Hi Andrew it’s good to have you back. I figured you were busy so didn’t want to drop a whole bunch of stuff on you in one shot.
Thanks for fixing the loop with the points/redeem ratio fields.
Have you had a chance to give the two issues I raised in that post a thought?
http://www.zen-cart.com/forum/showthread.php?p=563445#post563445
the option for opt-in for the points program, if a store owner wants to enable it, and the point summary on the separate page in the my accounts. Any chance of this?
**Here is one more issue/question **
Would it be possible to program it so that transaction amount that was paid with the points doesn’t bring you any points? You only receive points on the part of the transaction (if there is any) that was actually paid for.
In a general situation (1$=1point - 1 point = .05$) it won’t bankrupt the store, but it’s just more what consumers are used to. It will bring you to about 0.52$ per point value when you include the points received by paying with points.
However if you plan on running any type of promotion it will end up costing.
Typical promotion would be example: Shop with us on June 29 and receive triple points on your purchase.
Such a promotion is geared to increase “real” sales. Giving the customer an incentive to shop on that day for a bonus.
Now you have a customer who collected 1000 points and they are worth 50$. He makes a 50$ purchase pays with points and collects 150 points (the value would be 7.5$ at your normal conversion of .05$ per point). Significantly increasing the conversion rate of his original points, without bringing any additional revenue to the store.
I collect/use points all the time. Granted mine are mostly all converted into one of 3 airline point programs, but it doesn’t matter. When I travel using the points then I don’t receive any on that trip.
Wish list
I like the groups, but at the moment if I want to create a tiered use of it it’s not really possible to implement.
So here is some thought for some additional options
Let say you want to create 3 classes of points /customers based on over the year total purchases.
So you create Premier $0 to $999, Elite $1,000 to $2,999 Platinum $3,000 and over (you can set up as many tiers as you think your business needs I figure 3 -4 is usually the max, more than that is confusing)
The figures are determined/set up by the store owner.
The idea here is that when a customer fulfills that requirement he/she jumps to the next tier, automatically. (a message to the admin would be nice so that the admin can use the opportunity to contact the customer and advise of the change of status, encouraging additional purchases)
Now ideally the difference between tiers would be in the amount of points collected. Premier would collect 1 point for 1$ (global setting) Elite 1.5 for 1$ (global x 1.5) and Platinum 2points for 1$ (global x2) (again determined by the admin) So the more you spend the more you get back.
Now in the groups as it is now it’s the redeem ratio that changes, so if you use increased redeem ratios to reward that would mean that if you earned the first 1000 points as a Premier client if you jump Tiers then those points already earned are worth more. Which is not bad in some situations, but not quite the idea here. i.e. a customer could earn 1000 points in a year.. jump tiers and now redeem them all at the higher redeem ratio without making additional purchases.
What you want in this situation is to have the redeem ratio stay the same. Just the opportunity for the customer to earn more points per $ spent. (and encourage him/her to reach the next level)
Now there are reasons to have both the earning per point tiers groups and the redeem ratio group. They can be combined for special members. They would get bumped up in tiers depending on spending but their points would always be worth more (on in some cases that I cant think of right now less) because if their special status.
The tier group setting could be set up like I put above on a multiplication of global. So tier one is global, tier 2 is global X 1.5 or what ever you want it to be for that tier increase. Not sure how complicated it is to build in the calculation of total purchases by customer for the previous year or 2 year period, so the customer can jump tiers automatically.
As i said wish list, but i think it would be a great addition and a nice incentive to customers. Any thoughts or questions? i'd like to hear what you think and if it's possible.
thanks
nev
