Sell Gift Certificates online in your Virtuemart Store
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
You will need to set up a Coupon Template, which will be associated with your Gift Certificate.
- On the dashboard choose “Coupons”
- In the right-hand corner click “New”
- For Function type choose Gift certificate from the drop down menu
- For Coupon Code choose a meaningful name for the template, i.e. gift card 10 template
- For Published choose Template from the drop down menu
- For Value I choose 10 as I am setting up a template for the gift card worth $10
- In the Optional Fields section you can set an expiration date. Please refer to the table in Step 3 for more details on how to manage the expiration time.
- You can also choose to tick Exclude Gift Certificate Products that is if you do not want customers to use their gift certificate to buy a gift certificate.
- You can also enter an admin note for yourself.
- Once you made your selections click “Save” in the right hand corner
- Your template will show in the Coupon list for easy reference and editing
Step 3
Now 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”
- In the right-hand corner click “New”. You will get to this screen:
- For Product start typing your Gift Card name and the matching products will display
- For Template choose the template you set up in the Step 2 above
- For Profile choose any of the pre-loaded ones. The profile is the actual image of your Gift Card with the texts such as the value, expiration date (if any)... If you would like to create one on your own rather than using one of the preloaded ones, look under the section “Settings to play with” – Customizing the email
- 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”. The expiration time set here on the Gift certificate will always take priority, unless it is left blank and the expiration time in the template (Step 2) is set. If expiration fields are left blank, and the expiration date in the template (Step 2) was left blank, then there is no expiration on the gift certificates. Quick table to summarize:
Template expiration date Gift certificate expiration date Which one is used? Filled in Filled in Gift certificate Blank Filled in Gift certificate Filled in Blank Template Blank Blank No expiration - 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 & 3 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 4
Watch the sales roll in.
Settings to play with
Uploading your own codes
As mentioned in the Step 3, 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 3 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 the Profiles link.
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
- Using dynamic tags within the email and/or the 3 text fields
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 fields – 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 fields to the product, 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:
- Follow the instructions to create a Product custom field customer text input here
- In AwoCoupon Configuration, gift certificate products tab, enter the custom field ids. This is the id of the custom field created. When viewing the custom fields in the Virtuemart backend, it is the first column. If still having problems look directly in the database at table #__virtuemart_customs column virtuemart_custom_id
- Save it and you are done
- You need the business edition of HikaShop for this functionality
- Go to Display -> Custom Fields and click New to create the 3 custom fields needed.
- For the table, select 'Item'
- Keep track of the column name you create for each field, and make sure they are unique
- In AwoCoupon Configuration, gift certificate products tab, enter the data. For each field, enter the column name of the custom field that corresponds to the custom attribute field in AwoCoupon.
- Save it and you are done
- Make sure the gift certificate product displays the custom fields in the front end
- In Eshop Admin Go to Catalog -> Options and click New to create the 3 options needed.
- On the options list, keep track of the ID column you create for each field
- In AwoCoupon -> Configuration -> gift certificate products tab, enter the data. For each field, enter the ID's of the option that corresponds to the custom attribute field in AwoCoupon.
- Save it and you are done
- In Eshop admin, find the gift certificate product and edit it
- Go to the options tab. Add the 3 option fields and save.
- Make sure the gift certificate product displays the custom fields in the front end
The email field is treated as required. If the recipient name and message is entered but the email is not valid, none of the data is used.
If only the email field is filled out, the gift certificate is emailed to the recipient email.
If something goes wrong when sending the email to the recipient, then it is automatically re-routed to the customer.
Step 2
You will need to set up a Coupon Template, which will be associated with your Gift Certificate.
- On the dashboard choose “Coupons”
- In the right-hand corner click “New”
- For Function type choose Gift certificate from the drop down menu
- For Coupon Code choose a meaningful name for the template, i.e. gift card 10 template
- For Published choose Template from the drop down menu
- For Value I choose 10 as I am setting up a template for the gift card worth $10
- In the Optional Fields section you can set an expiration date. Please refer to the table in Step 3 for more details on how to manage the expiration time.
