How to sell gift cards in your online shop

Use YITH WooCommerce Gift Cards to integrate gift cards in your shop and allow your customers to choose the present they prefer

What’s the best present ever? Something he or she might love and still doesn’t possess. Well, this is one of the most frequent questions we all have run into in our life. But the real problem lies in the fact that we have to know the person and her/his habits in detail to know exactly what he or she likes, what she needs and what she doesn’t possess yet. We have to know their habits, their taste and… their “property”. And this not so easy or even appropriate!

Let consider the case I have a really close friend, who lives far from me: we meet rarely and we hear each other not very frequently. However, each time we hear or meet, we have so many things to tell and certainly telling our latest purchase is not what we care, at all! This does not change the fact that we know each other well enough. So, it might happen that I got really confused if I have to make a gift for her birthday, for Christmas or simply because I want she has something that reminds her about me.
Let’s make another example, a friend that is not so close, or a friend whose taste is always unpredictable, who never likes your presents. So, what are we going to do about it? What could be better than a gift card? I think you can make them happy by leaving them free to choose what they prefer: your present will not be wasted, they will be happy and your choice is really quick.

Now, we all know that gift cards are much more easy to find in a physical shop, but what about online shops? Many shops sell them, but if you are running your own e-commerce using WordPress and WooCommerce, how could you ever integrate gift cards?
No problem, because this is not such a difficult task, there are companies that work to offer you the best extensions for your site and for what concerns gift cards I might suggest you a gift card extension, which covers every need of both a person who wants to buy a gift card and of shop owners who have to organise their shop accordingly.

Let’s see together how this plugin works and what it allows you to do. The main basic feature is the one that allows your customers to purchase a gift card and to send an email to the receiver, with the promotional code that they can use to choose their gift.

For what concerns the amount of the gift card, you can set some fixed amounts, among which customers can choose, or you can also give them the possibility to choose their own amount and customize it as they prefer.
Moreover, you might also wish to send a specific gift, but you are not that sure that your friend might like it. As its cost is quite high, you might want to suggest that product and, in case, leave your friend free to choose something else. Well, with YITH WooCommerce Gift Cards, you can do that.

What’s more, if they do not like anything in the shop for that price, but they’ve seen something that costs just a bit more, they can also use the gift card to pay a part of the price and add the difference. Your shop can only benefit from that, because you will become known to new people, they are new possible customers and they might come back to you again for other purchases. Or, why not, to gift a card to some friends in turn.

You might wonder, though, how they receive the gift card. They receive a detailed email including the promotional code, the person who is gifting, the message attached etc. But, it is just the code what they need to trasform their gift card into something concrete. Moreover, if you like that, you can customise the email using your own image, say, you want to attach a picture of you together, maybe that one taken in a really funny moment, that none of you will ever forget… Well, you can do that and use it as presentation image for your gift card. What a nice idea, isn’t it?

And if you realise later that a more moving message would be the perfect one for the gift you are sending, no problem, because you can edit details of your gift card even after you have purchased it.

Another important thing that makes a gift card even more useful than a physical present, is the possibility to choose the exact date in which your gift card will be delivered to the receiver. You can schedule it exactly as you can on Amazon. You buy the gift card now and you can let the plugin deliver it on your behalf on the exact date of the birthday and avoid any possible hitch. Think, for instance, if you were bound to purchase the gift card the day of its delivery: an unexpected problem that forces you to stay longer at work, just to name one, and you do not find the time to purchase the gift card. Such things might happen. Don’t worry, you don’t have to worry about them, because you can purchase the gift card in advance and let it be delivered the scheduled day.

There are many other customisation options to sell your gift cards in your shop and configure it as you prefer. Among these ones, an important one concerns people who has set up a shop with many sellers. This plugin, in fact, has also been conceived to work in a multi-vendor environment.

Let’s take an example from one of the biggest and most common multi-seller online shop, Amazon. The shop is so big that people who reach it can purchase almost everything in it. If I had to spend a gift card in a shop like Amazon, I couldn’t but being happy to receive it, I will certainly find something to buy, or maybe I could find too many things to buy indeed. This is exactly what our YITH WooCommerce Gift Cards allows you to do in combination with YITH WooCommerce Multi Vendor: a customer purchase a gift card in your multi-vendor shop and gift it to a friend, who can choose anything from your shop, even products by different sellers: he or she can use the gift card to get them all in a time. You have sold products from more than one seller, but they will never know that, because the order is just one.

Everything has been made simple for you, so, you can already try this wonderful plugin and get ready for your customers’ requests especially when they realise that selling gift cards can conspicuously increase sales in their shop and ensure gifts that are really appreciated.
Try the free version or the premium version in our live demo and you’ll not be able to do without it.