Voucher code sites are a big part of the affiliate industry and in a typical retail based program, they contribute 15-25% of an affiliate program’s revenue. With such a significant contribution, scrutiny naturally follows and the question about how valuable these sites are has followed these sites since their inception.
Rather than deliver an opinion on the subject, we at Coam would encourage you to look at the data that relates to how these sites get traffic and you’ll be glad to know we’ve done the heavy lifting for you. Below you’ll find a a profile on the top 10 voucher sites in the UK, how they get their traffic and what that means for retailers who work with them.
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If you haven’t yet done so, we’d encourage you to first read our post about how affiliate sites get traffic, it will get you comfortable with the phrasing we use through this post and solidify your understanding on the topic.
So, without further delay, let’s get straight into the top 10 voucher sites and where they get their traffic from.
Where do voucher sites get their traffic?
The UK’s biggest voucher site vouchercodes.co.uk gets their traffic from the following sources:
The next step is to look specifically at the search traffic going to vouchercodes.co.uk and whether the keywords typed in by a consumer include a brand name:
When we tag up each referring search term we learn that almost all of their search traffic comes from “brand + voucher” terms. Just 2.4% of their search traffic comes from users searching for their site name or terms such as “voucher codes”, “discount codes” or “promo codes”.
Based on the data above, we can say with certainty that over 75% of all the traffic that goes to Vouchercodes.co.uk already had the intention to buy from a particular online store.
One of the UK’s oldest voucher sites myvouchercodes.co.uk gets their traffic from the following sources:
When we explore the search traffic more specifically, we learn that almost all of it comes from keywords searched by consumers that include a brand name:
Diving deeper, we learn that almost all of their search traffic comes from “brand + voucher” terms. Just 6.4% of their search traffic comes from users searching for their site name or terms such as “voucher codes”, “discount codes” or “promo codes”.
Based on the data above, we can say with certainty that over 75% of all the traffic that goes to Myvouchercodes.co.uk already had the intention to buy from a particular online store.
The Groupon subsidiary Vouchercloud gets their traffic from the following sources:
A big majority of their traffic is delivery by search engines with a greater share of email at 4% helped by a registered database of 4m+ users.
Notably, they have a smaller share of direct traffic compared to the other sites so far.
0.2% comes from social channels despite 300K (fb) and 28K (twitter).
Using ahrefs.com, we then analyse the volume of traffic that is delivered by “brand + voucher” terms and again it is the significant majority:
When we tag up each referring search term we learn that almost all of their search traffic comes from “brand + voucher” terms. A very small 2.5% of their search traffic comes from users looking for their site name or terms such as “voucher codes”, “discount codes” or “promo codes”.
Based on the data above, we can say with certainty that over 84% of all the traffic that goes to Vouchercloud.com already had the intention to buy from a particular online store.
The voucher sites hosted by the Daily Mail gets their traffic from the following sources:
The vast majority comes from search engines.
There are no socials dedicated to their discount code activity or any mention of the size of their email database and their volumes of traffic from these channels reflects that.
The reliance on “brand + voucher” terms is explored using ahrefs.com and in this instance we find it is huge:
Amazingly, just 0.07% of all the traffic to the Daily Mail’s voucher site comes from generic terms. When we tag up each referring search term we learn that almost all of their search traffic comes from “brand + voucher” terms.
Based on the data above, we can say with certainty that over 90% of all the traffic that goes to Daily Mail’s voucher site already had the intention to buy from a particular online store.
Bargain Fox, a lesser known voucher site but one that usually ranks well on Google, obtains traffic from the following sources:
The vast majority does arrive from search engines and they have minimal social.
In addition, they do not collect email addresses or do display marketing.
This affiliate is entirely search reliant.
The amount of traffic delivered by “brand + voucher” phrases is next examined using ahrefs.com, and once more, it is the large majority:
The traffic to Bargain Fox discovers the website through generics or searches on the website’s name 1.95% of the time. The other 98% of the traffic finds the site through “brand + voucher” terms.
Based on the data above, we can say with certainty that over 97% of all the traffic that goes to Bargain Fox’s site already had the intention to buy from a particular online store.
