The daily deals industry is an interesting one, which attracts many players to it (some say too many), causing the space to be characterized by cut-throat competition. Crowdedness is not necessarily bad: it is arguably easier to stand out in a crowded market with no dominant player in your niche (e.g. handmade jewelry) than to stand out in a market sparsely populated by a few dominant players whose names are synonymous with the industry (e.g. search engines). As a daily deal platform hosting hundreds of daily deal websites, we have seen – more often than we can count – high-quality daily deals that are not fully-optimized and thus do not reach their full sales potential.

Assuming that you are selling something that your market wants, here are some suggestions for daily deal optimization:

1. Display more images and videos
One of the easiest ways to improve a daily deal offering is to display more non-repetitive images and videos. Images should show different aspects of the deal (e.g. a spa package might include a facial, a herbal massage, and a steam bath; include those individually). You can also show video testimonials as well as explanatory clips. There is often too much text and too little media.

2. Display images with people having fun
What is more enticing: a panoramic view of a theme park or a picture of a happy family riding a rollercoaster? Faces usually do the trick.

3. Inflate that purchase count
This practice is ethically questionable but less questionable when it comes to its efficacy in increasing sales. You can customize your website to show a fake “150 people have bought this deal” line to serve as social proof and encourage buying. (We give the option to our customers to use this feature or not, thus shifting the ethical dilemmas to them!)

4. Use a shorter active time period
Deals with, say, a 5-day or 7-day open window might as well not have a countdown timer. The shorter the active time period, the more urgent and scarce the deal seems, leading to impulse buying.

5. Minimize the number of clicks required to reach the payment page
Some daily deal websites require a subscription before bringing you to their deals. Others require registration. While it is controversial whether those tactics increase sales, they certainly do increase the number of steps required to reach the checkout page. Generally, that is not good. Why not let visitors check out as guests? Why not allow a quick checkout, i.e. require just one click to go from the deal page to the payment page – bypassing the shopping cart?

6. Make your deals affordable
Price is correlated to value, yes, but consumers often see things in terms of absolute dollar value without much regard to the intrinsic or even perceived value of the item in question. Making your deals affordable means that you start by selling low-ticket deals to build your reputation (and morale) and slowly working your way up to the three-figure and four-figure deals.

7. Engage your visitors by providing discussion/commenting outlets
As much as you would like to provide all the relevant information pertaining to that deal, your visitors might still often have questions of their own. Start the ball rolling by putting up a simple “talk to us and we will respond in hours” notice. Let them consult one another or publicly ask you, the daily deal site owner, questions. Be responsive when that happens!

8. Minimize the number of side deals
More often than not, less is more. An overly-large gamut of choices (anything in the 10-20 range, really) puts your visitors in a browsing or exploratory mood, not a purchase consideration mood. Focus can help to sell deals.

9. Avoid unprofessional design
It is needless to say that your logo should make anyone who sees it want to trust your company. Try not to use too many sharp edges in your design, use sans-serif fonts, avoid clashing or saturated colors, have a consistent branding throughout the website, etc. In short, recommend UX Movement (http://www.uxmovement.com) to your designer.

10. Market your deals often
This suggestion is obvious. Yet consistently marketing one’s deals is not a common practice, because most people are afraid of being seen as spamming or hard-selling. Others are afraid that they will never be able to recoup their lost marketing dollars the more they advertise. The only problem is that nobody will buy your deals – no matter how good they are – if they do not know about it.

Of course, these suggestions are just hypotheses, which can at most be used as bases for testing. The only practical way to know what works and what does not is to perform A/B testing. If you have experience running split tests on any of the suggestions above, do share your results and findings in the comments section; we can all learn something!