- You can also choose to tick Exclude Gift Certificate Products that is if you do not want customers to use their gift certificate to buy a gift certificate.
- You can also enter an admin note for yourself.
- Once you made your selections click “Save” in the right hand corner
- Your template will show in the Coupon list for easy reference and editing
Step 3
Now 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”
- In the right-hand corner click “New”. You will get to this screen:
- For Product start typing your Gift Card name and the matching products will display
- For Template choose the template you set up in the Step 2 above
- For Profile choose any of the pre-loaded ones. The profile is the actual image of your Gift Card with the texts such as the value, expiration date (if any)... If you would like to create one on your own rather than using one of the preloaded ones, look under the section “Settings to play with” – Customizing the email
- 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”. The expiration time set here on the Gift certificate will always take priority, unless it is left blank and the expiration time in the template (Step 2) is set. If expiration fields are left blank, and the expiration date in the template (Step 2) was left blank, then there is no expiration on the gift certificates. Quick table to summarize:
Template expiration date Gift certificate expiration date Which one is used? Filled in Filled in Gift certificate Blank Filled in Gift certificate Filled in Blank Template Blank Blank No expiration - For Vendor name/email, can be left blank, unless you want the gift certificate purchased to be emailed to a vendor at the same time as is being emailed to the customer. This is very usefull if you are selling gift certificates of a third party and want to alert them of the gift certificate code that has been purchased in real time.
- Please see "Product’s custom fields – recipient details" below for how to fill it out
- 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 & 3 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 Certificates” list. You can easily edit them here.
Step 4
Watch the sales roll in.
Settings to play with
Uploading your own codes
As mentioned in the Step 3, 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’
- Choose product (as set up in the step 3 above), select the csv file to upload, attach, and click the upload button
- 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 the Profiles link.
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
- Using dynamic tags within the email and/or the 3 text fields
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 fields – 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 fields to the product, you can enable fields to collect gift card recipient details, allowing customers to enter the recipient’s name, email and a personal message. You will need the id's of the custom field to add to the gift certificate when creating it. Here is how to create and retrieve the ids:
- Go to the product edit screen and go to the 'Customization' tab
- Select the number of fields you need (3) and update settings
- Then for each field, enter the title, for example, Email, Name, Message and save
- There is no easy way to retrieve the id's of the custom fields. There are 2 ways I know of
-
Right click each field in Google Chrome and 'inspect element', it should show you the true id of the custom field. An example of what you would see is
<input type="text" name="label_1_14_1" value="Recipient's Name" style="float: left">
In this case, the Recipient's Name custom field has an id of 14 -
look directly in the database
table: ps_customization_field_lang
column: id_customization_field
-
Right click each field in Google Chrome and 'inspect element', it should show you the true id of the custom field. An example of what you would see is
- Once you have the ids, you can go to awocoupon -> gift certificates and add/edit an entry to add the ides on the the Perosnal Message section
The email field is treated as required. If the recipient name and message is entered but the email is not valid, none of the data is used.
If only the email field is filled out, the gift certificate is emailed to the recipient email.
If something goes wrong when sending the email to the recipient, then it is automatically re-routed to the customer.
Step 2
Now 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 or Prestashop 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.
Comments (49)
The customer is sent one email per order and this email lists all the gift cards bought in the order.
Thanks, Allenka
How can my vendors KNOW if the coupon has been used before and is authentic? Can they have access to a validation and redemption page? Even if its bare and simple?
And how can i determine which vendor, preferably by email address has redeemed the voucher for payment?
https://awodev.com/products/joomla/awotracker
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!
Yes, you can manually updated the value used of a gift certificate in the backend.
Seyi
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!
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?
https://awodev.com/forum/awocoupon-virtuemart/help-section/not-receiving-email-coupon#comment-1575
If still having problems, please post in the forum
Thanks. This is a very, very good app.
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?
- {user_first_name}
- {user_last_name}
Since you cannot have a receiver, there is no receiver name.
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
Please post further questions in the forum.
Please email mike@pollenranch.com with the reply as that is the person to be setting this up.
Thank you!
