Finale Lite – Sales Countdown Timer & Discount for WooCommerce vs Smart COD for WooCommerce

Finale is the ONLY WooCommerce plugin that allows you to create urgency and scarcity inducing promotional campaigns. Urgency and scarcity are both powerful psychological triggers that motivate shoppers to take fast action and avoid missing out. You can use Finale to run scheduled sales campaigns such as flash sales, seasonal promotions, coupon code led discounts, pre-launch offers, daily deals, faster shipping deadline campaigns, instant discounts, early bird deals, recurring offers and more. Explore full capabilities of Finale in this article about WooCommerce Discounts Just plug in the promotion details and get started in minutes. Here’s how: Finale is built to empower store owners who want to run promotions and convert more visitors into buyers. It’s for those who don’t believe in ‘let’s hope they’ll buy someday’ philosophy. Instead want to seize every opportunity to generate more orders. “This plugin is everything I was looking for and more. The best part is that all the settings are intuitive- I didn’t have to spend hours figuring things out. I could get started within minutes of installation. And yes, a big thumbs up for support, they ensure you win with the plugin.” -Phil de Gruchy Founder, Blue Lama Finale’s Lite Features Set Up Sales Between Two Fixed Dates and Time In WooCommerce you cannot start a campaign at a set time. But Finale allows you to pick a time. This is great for running flash sales like happy hours, deals of the day (Wow Wednesdays, Tipsy Thursdays), prime time specials, lunch hour deals and more. Run a Countdown Timer to Give Shoppers a Clear Deadline for Action Most shoppers wait until the last few hours to make their purchase. In fact a typical sales graph shows that 90% of sales happen on the big last day. It’s when the fear of missing out is at its peak. Make this insight into buyer psyche work in your favor. Use Finale to set up stunning countdown timers on the product page to remind shoppers about the deadline. You’ll be surprised by the power of a subtle reminder. Set up a counter bar to show the real-time stock status Visualization is powerful. Don’t tell your visitors the number of items left in stock, show them. A counter bar shows the real time stock status and gives people a compelling reason to hurry up. It’s persuasive and moves as more and more people buy. Similar to Amazon’s counter bar on daily deals that says ‘x% of deal claimed’, it gives you the power to use scarcity with class! Create rules to customize campaigns Rule builder allows you to create your rules to customize campaigns. It makes the experience of using Finale hassle-free. No need to visit individual product pages to set up campaigns. Choose from 4 nifty rules to customize your campaigns. Set up campaigns: On certain hand-picked products, or all products in a specified product category, or chosen product type or only on products under or above a certain price point. Finale: The Must Have Tool For Running Scarcity & Urgency Led Promotions At Any Time of The Year Set up your deals of the day, clearance sales, end-of-season offers, early bird discounts, members-only offers, and festive campaigns in minutes. “Finale is a game changer. It’s one of the most effective sales-booster I’ve ever tried! It’s amazing how easy is to manage sales and display triggers that motivate customers to purchase more and come back to the store. Different sets of conditions and types of rules lead to impressive results. The outcome is almost unbelievable! Also the support is outstanding… Thanks, Daman you did a great job!” – Razvan Popescu Watch this video to set up your first promotion in 2 minutes. No matter what time of the year, people always need a push or a reason to make a decision. Finale gives them that credible reason they need to say yes. Use Cases of Finale Lite Here are just a few use cases of Finale Set up Flash sales scheduled to start on a set date/time Create Seasonal offers scheduled to trigger on set dates Run Exclusive Happy Hour Deals that only last for a few hours Set up Store Anniversary/Birthday Specials that last for a day and end at 11:59 pm Run Store-wide campaigns or only setup product category-wide sales Run Exclusive Festive deals that last till the stock lasts and end once the inventory goal is met Feed your entire promotional calendar in one go Show the depleting stock size through a counter bar to sell limited stock products There’s more ground you can cover with Finale Pro Finale PRO’s Features In addition to the features in Lite, Finale pro has the following core features: Set Up Recurring Campaigns That Stop And Re-Start On Automation Do you want to run frequent offers and campaigns without having to go to admin panel to re-start? Choose the start date/time, duration, pause period and number of recurrences. The campaign will start, pause and re-start as per your inputs. Never again log back in to re-start campaigns. Set up High-Converting Sticky Header & Footer Announce new campaigns in style. Put up urgency-triggering elements like the sticky header/footer on your store. Introduce new arrivals, announce campaigns, category-wide or store-wide discounts, time-limited offers with class. Increase click-through rate to the relevant product pages/ category pages with offers. Display Countdown Timer In Your Email Campaigns & More Grab the shortCodes and display these visually compelling countdown timers or