Sell Gift Certificates online in your Virtuemart Store

allenka — Wed, 10/13/2010 - 21:22

The ability so sought after is finally here!

Many entrepreneurs using Virtuemart component for their Joomla based e-store wonder how to sell gift certificates on the front end, while keeping it nice and tidy in the back end. Well, AwoCoupon Pro provides quite a simple solution to selling gift certificates online.

It’s as easy as 1, 2, 3. Really! All you need is AwoCoupon Pro (minimum version 1.2.0) which you can buy here.

Here it is in a nut shell:

Step 1

As you are planning on selling a new product, you need to go to Virtuemart, and create your new product(s).

Example: add a new product called “Gift Card 10” worth $10, and another called “Gift Card 30” worth $30.

Step 2

Now you need to set this new product up in AwoCoupon Pro. This is so that AwoCoupon Pro knows, that this particular product is a gift certificate, and when it is bought, AwoCoupon Pro auto-generates a gift certificate code, which is inserted into an e-mail that is auto-sent to customer. Note that you can also upload your own codes if you wish rather than using the randomly generated codes. More on this in “Settings to play with” section at the bottom.

To create a gift certificate product, go to your AwoCoupon Pro component.

On the dashboard choose “Gift Certificate Products”
In the right-hand corner click “New”. You will get to this screen:
Fill out the information. For expiration, if you choose, say, 10 days it means that each of the gift certificates purchased will be valid for 10 days only. If the customer does not use it, s/he will loose “the money”. If expiration fields are left blank, there is no expiration on the gift certificates.
Once you have populated the fields, click “Save” and you are done.

You would need to do this for every product you are going to sell as a gift certificate. In our example, we would repeat step 2 for our second gift certificate product we want to sell which is “Gift Card 30” worth $30.

Good news is that you need to do this set up only once per your gift card/certificate product.

Every gift certificate product you set up in AwoCoupon Pro shows neatly in “Gift Certificate Products”. You can easily edit them here.

Step 3

Watch the sales roll in.

Settings to play with

Uploading your own codes

As mentioned in the Step 2, once a customer buys the gift card product in your e-store, AwoCoupon auto-generates a unique random gift certificate code which is inserted into an auto-generated email. However you also have the option to import your own codes using a csv file. To do this:

From the Dashboard, go to "Gift certificates" => "Codes"
Click ‘New’ in the upper right hand corner
Choose product (as set up in the step 2 above), select the csv file to upload, attach, and click the upload button in the upper right hand corner
Once the codes are uploaded they are all visible in the ‘Codes’ section

Note, once all the codes in your gift certificate product have been marked as used, AwoCoupon will switch to auto-generating random codes.

Customizing the email

Now, you would be pleased to hear that the email can be largely customized. To do this, go to Gift Certificates -> Gift Certificate Profiles tab.

Here you can set up your own profiles either as plain text or html email with an image format. The default profile is the one that gets emailed out to customers. Things within your power:

uploading your own images (or use one of those already loaded in AwoCoupon Pro)
uploading your own font styles
creating up to 3 text fields and placing them precisely on the gift card image
positioning of gift certificate code, value, expiration date (can be hidden too)
customizing email text, from name, from email, email subject, and whether to Bcc admin

Within this screen you can also set up the minimum and maximum length of the auto-generated code on the gift certificate/card. Default values are 8-12 characters. And this is an example of a final product gift certificate/card if you choose the html format with image:

Hope you enjoy this feature, as I think it is great to be able to create multiple profiles and then just set the default to the one which corresponds with current promotion or shopping season.

Product’s custom attributes – recipient details

When your customer shops in your store for a gift card, by default it is emailed directly to them. However, it is pretty safe to assume that when somebody buys a gift card it is a gift for somebody else. So by adding custom attributes to the product in Virtuemart, you can enable fields to collect gift card recipient details, allowing customers to enter the recipient’s name, email and a personal message.

To do this:

edit the product within Virtuemart
go to the Product Status tab
in the Custom Attribute field at the bottom add the field names. For example: Recipient Name;Recipient Email;Message. Don’t forget to separate them with semicolon (;).
Save it and you are done

If something goes wrong when sending the email to the recipient, then it is automatically re-routed to the customer. You can also setup the custom field names, entered in Virtuemart, in AwoCoupon configuration.

Good to know for admins

Dashboard => “Coupons”

Once a customer buys a gift certificate and his/hers code is generated and emailed out, it is automatically added into your coupon list. Here you can see all the codes and you can easily filter and/or sort them according to your needs.

