Key Concepts

Before diving into specific discount types, it helps to understand a few concepts that come up throughout the plugin.

Discounts

A discount is a single discount definition. It describes:

• What kind of reward (% off, fixed amount off, free item, free shipping)
• Who is this for (customer roles, login state, past orders, lifetime spend)
• Where does it apply (zones, currencies)
• When does it apply (always-on, date window, day of week, time of day)
• What triggers it (auto-applied, coupon code, spend threshold — plus the eligible-items filter for which products count toward the trigger)
• What customers see (cart labels, product page display, upsell messages)

Each discount appears as a row in the Discounts tab. You can reorder them by dragging the grip handle, toggle them on/off, and edit them in the Discount Wizard. Once a discount has been redeemed, its row shows a quiet “used N times” count next to the name so you can see real activity at a glance.

The wizard’s six sections

When you open or create a discount, the wizard presents the same six sections as a single scrollable page. Only Rewards is required — the rest have sensible defaults.

Section	What it controls	Default
Who is this for?	Customer roles, login state, past orders, lifetime spend	Anyone
When does it apply?	Date window, day of week, time of day	Always
Where does it apply?	Geographic zones, currency	Anywhere
What triggers it?	Auto-apply, coupon code, or spend threshold — plus the Eligible Items sub-section that scopes which products / categories / tags / SKUs count toward the trigger	Auto-applied; all items eligible
Rewards	Reward kind, amounts, and tier configuration	Required
Messaging	Cart label, product-page display, spend-more nudge copy	Recipe defaults

A green Plain English summary box sits at the top of the wizard and re-reads itself as you change fields — “When the cart subtotal reaches £50, apply 10% off the cart” — so you can sanity-check the rule without scrolling. To the right of the wizard, the Cart Preview right rail simulates a customer cart against the real discount engine so you can verify the rule fires before publishing.

Recipes

A recipe is a pre-configured template that creates a discount with sensible defaults. When you click + Create Discount, you pick a recipe first.

The recipe gallery groups templates under Common mechanisms with six sub-headings — pick whichever matches what you want to build:

Sub-heading	Examples
% / £ discounts	% off the cart, fixed amount off the cart, % off a category
Spend & save / tiers	Spend threshold cart discount, tiered Spend & save, free shipping over a threshold, volume discount
Customer segments	First-order welcome, VIP / role discount
Coupon-triggered	Coupon code discount, Coupon: £ off, Coupon: free shipping, free gift with coupon code
BOGO / bundle	BOGO same item, Buy A get B free, cross-product BOGO, mix & match bundle
Time / day	Day-of-week sale, flash sale (date window), seasonal templates

Underneath, a Seasonal · pre-filled row offers worked-example templates (Black Friday, Mother’s Day, etc.), and a dashed Build any discount tile in the top-right opens a blank wizard for starting from scratch.

Recipes save you time — you can always customise everything after the discount is created.

First-time customer discounts

The dedicated First Order template was retired in favour of a more flexible BYO path. To target first-time customers today, pick any starting recipe — for example First-order welcome under Customer segments — and in the wizard’s Who is this for? section enable the First-time customers condition row. Under the hood the condition writes a past_order_count == 0 targeting leaf — see Targeting.

The retired “Which Items?” section

Earlier versions of the wizard had a standalone Which Items? section. The product / category / tag / SKU / attribute pickers now live as a sub-block called Eligible Items inside What triggers it? — the place where you also pick the trigger metric and the gating coupon code. The behaviour and field names are unchanged; only the location moved.

Draft vs Published

Dino Discounts uses a draft / publish workflow, similar to WordPress posts:

• Draft — Your changes are saved in the admin but not live on your store. Customers see nothing.
• Published — The current live state. This is what your store is running right now.

When you create or edit a discount, it becomes a draft. You can make as many changes as you like, across multiple discounts, and then publish them all at once from the Publish button. The publish modal lists a “What goes live” summary of every pending change so you can review before flipping the switch.

Why this matters

This means you can set up a complex promotion (multiple discounts, schedule changes, new targeting) and review everything before it goes live. No half-finished discounts reaching customers.

Stacking

When a customer’s cart qualifies for multiple discounts, Dino Discounts needs to decide how they combine. This is called stacking.

You control this globally in the Settings tab with four modes — from “apply everything additively” to “best discount only.” See Discount Priority & Stacking for details.

There is also a separate WooCommerce coupon interaction control — both per-discount (the Allow stacking with WooCommerce coupons toggle in the What triggers it? section) and global (in Settings) — that decides whether each Dino discount stacks with, or yields to, native WooCommerce coupons.

Zones

A zone is a geographic region — a group of countries — that you can use in the Where does it apply? section. For example, you might create:

• An “EU” zone for European customers
• A “North America” zone for US and Canada
• A “Domestic” zone for your home country only

Zones are managed in the Countries & Zones tab and can be referenced by any discount.

Coupons

A coupon is a group of coupon codes that share the same settings (discount amount, usage limits, expiry). Instead of creating codes one at a time, you create a coupon and generate codes within it.

Coupons are managed in the Coupons tab. See Coupons for details.

History snapshots

Every time you publish, Dino saves a snapshot of your full discount configuration to the History tab. If a publish causes a regression, open History, pick any previous snapshot, and click Restore to rewind to that exact state — no manual reverts required.