions based on purchase history.
How To Set Role-based Pricing In WooCommerce (Tutorial)
By default, WooCommerce does not offer the option to tailor pricing based on user roles. Thankfully, you can easily enjoy this feature using Wholesale Prices Premium. This powerful plugin is part of Wholesale Suite, a collection of tools designed to streamline wholesale operations within WooCommerce.
Wholesale Prices Premium allows you to easily set wholesale prices and create discounts for your wholesale customers. To begin setting up role-based pricing for WooCommerce, make sure that you have installed and activated both the free version of Wholesale Prices and Wholesale Prices Premium. You’ll need both plugins to be able to create multiple wholesale user roles.
Without further ado, let’s begin with the tutorial!
Step 1: Create additional wholesale user roles
The free version of Wholesale Prices automatically creates the “Wholesale Customer” user role by default. However, if you want to give your B2B customers a more personalized shopping experience, you’ll want to create more wholesale customer roles. This allows you to leverage the full advantages of role-based pricing for WooCommerce.
Before creating your new wholesale customer roles, take time to think about how you plan on categorizing your wholesale customers. For example, you can consider:
- Purchase volume tiers: Group wholesale customers based on purchase volume. For instance, you can create tiers like “Bronze”, “Silver”, and “Gold”, which correspond to different levels of purchase volume.
- Order frequency: You can also evaluate the order of frequency with which your wholesale customers place orders and give them labels like “Regular”, and “VIP”.
- Commitment level: Likewise, you can categorize B2B clients based on their order history and loyalty to your business. Consider creating roles like “New Wholesale Customer”, “Regular Customer”, and “VIP Customer”.
Creating a new wholesale user role
To create additional wholesale user roles, navigate to your WordPress Dashboard > Wholesale > Roles. This will automatically take you to the page where you can add multiple wholesale user roles.
On this page, fill in the following details:
- Role Name: Specify the name of the new wholesale user role (example: Bronze, Silver, Gold)
- Role Key (Optional): Optionally, assign a unique role key for identification purposes.
- Description (Optional): Provide a brief description of the role’s purpose or characteristics.
Then, once you’ve entered the necessary details, click on the “Add New Wholesale Role” to create the new wholesale user role.
You can also tick the option “Prevent purchase if wholesale condition is not met”. This feature ensures that users assigned to this role cannot place orders unless they meet the specified wholesale conditions, such as minimum order requirements. To learn more about setting minimum order requirements, check out this guide!
Step 2: Set discounts for your wholesale user roles
Wholesale Prices Premium gives you immense flexibility when it comes to tailoring discounts for your wholesale customers. In this tutorial, let’s focus on one of the easiest ways to do this: providing percentage-based discounts for different wholesale user roles.
Firstly, head to your WordPress dashboard and select Wholesale > Settings > Wholesale Prices > Discounts. This will immediately take you to the page where you can define percentage-based discounts for different wholesale user roles.
To begin mapping a discount, simply select the wholesale user role from the dropdown menu. Then, enter the percentage discount you want to offer er for that role in the “Percent Discount” field. After indicating the discount, click “Add Mapping”.
In the example above, we mapped the following discount tiers for our wholesale customers:
- Wholesale Customer: 5% discount
- Bronze Wholesaler: 7%
- Silver Wholesaler: 10%
- Gold Wholesaler: 12%
Step 3: Save your changes!
Once you’re satisfied with your changes, scroll down and click “Save Changes”. So, that’s it! You’ve successfully set up percentage-based discounts for your wholesale user roles using Wholesale Prices Premium!
Other Ways To Set Role-based Pricing For WooCommerce Using Wholesale Prices Premium
While we’ve touched on setting percentage-based discounts for different wholesale user roles, Wholesale Prices Premium offers other ways for you to leverage role-based pricing for WooCommerce. The approach you’ll choose will depend greatly on your business model, current goals, and requirements. Let’s quickly review them below:
1. Map general quantity discounts
In addition to setting general percentage-based discounts, Wholesale Prices Premium allows you to map quantity discounts for various wholesale user roles. This feature offers the flexibility to tailor discounts based on the quantity of products purchased by wholesale customers.
You have the flexibility to define the wholesale user role, starting and ending quantities, and the percentage-based discounts that will apply. This approach can be beneficial if you aim to increase order values or offer tiered pricing based on order quantities.
2. Provide cart subtotal price discounts
Wholesale Prices Premium also allows you to map cart subtotal price discounts based on wholesale user roles. Using this feature, you can define the wholesale user role, applicable subtotal price threshold, and the type of discount you wish to give. This can be a fixed amount or a percentage discount.
This approach allows you to offer discounts based on cart subtotal values, thus encouraging your wholesale customers to reach specific spending thresholds to unlock discounts. It can be an effective strategy if you aim to drive increased sales volume for your business.
3. Offer role-based discounts on the product & product category level
If you prefer a more granular approach, Wholesale Prices Premium also allows you to offer role-based pricing for WooCommerce at the product and product category levels.
At the product level, you can easily set fixed wholesale prices and define product quantity discounts.
Additionally, you can set percentage-based and quantity-based discounts on the product category level.
This approach allows you to offer discounts based on broader product groupings, providing a more streamlined approach to managing pricing for similar products within your store.
Important Note: If you have multiple wholesale discounts enabled, they follow a specific order of priority. This ensures that one discount takes precedence over another in case of conflicting settings. The order of priority, from highest to lowest, is as follows: Individual Product Wholesale Price, Product Category Wholesale Price, User Override Wholesale Price, and General/Global Wholesale Price.
Conclusion
Implementing role-based pricing for WooCommerce can help you create a more personalized purchase experience for B2B customers. In this article, we’ve reviewed the key advantages of leveraging this strategy, as well as key factors to consider if you’re thinking of implementing it for your business:
We’ve also discovered how easily you can implement this for your store using Wholesale Prices Premium. To summarize, let’s review the steps below:
Finally, we’ve walked you through the many ways you can use role-based pricing for WooCommerce with Wholesale Prices Premium. With this powerful plugin, you can set percentage-based discounts, map quantity discounts, and apply discounts at the product and product category levels.
Do you have any questions about role-based pricing for WooCommerce? Let us know in the comments section below!
