WooCommerce Hack: From Add to Cart to Buy Again with Discount

Encourage Reorders in WooCommerce: Add Buy Again and Apply Discount Automatically

Looking for a way to encourage customers to reorder products they’ve already purchased from your WooCommerce store? Adding a “Buy Again” button with a 5% discount for repeat purchases can be a powerful loyalty booster — and it doesn’t require any plugins!

In this guide, I’ll show you how to:

• Change the “Add to Cart” text to “Buy Again” if the user has purchased the product before.
• Automatically apply a 5% discount on those products during checkout.
• Reward loyal customers and increase repeat sales — automatically!

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📌 Step 1: Change “Add to Cart” to “Buy Again” (if purchased)

Let’s start with a small UX touch — modifying the button text on product and shop pages:

add_filter( 'woocommerce_product_add_to_cart_text', 'buy_again_button_text' );

function buy_again_button_text( $text ) {
    if ( ! is_user_logged_in() || ! is_product() && ! is_shop() ) {
        return $text;
    }

    global $product;
    $user_id = get_current_user_id();

    // Fetch customer orders
    $orders = wc_get_orders( array(
        'limit' => -1,
        'customer_id' => $user_id,
        'status' => array( 'wc-completed', 'wc-processing' ),
    ) );

    foreach ( $orders as $order ) {
        foreach ( $order->get_items() as $item ) {
            if ( $item->get_product_id() === $product->get_id() ) {
                return __( 'Buy Again', 'your-textdomain' );
            }
        }
    }

    return $text;
}

✅ Result: Logged-in users who previously bought the product will now see “Buy Again” instead of “Add to Cart.”

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💰 Step 2: Give a 5% Discount for Repeat Purchases

Let’s reward those loyal customers at checkout by detecting repeat purchases and applying a 5% discount dynamically.

Add this to your functions.php or a custom plugin:

add_action( 'woocommerce_cart_calculate_fees', 'apply_buy_again_discount', 20 );

function apply_buy_again_discount( $cart ) {
    if ( is_admin() && ! defined( 'DOING_AJAX' ) ) return;
    if ( ! is_user_logged_in() ) return;

    $user_id = get_current_user_id();
    $discount = 0;

    // Get list of purchased product IDs
    $orders = wc_get_orders( array(
        'limit' => -1,
        'customer_id' => $user_id,
        'status' => array( 'wc-completed', 'wc-processing' ),
        'return' => 'ids',
    ) );

    $purchased_products = array();

    foreach ( $orders as $order_id ) {
        $order = wc_get_order( $order_id );
        foreach ( $order->get_items() as $item ) {
            $purchased_products[] = $item->get_product_id();
        }
    }

    // Apply discount if product was previously purchased
    foreach ( $cart->get_cart() as $cart_item ) {
        $product_id = $cart_item['product_id'];
        if ( in_array( $product_id, $purchased_products ) ) {
            $line_total = $cart_item['line_total'];
            $discount += $line_total * 0.05; // 5% off
        }
    }

    if ( $discount > 0 ) {
        $cart->add_fee( __( 'Repeat Purchase Discount', 'your-textdomain' ), -$discount );
    }
}

✅ Result: If a customer adds a product they’ve already purchased, WooCommerce will automatically apply a 5% discount during checkout.

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🔔 Bonus: Show a Friendly Notice

Let your customer know they’re getting a reward — add this message to the cart:

add_action( 'woocommerce_before_cart', 'show_repeat_purchase_notice' );

function show_repeat_purchase_notice() {
    if ( is_user_logged_in() ) {
        echo '<div class="woocommerce-info">You’re getting 5% off items you’ve purchased before 🎉</div>';
    }
}

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🎯 Why This Works

• Boosts Loyalty: Returning customers feel rewarded.
• No Coupons Needed: Clean, automatic experience.
• Easy to Extend: You can increase the discount, limit it to specific categories, or track how many repeat purchases are made.

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💡 Want to Extend It?

Here are some bonus ideas:

• Apply a larger discount if they’ve bought the product more than once.
• Only apply the discount if they’re logged in for more than X days.
• Add a “Recently Purchased” section with quick reordering.

Let me know if you’d like help building any of those — or turning this into a full plugin with settings in the WordPress dashboard.

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🚀 Final Thoughts

This lightweight customization is a great way to encourage repeat orders on your WooCommerce store — no plugins, no extra overhead. Just a few lines of well-placed PHP and a more engaging customer experience.

Have questions or want to build more WooCommerce automations? Drop them in the comments or shoot me a message — happy to help!