Dashboard => “History of Uses”

My personal favourite. Here you have an extra little sub tab for gift certificates which does wonders. It displays a list of all the gift certificates bought, but what more it shows how much of the value of the particular gift certificate was already used and what the remaining balance is. Great for when you get that one email from a frantic customer who wants to know how much he has left on his gift card...

Dashboard => “Reports”

You can download the History of Uses report here, as well as Coupon Usage vs. Total Sales report and other. The latter one shows you all the sales and coupon usage, both regular coupons and gift certificates, and is generally a great way to analyse which coupon promotions “worked”.

So here it is - your guide to selling gift certificates online in your Joomla based e-shop. All you need to create sellable gift certificates is to get your latest version of AwoCoupon Pro and off you go.

Let us know if you need some help. We will be happy to assist you with getting those gift cards selling online.

allenka's blog

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The customers are not

Sanjay Beri (not verified) — Fri, 03/02/2012 - 19:18

The customers are not receiving any emails from the system. I've gone through and checked and double checked all the settings and nothing seems to be working. Any ideas?

Try these

seyi — Sat, 03/03/2012 - 20:28

Try these suggestions:
http://awodev.com/forum/awocoupon-virtuemart/help-section/gift-cart-not-...

If you have any more support questions, please post them within the forum.

Thanks.

Thanks for the steps, I have

Alex (not verified) — Wed, 11/23/2011 - 06:41

Thanks for the steps, I have one question about the gift certificate product when being purchased (as the only item in the cart).. why does it show the shipping options, being that its digital and all... it really doesn't make any sense?.. or am I missing something? :) Thanks.

That is true. There are 2

seyi — Wed, 11/23/2011 - 09:43

That is true. There are 2 solutions posted in this topic to help get around that problem:
http://dev.awofadeju.com/forum/awocoupon-virtuemart/help-section/shippin...

The pro component has worked

Russellzen (not verified) — Thu, 09/29/2011 - 21:29

The pro component has worked very well for me in a previous job (and I found it easy to make significant customization).

I'm coming back to use it again for Gift Certificates. My client was wanting to let user enter the amount of the Gift Certificate.

Do you know of a good way to do this? I am considering making a $1 certificate and user determines the quantity.

Any guidance or ideas much appreciated.

Glad you are enjoying

seyi — Fri, 09/30/2011 - 01:20

Glad you are enjoying AwoCoupon.

For your problem, I have not dealt with your exact situation since most settle for second best, a dropdown of common values. If this is an option, it would require no hacks and you can simply create a product called 'gift certificate' with x number of children products which hold the value of the gift certificates and display this in a dropdown in the front end.

I opted to make another

chad62 — Wed, 10/05/2011 - 16:54

I opted to make another custom attribute and a couple of small hacks to get the manually entered price... taking the idea from http://forum.virtuemart.net/index.php?topic=67637.0

I even used custom attributes to allow the user to enter the name of the person they're sending the Gift Certificate too.

It is a pleasure to rummage around your code... cheers again!

If you're shopping around for

alyssa — Thu, 09/15/2011 - 06:38

If you're shopping around for a promotional tool this is where your search ends, period. AwoCoupon Pro is THE ultimate tool in my book (and I've tried many) that does not only offers very creative marketing/promotional tools, but it comes at a very competitively (low) price!

I must be honest, the price actually scared me away for a few weeks until I finally decided to try it out and I'm glad I did! It is easy to install and if you stumble upon anything, do a quick search through the forum - 9.9 out of 10.0 times it has been answered, and if not - it gets answered.

You cannot afford to not add AwoCoupon to your arsenal - it will be one of your best investments if you're serious about running your store - guaranteed!

Thank you Seyi for a wonderful product.

--Alley

Hi there, I purchased my copy

andreas — Sat, 07/09/2011 - 17:55

Hi there,

I purchased my copy today and have fun with it :-)

Now I have (as I believe) a silly question.

When I make a Virtuemart product to sell a Gift Certificate Product, I have no clue which settings in the VM product have to be.

When make a "normal" (physical) product I get also the cost of post and package during the payment routine.

When I create a downloadable product, I need to upload a downloadable file.

I just created a "normal" product and when I want to buy it I get the option to choose a shipping methos (standars shipping or TNT in this case).

What have I done wrong?

Thank you in advance for your help.

Best regards,

Rob van Linda

Update:

I have found the solution.

I should learn to use my eyes and brain :-)

Rob

Hey there, What was the

emilio — Sat, 09/17/2011 - 23:27

Hey there,

What was the solution? I have not figured it out yet.

Let me know!