counter bars on dedicated landing pages, blog posts, pop-ups and more. Generate buzz for upcoming products Lift curtains off new products in style. Set up a countdown timer on upcoming products and hide the ‘Add to Cart’ button during the waiting period. Set it to become auto-visible as soon as the counter strikes zero. Maximize conversions through Smart Events Instruct Finale to execute decisions based on real-time status. Bump up discounts when the campaign expiry time is close. Or increase the prices of products when remaining stock is little. Or bump up total units when few items are left in stock. You can even use Events to offer Early Bird Discounts (limit discounts to the first set of buyers). Embed Shortcodes Finale has 3 short codes for your campaigns (countdown timer, counter bar and custom text). Grab these short codes and embed them in your site and also in emails. Think dedicated landing pages, blog posts, urgency-inducing emails etc. Great for flash sales, festive campaigns, new launches and more. Finale Deal Pages List all your deals on a single page so that shoppers can discover and browse them easily. They’ll no longer have to scout for good deals and offers in your store. You can choose from a well-presented grid and list format to display your deals. List all your Christmas sale or Black Friday offers on one page during the promotion season. Also, show countdown timers and scarcity bar on this special curated page. Use Cases of Finale PRO Here’s a snapshot of a few interesting use cases of Finale Pro. The possibilities are endless. Run store-wide recurring flash sales or only on certain products/product category Automate your regular weekend offers on chosen products Spotlight special campaigns such as Christmas/ Black Friday/Mother’s Day etc. through sticky headers/footers Use Short codes to embed countdown timers on popups, landing pages, blog posts and sidebars Create buzz for upcoming products: Start countdown timers gearing up to the launch date/time Run campaigns on products with a specified stock status Set up frequent ‘Deals of the Day’ campaigns on automation Show a certain campaign to people from a chosen country. And another campaign to people from another country Personalize your campaigns and show them to logged in members only Hide ‘Add to Cart’ button on Out of Stock Products Trigger Early Bird Discounts on new arrivals that expire after a specified number of units sell Increase/Decrease discounts based on the units sold/left Set up a countdown timer to nudge shoppers to buy before same/next day shipment deadline expires Quick Start Tutorial Watch this ‘Quick Start Tutorial’ to hit the ground running with Finale: Frontend Demo: Experience all the visual elements of Finale Imagine Having all the tools you need to shed your visitors’ inertia and to jolt them into action Having the controls to plan and set up your promotional calendars in one go Being able to customize your campaigns based on 15 different conditions Owning a high-converting store that consistently clocks high sales Who should use Finale? Ambitious store owners committed to driving more revenue to their business this season. Store owners tired of letting interested shoppers leave their site and postponing their purchase decision Store owners who’re ready to generate more cash from the same traffic without spending a dime more on ads Those who understand the importance of shopper psychology in sales If this is you, you’re the right fit for Finale. Think About This Would you ever make it to the airport on time if flights didn’t have a set departure time? No. We speed our car, grab coffee on the way and do whatever it takes to make it on time. Why? Because there is a definite deadline attached to the task. We experience fear of missing out and fear of losing money on the tickets. This propels us into fast action. Similarly deadline-based campaigns and stock scarcity make people experience fear of missing out. This acts against their natural procrastination and nudges them to the finish line. Why We Built Finale? Most store owners run campaigns. But they are ineffective without awareness and definitive expiry deadline. We studied several top stores to see what they were doing to clock high conversion rates. And discovered they had the master key to sales i.e. shopper psychology nailed. Here is what Top store owners do to increase conversions: Run Time-bound flash sales Introduce Limited-edition products Announce Exclusive deals of the day and weekend offers Build hype around new launches Create awareness around festive campaigns through visual elements on the store Put up a faster shipment deadline. These well-planned campaigns help them set high sales records. We wanted to bring the same bag o’ nifty conversion hacks to small WooCommerce store owners. And that’s what led to Finale. Also, store owners like you told us they wanted us to build a plugin that could help them run recurring campaigns. They found it a tedious task to go back to the admin panel to re-start campaigns. These demands solidified the core features of Finale. About The Team Finale is backed and supported by a strong team of developers, support engineers and marketers from XLPlugins. The team is constantly updating the plugin and ensuring its compatibility with the latest WooCommerce versions. We’re also coming up with new and varied use cases of Finale and creating short videos around it. Our aim is to educate store owners to make the most of our tools.

