About twice a week I get a phone call or email from a customer claiming that my cart never gave them an opportunity to enter a coupon code and would I please refund them the discount associated with such and such a coupon code.
You and I both know that they were prompted for the code, but people just aren't looking for it at the right time.
It happens so often that I have a keyboard macro which I will execute now so you see what a pain these are: I'm sorry for the confusion on the coupon entry. I've refunded your credit card for the amount on the coupon. For future reference, you can find the coupon entry field on the screen that appears right after you add anything to your cart. Alternatively, you can return to that screen by clicking "View Cart" in the upper right corner any time you already have anything in your cart."
Ugh.
Today it occurred to me that fixing this would be incredibly simple. I just added a menu item to the upper right menu, right below the existing "View Cart" link. It says "Enter Coupon" and it goes to the same place as "View Cart". Furthermore, it only shows up when items are in the cart.
Super simple:
Create a new language variable in the label topic called "lbl_enter_coupon" and set it to "Enter Coupon" or "Redeem Coupon" or whatever.
Then, in customer/menu_cart.tpl, find this line:
Code:
<a href="cart.php" class="VertMenuItems">{$lng.lbl_view_cart}</a><br />
Immediately after that line, insert these lines:
Code:
{if $minicart_total_items > 0}
<a href="cart.php" class="VertMenuItems">{$lng.lbl_enter_coupon}</a><br />
{/if}
And that's all there is to it.
Granted, it doesn't add any actual functionality - it's just a copy of the link above it using a new label. But, when people go to that page they aren't normally looking for the coupon field and so they easily miss it. If they click on that link, they will actually look for it there and you'll be spared the phone call or email and the necessity of processing a partial refund.
Marshall