Emilio

http://dev.awofadeju.com/foru

seyi — Sun, 09/18/2011 - 00:02

http://dev.awofadeju.com/forum/awocoupon-virtuemart/help-section/shippin...

We have a client who

david6 — Tue, 05/31/2011 - 17:45

We have a client who purchased 2 gift certificates adding up to $50.00 and they want to change those into a single $50.00 gift certificate to use in one purchase. Is this possible?

Please email mike@pollenranch.com with the reply as that is the person to be setting this up.

Virtuemart does not allow the

seyi — Tue, 05/31/2011 - 21:57

Virtuemart does not allow the use of multiple coupons so this is not possible. What you can do to fix that customer is invalidate both codes and create a new gift certificate code for the amount of $50.

Could you give me a quotation

davidyv (not verified) — Mon, 02/06/2012 - 12:20

Could you give me a quotation for hack modify your AwoCoupon Pro Virtuemart component and virtuemart core to allow submitting multiple coupon codes at checkout?

Thank you!
David

Awocoupon pro now supports

seyi — Mon, 02/06/2012 - 13:58

Awocoupon pro now supports multiple coupons. Disabled in configuration by default so will need to be enabled. To use multiple coupons, the customer must enter all of them separated by a semi-colon. So for example:

coupona; couponb; couponc

Another question, During the

defrox (not verified) — Tue, 05/31/2011 - 09:03

Another question,

During the process, customers can select the shipping address, but being a gift certificate, where does the customer select the email address? As far as i understand, if someone buys a gift certificate wants someone else to receive it. Also a note/greeting to the receiver would be useful

Virtuemart does not allow

seyi — Tue, 05/31/2011 - 12:27

Virtuemart does not allow customer text input per product, so this is not possible. The gift certificates are emailed to the customer who purchased them.

Please post further questions in the forum.

HI there, Im trying to edit

defrox (not verified) — Tue, 05/31/2011 - 08:15

HI there,

Im trying to edit the gift certificate profile, and want to use the sender's name as well as the receiver. Where is the list of available tokens/shortcodes?

These are the variables that

seyi — Tue, 05/31/2011 - 12:29

These are the variables that can be used for the customer name:
- {user_first_name}
- {user_last_name}
Since you cannot have a receiver, there is no receiver name.

Quick question- The customers

Rob (not verified) — Mon, 05/30/2011 - 02:33

Quick question-

The customers are not receiving any emails from the system. I've gone through and checked and double checked all the settings and nothing seems to be working. Any ideas?

try this

seyi — Mon, 05/30/2011 - 15:06

try this checklist
http://dev.awofadeju.com/forum/awocoupon-virtuemart/help-section/not-rec...

If still having problems, please post in the forum

Yup, I found the issue. The

Rob (not verified) — Mon, 05/30/2011 - 16:41

Yup, I found the issue. The issue on my end was not with your product, it was with our email server. They were just not getting sent out. Once I went into the store backend, and made the changes to the email addresses, your module was pushing them out like normal.

Thanks. This is a very, very good app.

Hi, Q#1 : Can we import our

Afshin (not verified) — Fri, 05/13/2011 - 11:29

Hi,

Q#1 : Can we import our gift certificates from a text file ?

Q#2: Can we manage to send only and olny one email to client includes a gift certificate number when the order status has been changed to " Confirm" ?

I appreciate your prompt reply.

Thanks!

Yes, you can import your own

seyi — Mon, 07/11/2011 - 09:54

Yes, you can import your own gift certificate codes. Only one email is sent to the client with all the gift certificates that have been purchased.

What if I want to allow my

Raymond (not verified) — Fri, 04/08/2011 - 14:46

What if I want to allow my customers to use the coupon inside my physical store as well as online? They could print out the coupon and bring it in.

If they come into the physical store and use it can I go into the website and show that it has been used and update the value left?

I would like to have the option to do both.

Thanks!

Hello, Yes, you can manually

seyi — Sat, 04/09/2011 - 10:07

Hello,

Yes, you can manually updated the value used of a gift certificate in the backend.

Seyi

Hi Allenka. I have a simple

clyde1 — Wed, 02/23/2011 - 20:53

Hi Allenka. I have a simple question: if a customer buys two or more "Gift Cards", will the system generate multiple coupon codes and send multiple emails? In other words, if the quantity box is >1, will this still work? Thnx

Hi. Indeed it will still work

allenka — Thu, 02/24/2011 - 20:26

Hi. Indeed it will still work :)
The customer is sent one email per order and this email lists all the gift cards bought in the order.
Thanks, Allenka