Gift cards
In nopCommerce, you have an opportunity to sell gift cards among other types of products.
Gift cards is a good marketing tool, enabling you to reach more customers and stimulate additional purchases. Gift cards is a highly targeted instrument as the receivers are certainly motivated to use them, because it is like a personal proposal to them.
Add a new gift card
You can create gift card products, defining a product as a gift card by ticking the Is gift card checkbox when creating the product in the Catalog → Products → Add new → Gift card panel.
In this panel you also need to specify the Gift card type: Virtual or Physical.
Warning
It is not recommended to change the gift card type from one to another in a "live" store.
Activating a gift card
After customers complete purchases with the gift card products, you can then search and view the list of all the purchased gift cards in Sales → Gift cards.
To see the gift card details click the Edit button deside it. The Edit gift card details window will be displayed:
You should tick the Is gift card activated checkbox to activate the gift card. Then generate the Coupon code.
Note
In order to active a gift card automatically after completing an order go to the Configuration → Settings → Order settings page. Find the Gift cards panel and tick the Activate gift cards after completing of an order checkbox. In this case the Coupon code will be generated automatically as well. Note that there are other settings related to gift card activation on this page.
You can also define the following gift card information:
- From the Gift card type select whether it's Virtual or Physical.
- Beside Order field, click View to view the order in which the gift card was purchased.
- In the Initial value field, edit the initial value of the card if needed.
- If required, edit the Recipients name, Recipient's email (if the gift card type is Virtual), Sender's name and Sender's email (if the gift card type is Virtual) in the relevant fields.
- Enter an optional message in the Message area.
- Click Notify recipient. An email containing the gift card details will be sent to the recipient's email. This button is relevant only for virtual gift cards card and not physical gift cards.
Usage history
In the Usage history panel you can see the list of orders this gift card coupon was used for. After the gift card is activated and the sender received a coupon code, he can use it during checkout.
Using gift cards
A gift card is used in the public store by entering the serial number in the box on the shopping cart page.
Note
You can disable the gift card box on the shopping cart page by unticking the Show gift card box checkbox on the Configuration → Settings → Shopping cart settings page (Common panel).
You can also allow your customers to check the gift card balane. To do this tick the Allow customers to check gift card balance checkbox on the Configuration → Settings → Shopping cart settings page (Common panel).
Note
This feature requires CAPTCHA to be enabled because it is potentially not safe and CAPTCHA is needed to prevent and complicate bruteforce. To activate CAPTCHA go to Configuration → Settings → General settings page and tick the CAPTCHA enabled checkbox in the CAPTCHA panel. To learn how to set up CAPTCHA refer to the Security settings - CAPTCHA section.