Limitations of the static Woods–Saxon potential and the applicability of the energy dependent Woods–Saxon potential (EDWSP) model within the framework of one-dimensional Wong formula to explore the sub-barrier fusion data are highlighted. The inelastic surface excitations of the fusing nuclei are found to be dominating in the enhancement of sub-barrier fusion excitation function data and the effects of such dominant vibrational states are exploited through the coupled channel calculations obtained by using the code CCFULL. It is worth mentioning here that the influence of multiphonon vibrational states of the reactants can be simulated by introducing the energy dependence in the nucleus–nucleus potential.