David
coupona; couponb; couponc
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
What was the solution? I have not figured it out yet.
Let me know!
Emilio
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
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.
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 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!
So, they order and pay for a $100, and receive a $25 gift certificate.
Obviously, that's not going over too well ;-)
How to fix?
How did you setup the dropdown for the children products? What version of Virtuemart are you using? What version of AwoCoupon are you using? Did you create and attach a coupon template to each of the children products?
AwoCoupon Pro 2.2.3 (just noticed the updated, and updated to 2.2.5, but don't know yet if that will help)
Originally had set up the child products with "additional charges" in the custom fields, but after the problem was brought to my attention, I removed the "additional" charges from the custom fields and added a cost price to each individual child product.
I then did a test order, but the problem persisted.
Yes, I did create and attache a coupon template to each child product.
Everything looks totally fine in the cart and on the invoice, however only a $25 code is generated and sent to the client no matter which value is chosen.
You can see the page at: http://www.sweetskins.com/gift-certificates.html
If you are using stockable variants as a means of putting the items into a dropdown, then that issue was fixed in version 2.2.4.
Thank you!
https://awodev.com/forum/awocoupon-virtuemart/help-section/shipping-option-required
https://awodev.com/forum/awocoupon-virtuemart/help-section/gift-cart-not-sent-after-payment-system-sets-orders-status-c#comment-2680
If you have any more support questions, please post them within the forum.
Thanks.
And the customers how can buy the gift cards? Where is the sellable gift card (in fronted)? I did not find this description.
Thank u for ur answer, and sry for my english.
If all 5000+ of your products are gift certificates that you are selling, then you would need to create a gift certificate product in AwoCoupon for all 5000+. But you do not need to create separate profiles. You can use the same profile for all. When using a gift certificate as a coupon code, it is by default valid for all products.
The gift certificates are just products of your estore. So you would first create a product in your estore, then in AwoCoupon set it up as a gift certificate. For the customer to access it, they would simply have to access the product you setup in your estore.
Hope it is clear.
Currently this can be done by uploading the file to your site, probably through ftp, to the location
www/administrator/components/com_awocoupon/assets/giftcert/images
It will accept both jpg and png files.
Here is a link to what the directory looks like. Where am I going wrong?
Thanks
www.novelocket.com/components/com_awocoupon/ftpimage/awocoupon-ftpimage.png
public_html/ADMINISTRATOR/components/com_awocoupon/assets/giftcert/images
I'd like to buy the AwoCoupon Pro and I have a question. Is it possible that a customer use a gitf certificate multiple times? I mean, let's say that a customer does receive a 100 € gift certificate and he wanna spend 40 € today for a product and the remain 60 € in two weeks for another product. Is it possible?
thanks!
Yes, this is one of the functions of a gift certificate:
https://awodev.com/documentation/frequently-asked-questions#giftcert-storevalue
Cheers!
for to auto-generated code and for auto-send email to customers i need of the plugin ?? (https://awodev.com/products/joomla/awocoupon-email) i have awacoupon pro.
Because i add a new product, i buy it, but i don't receive any code and in the gift certificated list i don't see any code.
Any help? Thank you
For gift certificate automatic emails, no, you do not need that product, just AwoCoupon pro.
Please check to make sure it is not one of these problem:
https://awodev.com/documentation/frequently-asked-questions#giftcert-autoproblem
If not, please post on the forums and I will be glad to help you there.
I would know if it is possible with awo coupon pro to do this:
userA buy a product at 100$, and receive a 5$ coupon via e-mail.
userA gives this coupon to userB, userC and userD.
all of them sign in and buy a new product using the coupon userA gave them.
userA receive 5$ + 5$ + 5$ on his 'wallet', that he can use to buy something new.
Is that possible?
thankyou for help
Davide
Sounds like you want to do a referral through coupons? We have such a product,
AwoAffiliate + AwoCoupon.
With AwoAffiliate, you can assign a coupon to a user, and when another customer uses this coupon, the affiliate earns a commission. Here are the applicable products:
https://awodev.com/products/joomla/awoaffiliate
https://awodev.com/products/joomla/awocoupon