Smart COD for WooCommerce extends the WooCommerce Cash on Delivery (COD) Gateway with an optional extra fee and restrictions based on customer conditions such as location and selected shipping method. Supports both Classic Checkout and WooCommerce Cart & Checkout Blocks (WooCommerce 9.9+ for Blocks). The same COD restrictions and extra fees apply to both checkout types. Protect your COD orders with Smart COD AI Go beyond your own store’s history: use delivery history from connected stores in your country, machine-learning risk assessment and clear reasons for COD decisions. Choose your protection rules and checkout actions, and preview and import your existing Smart COD settings. Discover Smart COD AI — a separate paid service with a 7-day free trial. This Free plugin remains free and works independently. Restrictions Each restriction can be easily toggled between Enable and Disable. When set to Enable, the restriction will allow the Cash on Delivery (COD) payment option only for the specified selections. On the other hand, when set to Disable, the restriction will disable the COD option for the specified selections, making it unavailable for them. Shipping Zone Shipping Method inside Shipping Zone Country State Postal Code (Supports Ranges) City User Role Products in cart (Supports Variations) Categories of the products in cart Shipping Class You can define an informational message to display before the payment methods, when the COD method is not available for a customer. You can define different messages per restrict reason. Extra Fees You can configure a standard extra fee and a separate fee for local pickup. You can use a fixed price or a percentage of the customer’s cart amount. You also have a nice rounding option. You can enable tax for this fee. Settings Backup Export your Free settings as a JSON file and restore them on the same store from WooCommerce > Smart COD: Settings backup. Review the current and saved values before confirming. No Smart COD AI account is required. Backups include COD availability, fees, restriction selections and messages. Sharing consent, credentials and order/customer data are excluded and remain unchanged during restoration. Files from another store are not accepted because product, shipping and category identifiers are store-specific. A preview expires after ten minutes; changing settings after preview requires a new preview. Developer-Friendly The plugin integrates seamlessly with WooCommerce and uses a clean, object-oriented codebase. It also provides the following filters for easy customization: wc_smart_cod_fee: Alter the extra fee. wc_smart_cod_available: Alter the current COD restriction. wc_smart_cod_fee_title: Change the COD fee title. Since the plugin extends the existing WooCommerce Cash on Delivery Gateway, there’s no need to enable or disable gateways manually. External services COD Protection and order-history sharing are optional and off by default in this Free plugin. Enabling the sharing setting in Cash on Delivery settings registers the installation with api.woosmartcod.com and permits the collection described below. Collection includes future physical COD creation snapshots and subsequent outcomes in signed background batches, without requiring tracking or a 24-hour wait. The existing filtered cancellation relay still sends eligible historical and future cancellation evidence and a capped prior-completed tracked COD count for the same shopper at that shop. An existing enabled sharing setting applies to this collection after updating, without another activation step or expansion notice; disabled settings remain disabled. Registration includes a generated installation identifier, shop domain, operating country and public signing key. Events include pseudonymized customer/location identifiers, a non-reversible order reference, timestamps, totals/currency, shipping method, item count, guest/registered status and courier/tracking where available. The service validates signed submissions, deduplicates events and applies an additional secret-keyed transformation to identity tokens. Data supports same-store COD protection and, subject to server-side eligibility review, cross-store machine-learning training; collection does not activate live ML scoring. No individual shop could perform that cross-shop processing locally. When COD Protection is enabled and checkout contains an email address or telephone number, the plugin sends locally generated SHA-256 identity tokens, the installation identifier and operating country to the COD Protection endpoint. Raw email and telephone values are not sent. The service checks only eligible events belonging to that same installation