Coupon Follow is another prominent voucher code site in the UK and can often be found in the search results on the first page of Google. It obtains traffic from the following sources:
As is the trend so far, a significant amount of their traffic comes from “brand + voucher” related searches.
We can also see that there is some brand equity of the affiliate’s site as 10% of their traffic comes from direct type-ins alongside a small amount from referrals and social.
Similar to the last example, Couponfollow get 99.97% of all search traffic from “retailer brand name + voucher” terms. That leaves just 0.03% of search traffic that finds them using generic terms (in this case the name of their site).
With this revelation in mind, we can be confident that over 88% of all traffic passing through Couponfollow already had the intention to buy from a particular online store.
NetVoucherCodes are one of the top ten discount code sites in the UK and have a reasonable amount of search coverage
NetVoucherCodes have a comparatively reasonable amount of traffic from direct type-ins of their site name (almost 20%).
Like the other voucher sites though, more than 80% of traffic comes from search engines and there is almost no traffic from social, email or display.
Of the search traffic that NetVoucherCodes do get, 99.92% of it arrives having searched for “retailer brand name + voucher” terms. The remaining 0.08% search traffic finds the site from generic terms which in this case is the name of the site and the phrase “discount codes uk”.
Taking into consideration the data above, we can establish that over 80% of all traffic that visits NetVoucherCodes already had the intention to buy from a particular online store.
Savoo are another one of the top ten discount code sites in the UK and their traffic arrives from the following marketing sources:
The direct type ins reflect a reasonable amount of brand awareness for Savoo and it’s supported with a little help from Referrals, Social & Display (almost 1% combined).
As we saw with other voucher sites though, more than 80% of traffic comes from search engines.
Of the search traffic that arrives on Savoo’s site, almost all of it (99.2%) comes from users who searched for “brand + voucher” terms. The remaining 0.2% comes from users who looked for generic terms which in this case is the name of the site.
Our findings on this topic allow us to say with confidence that over 86% of all traffic that visits Savoo already had the intention to buy from a particular online store.
Discount Codes are a historically strong voucher sites another one of the top ten discount code sites in the UK and their traffic arrives from the following marketing sources:
The direct type ins listed here are actually a bit of misdirection as the “referrers” are poorly labelled by Similarweb. They come from webpkgcache.com which is a cached version of the discountcodes.org.uk site and should fall into the Search category.
All of the search traffic that arrives on discountcodes.org.uk comes from search engine queries on “brand + voucher” terms. This site (despite many direct type-ins) has no traffic that finds its website based on generic terms like “discount code” or “uk vouchers”.
Our findings on this topic allow us to say with confidence that over 74% of all traffic that visits discountcodes.org.uk already had the intention to buy from a particular online store. (note, we are including the 11% from referrals in this figure).
Concluding our list of top ten voucher sites in the UK is Voucherbox. They get their traffic from the following sources:
Voucherbox has a very similar profile to Vouchercloud with almost 87% of traffic arriving on the site from search engines.
The remainder comes from direct type-ins with a small contribution from display ads as well.
It’s close to being all of the search traffic that arrives to the Voucherbox site that has come from users who searched for “brand + voucher” terms. This site has only 0.2% of traffic that arrived searching for its website name or the term “uk voucher sites”.
Our findings on this topic allow us to say with confidence that over 86% of all traffic that visits voucherbox.co.uk already had the intention to buy from a particular online store.
Conclusion on "do voucher sites add value"?
All of the top voucher code sites in the UK get more than 75% of their traffic from users who already know which online store they’re going to buy from. In the worst case scenario (The Daily Mail and Bargainfox), this number rises above 90%.
In addition, only one of these voucher sites gets more than 1% of their traffic from the emails they send out to their subscribed members or from social channels.
The natural conclusion is that most voucher code sites do not add as much value as they would have you believe. The very high volumes of users that find voucher sites through a “brand + voucher” search term shows they are rarely the step in a journey that sways a consumer towards a particular brand or service. When you combine that with the incredibly low amount of traffic (less than 1%) that these sites get from email or social channels, our conclusion becomes more apparent.
If you’d like to see how this compares to Deal sites, you can read about where deal sites get their traffic from here. However, if this article has got you questioning whether you should even haven an affiliate program, read our article on are affiliate programs worth it?
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