In short: WooCommerce can’t run “buy one, get one free” or Buy X Get Y offers on its own. With Nanflows Bundles Pro you choose the products to buy, the products the shopper gets, and whether those are free or discounted, with optional start and end dates. Check the margin first: a BOGO is a 50% discount on two units.
“Buy one, get one free” might be the oldest offer in retail, and it still works because nobody has to do maths to understand it. Buy X Get Y is the wider family: buy 2 T-shirts and get a cap free, buy a camera and get the bag half price.
WooCommerce can’t do either on its own. This post shows how with Nanflows Bundles Pro, and how to check an offer is worth running before you run it.
How it works in Nanflows Bundles
A Buy X Get Y offer is a bundle with two kinds of product in it:
- Buy: what the shopper pays for, at its own price.
- Get: the reward, at the discount you set.
You set how many of each. The discount on the Get products goes from 1% to 100%, where 100 means free and 50 means half price.
One thing to be clear about: this isn’t a cart rule that watches for two T-shirts and quietly applies a discount. The offer is shown on the product page as a bundle, and the shopper adds it as a set. That’s a good thing. People can see the deal before they buy, which is the whole point of a deal.
Buy X Get Y on a product page: two tees at their own price, the cap free.
Setting up a BOGO
- Go to Bundles → Create Bundle and choose Buy X Get Y.
- Add the product once as Buy with quantity 1, and once as Get with quantity 1.
- Set the discount on the Get products: 100 for free, 50 for half price.
- Pick the product pages where the offer shows.
- Publish.
No coupon to type. The bundle carries its own price.
Other shapes of the same offer
- Buy 2, get 1 free: Buy × 2, Get × 1, 100%.
- Gift with purchase: a full-price product as Buy, a sample or small accessory as Get, 100%.
- Accessory deal: the camera as Buy, the bag as Get, 30%.
- Buy 3, get 1 half price: Buy × 3, Get × 1, 50%.
Do the maths first
“Buy one get one free” is 50% off two items. If your margin is under 50%, every BOGO you sell loses money.
A quick check: say a T-shirt sells for $25 and costs you $10. BOGO free means $25 in for $20 of product, plus the cost of shipping a heavier parcel. That’s thin. Buy 2, get 1 free is $50 for $30 of product, which is healthier. BOGO half price is $37.50 for $20.
The same tee, three offers. “Free” leaves the least.
If the numbers are tight, don’t start with “free”. Half price on the second item still reads as a strong offer.
Give it an end date
An offer that never ends stops being an offer. Pro has two rules for that on every bundle:
- Sell from and Sell until: the days the bundle can be bought, in your shop’s time zone. Set it up on Monday for a Friday-to-Sunday sale and forget about it.
- Minimum and maximum bundles per order: so one buyer can’t clear your stock at half price.
Offer ideas that tend to work
- Weekend half price: buy one, get the second half price, Friday to Sunday.
- Launch a new flavour: buy the best seller, get the new one free for the first week.
- Refills: buy 3, get the 4th free.
- Accessories: buy the main item, get the case at 30% off.
- Clear last season: buy two of this season’s, get one of last season’s free.
- Gift season: buy any gift set, get a card or a small extra free.
Check whether it worked
Pro’s reports show each bundle’s funnel (views, adds to cart, checkouts, purchases) and the products it moved. The question to ask isn’t “did people buy the offer?” but “did people buy more than they would have?”. See bundle analytics for how to read that.
Run your first offer
- Nanflows Bundles Pro has Buy X Get Y, with sell-from and sell-until dates and a limit per order. $39 a year for one site, or $149 for up to five, and a first purchase can be refunded within 14 days.
- It builds on the free Nanflows Bundles plugin from WordPress.org.
- More on BOGO in WooCommerce and Buy X Get Y in WooCommerce.
FAQ
Is BOGO in the free plugin?
No. Buy X Get Y, which includes BOGO, is one of the eight bundle types in Pro. The free plugin has fixed bundles and frequently bought together.
Can the free item be a different product?
Yes. Buy and Get can be the same product or different ones.
Does it work with my payment gateways and coupons?
Yes. Orders go through the normal WooCommerce checkout with your gateways, taxes, shipping and coupons.