and returns only an allow/disable decision with a decision reference and policy metadata, not customer-history counts. The service records aggregate decision statistics and pseudonymized supporting evidence for denials, rather than storing every raw checkout lookup request. A timeout, invalid response or unavailable service leaves Cash on Delivery available. Turning the option off stops future collection, transmission and checkout lookups. The plugin does not call courier APIs. Service information: cancelled COD service privacy details, Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy. COD Protection, successful history and order lifecycle Classic shortcode checkout remains supported. Cart and Checkout Blocks are also supported on WooCommerce 9.9 or newer through the native Store API and Blocks extension APIs. The same COD rules, fees and optional order-lifecycle collection apply to both checkouts. Third-party gateways and checkout fields require their own Blocks support. Changes in this release: collection expands from filtered cancellation evidence to prospective physical COD creation and outcome events. The successful-history allowance adds context so earlier cancellations are not considered in isolation. This prepares representative data for cross-store machine-learning training; receiving data does not automatically activate ML scoring at checkout. New lifecycle events do NOT require tracking or a 24-hour wait. A new physical COD order created and cancelled within minutes is still recorded whenever the sharing setting is enabled. Other payment methods, virtual-only orders and deposit-child orders are excluded. Existing historical cancellations retain their filtered relay: this release does not import all past creations or completed orders. Collection and COD restriction are different. Not every collected cancellation is a qualifying negative match. The existing shipment/fulfilment checks remain: tracking, a prior physical-order completed status or a shipped/fulfilled transition. The lower-confidence untracked fallback applies only without a recognized tracking integration, after at least 24 hours between creation and cancellation, with a fulfilment-stage source status when supplied. Tracking AND 24 hours are not universal joint requirements. A cancellation by itself is not proof of refusal or non-delivery. Optional and off by default in this Free plugin. Protection checks only this installation. When the existing sharing setting is enabled, the plugin sends future physical COD creation snapshots and later status/outcome changes (including completed, cancelled, refunded and reopened orders) to api.woosmartcod.com in signed background batches. Creation snapshots include pseudonymized email/telephone and postcode identifiers, order reference, timing, totals/currency, shipping method, item count and guest/registered status. Courier names and tracking codes are included where available. Raw customer email, telephone and names are not sent. Data is used for COD protection and, subject to server-side eligibility review, cross-store machine-learning training. There is one sharing setting. After updating, stores that already enabled sharing also collect future physical COD creation snapshots and subsequent outcomes, without a separate activation or upgrade notice. Stores with sharing disabled remain disabled. Switching sharing off stops future capture, transmission and checkout checks. Historical cancellations keep their existing compatibility relay. Old orders first observed after the update or activation are marked as late observations, not invented checkout snapshots. The configurable successful-history allowance uses only directly matching email or telephone in this store and affects only the history-based restriction. Default minimum rate: 100%, preserving the existing history restriction unless the merchant chooses a lower rate (50% to 100%). Nine known successful orders and one qualifying dispatched-then-cancelled order meet 90%. Pending orders do not count. WooCommerce completed status is merchant-reported, not automatically courier-confirmed. New completion rows and cumulative historical snapshots are not summed: the service uses a conservative maximum to avoid counting the same deliveries twice. Exact individually imported historical success coverage may therefore be incomplete. Checkout calls contain hashed identifiers, not raw identity values. The service records aggregate operational counts and pseudonymized evidence for actual denials. This is distinct from storing every raw lookup request. Transport/service errors fail open. More details: https://woosmartcod.com/cancelled-cod-data-sharing/