online or make your products available for local delivery or pickup, customers can redeem gift cards at checkout. Let’s take a look at how to create gift cards for your business, why you might want to, and what to do once you’ve launched gift cards for sale.
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1 Why You Should Create Gift Cards for Your Online Business
1.1 Shopify app
1.2 Third-party applications
2 Managing Gift Card Sales in Shopify
3 Sell gift cards further
3.1 Create a custom image for your gift cards
3.2 Gift Card Discount
3.3 Sell a gift card on another site
4 Digital Gift Card FAQs
4.1 Related publications:
Why You Should Create Gift Cards for Your Online Business
Gift cards offer many benefits for both merchants and customers, including:
Increased Cash Flow: You don’t have to have a product to generate cash flow from selling digital gift cards. It can be a way to increase revenue during tough times. Plus, up to 30% of gift cards go unused.
New Customers : Your existing customers serve as brand ambassadors. You can encourage them to purchase gift cards for their friends and family - a whole new pool of potential customers .
Promotions and Offers: Gift cards are a flexible tool for special sales, campaigns, and other offers you may want to offer. For example, outdoor retailer REI often incentivizes cart value increases with a gift card with purchase.
Ease of fulfillment and redemption: Since the cards are digital, they do not require any shipping or warehousing fees and are fulfilled immediately. This is especially important considering that more than 20% of cards are purchased on the same day they are issued. Additionally, customers do not have to worry about the safety of the physical card.
Improve Sales and Customer Relationships: Loyal customers want gift cards as rewards. Up to 60% of consumers say they prefer digital gift cards to discounts, coupons, bonus dollars, or other offers.
Note: Before you create a store, you will need a logo for your business and some photos that represent your brand. If you don’t have any, you can use free stock photos from Burst. There are two ways to create digital gift cards for your Shopify store:
Via the native Shopify app
Via Shopify's third-party gift card app
Shopify App
Selling digital gift cards is available on all Shopify plans. Log in to your admin and go to Products > Gift Cards > Add Gift Card Product . This will enable the gift card features and allow you to create your first gift card in draft mode.
To create and publish a gift card, making it available for purchase , go to Gift Card Products . Click Add Gift Card Product . You can only add a gift card product once.
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You will then need to enter your gift card information, including:
Title : The title of the gift card - for example, "holiday gift card" or "birthday gift card."
Description : The description of the product as it will appear in your store.
Media : Image of your gift card product
Denominations : Use the options to add or edit denominations
Search Engine Listing Preview : How Your Gift Card Can Appear in Search Engine Results
Sales Channels and Apps : Availability Settings and Publication Date
Organization : Optionalproduct type and supplier information - add this to existing manual collections and add tags
Once you have entered all the data , click the Save button .
To make a gift card public and available for sale on one or more sales channels, click View gift card products and select the gift card you want to publish. Under Sales Channels, make the gift card product available to the sales channel(s) you selected, then click Save . This will allow people to purchase the gift card through the selected channel(s). To add additional denominations, you can create gift card variations. Here, you can change the name, price, and image as needed.
Third party applications
If you need additional features and functionality, you can also install a paid third-party app from the Shopify App Store. Some of the best apps include:
Gift Cards & Loyalty Program : Create and sell digital and physical gift cards. Additional features include the ability to schedule gift card delivery and bulk gift card sales.
GiftKart: Gift Cards & Rewards : Allows customers to schedule gift cards via email, as well as personalize the messages and designs . Customers can optionally add video messages to gift cards.
ShopKeeper Gift Cards : This app lets you customize designs, send personalized messages , and schedule delivery. However, it doesn't offer any additional features.
Gift Card Factory : Gift Card Factory offers unique features including balance reminders, the ability to bulk upload gift card data via CSV file , and incentivize purchases with free gift cards.
Gift Card Pro : Customers can personalize gift cards with handwritten or video messages. They can also schedule delivery via email or SMS, and customize the gift card design.
Govalo : Govalo is a fully integrated gift card and store credit platform . Customers can schedule deliveries and add messages. You can also promote gift card sales when items are out of stock.
Managing Gift Card Sales in Shopify
Gift cards are sold as a product, but gift card sales are reported differently. You can use the Gift Card Sales report to track gift card sales. Gift card orders appear under Orders > All Orders . Since your store is set up to accept payments automatically , you don't need to do anything here when new orders come in.
