Student discount for WooCommerce: A no-brainer for e-commerce businesses

Student discount for WooCommerce: A no-brainer for e-commerce businesses

If your platform is one of the four million already using WooCommerce, there’s a powerful new way to boost your sales: the Student Discount for WooCommerce plug-in powered by InAcademia. This extension simplifies offering exclusive discounts to Europe’s 18 million+ student community, giving your store a competitive edge while tapping into the influential spending power of Gen Z.

Student discounts are a proven strategy for increasing sales, driving conversions, and building loyalty. Students are consistently gravitating toward brands offering discounts, with special offers significantly influencing their purchasing decisions. Now, you can streamline this process for your customers with a solution that’s fast, secure, and effective - a no-brainer for a frictionless online shopping experience.

What is the student discount for WooCommerce plug-in?

The Student Discount for WooCommerce plug-in by InAcademia provides all the advantages of offering discounts to the student community—without the usual challenges. Think of it as the digital equivalent of checking a student ID at checkout.

This simple yet powerful tool validates student affiliation in real time, directly at the shopping cart, without requiring additional data collection or cumbersome offline processes like document verification.

What are the key benefits? 

Our new WooCommerce plug-in is designed for simplicity, speed, and security, making it the perfect solution for offering student discounts. Here’s how the plug-in can enhance the digital experience for your shoppers with minimal effort required from your side:

1. No coding needed: Install and configure the plug-in in minutes - no technical expertise necessary!
2. Fast and seamless for students: The validation process takes seconds, ensuring a smooth checkout experience that boosts conversions.
3. Privacy preserving: Interoperating with the user’s institution, rather than collecting data, protects user privacy and minimises the data collected during process, supporting GDPR compliance.
4. Secure and risk-free: Backed by WordPress and WooCommerce’s security framework and the trusted eduGAIN infrastructure, the plug-in comes with a 14-day free trial, letting you test its value before committing.

How does it work? 

The Student Discount for WooCommerce plug-in adds an ‘I’m a Student’ button or notice to your store’s shopping cart, giving your customers the opportunity to validate their student affiliation. This is how it works:

1. Student Identification: Shoppers click the “I’m a Student” button, triggering a secure call to the InAcademia service.
2. Authentication: InAcademia sends an authentication request to the student’s institutional identity provider, prompting the the user to log in with their academic credentials.
3. Validation: Once authenticated, InAcademia confirms the customer’s student affiliation and sends this information back to your store.
4. Automatic discount: If the customer is verified as a student, your pre-configured discount is automatically applied to the cart using standard WooCommerce functionality.

This process is powered by the trusted eduGAIN academic federated identity infrastructure, ensuring security and reliability while keeping the validation process lightning-fast. Better yet, it doesn’t require you to store additional personal data, maintaining compliance with data protection regulations.

Ready to get started? 

The Student Discount for WooCommerce plug-in is free to download and includes a 14-day free trial for access to the InAcademia service. If you continue to use after the trial, a subscription is required at €250 per month, which allows up to 1,000 student validations monthly.

If you have any questions about the plug-in, or about how InAcademia’s student verification platform can enhance your business, don’t hesitate to contact our sales team today.