Question about gift certificates

[apotterdd]

Are they like coupons that you send to your customers or is there a way that they can be purchased as a gift for someone, they register and buy something and then can apply their gift certificate to their order?

Thanks.

[fairestcape]

To make Gift Certificate "active" you first need to make sure the payment module for them is installed:-

ADMIN>>>MODULES>>>ORDER TOTAL>>>Gift Certificates (ot_gv).

Then, when it's installed and active, you need to set up Gift Certficates as PRODUCTS. It's best to create a Category called "Gift Certificates", and house them all in there.

These are set up like any "normal" product, but for ZC to "recognise" that they are Gift Certificates, the Product Code (Model) has to be prefixed with "GIFT_"...

... so, a $10 Gift Certificate will have the "Model Number" set to "GIFT_10", for example.

GO TO: http://www.zen-cart.com/wiki/index.p...t_Certificates for full instructions.

[apotterdd]

Nice! When I get more product up I will definitely do that.

Thanks.

[mshultise]

Are they like coupons that you send to your customers or is there a way that they can be purchased as a gift for someone, they register and buy something and then can apply their gift certificate to their order?

Thanks.

As noted by another, GIFT CERTIFICATES are purchased items (or given out by you like a rebate or to repay for a returned item) and carry a value which can be applied to orders. They are similar to gift cards from a store.

There are also things called COUPONS (they should already be enabled in your store) which may be advertised or hidden from general users. They can offer a % off any or specific products, a specific dollar amount [like $2.00 off], or can offer free shipping.

I use coupons as a way of tracking which ad people found me with. Thus if you advertise in 2 magazines like Time and People, you could call one ad TIME and the other PEOPLE. They both might offer 10% off, but it lets you see where your business came from. Note that I would rather use more cryptic codes than this. People sometimes type in common names like AARP out of the blue to see if there is a discount for AARP members (of which they may not qualify). If they can find a discount that works, they use them). A common code people look for is FREESHIPPING or versions of that :-)

There are stores who offer many different codes and don't care if others use them if found. For example, you may offer 10% off to people you used to work with (in a large company). Those people may give the codes to relatives who give them to friends. Although the final user of the code may not be in your target audience, still, the offer of a discount got passed along and you may have received business that you would normally have gotten.

Just some thoughts.