What are Gift Vouchers and how can I create them?

FAQ applies to:

ezimerchant Professional version 4

Gift Vouchers are a particularly useful marketing tool which can be used in a number of different ways. You may want to include a small gift voucher in any sizeable order as a thank you. The receipt of the gift voucher will be a positive experience for the customer and they are likely to come back and spend it on an order significantly bigger than the value of the voucher. Another example is where you include a small gift voucher with marketing materials which prospects can redeem when making a purchase on your site. Although it does have a cost, it is possibly cheaper than alternative methods of customer acquisition.

Creating a Gift Voucher

From the main screen in ezimerchant click the Gift Voucher link...

Click the Synchronise button (and enter your GTS server username and password)...

ezimerchant will now display the Gift Voucher Screen. To add a new Gift Voucher click the Add button...

ezimerchant will automatically generate a Voucher Code. Add some notes (to remind you who the voucher is for) and set an Expiry Date and a Voucher Amount then click Ok.

You should now see a new entry in the Gift Voucher screen...

Before the Gift Voucher will be usable you need to Update the GTS. Click the Update GTS button...

After you update the GTS, ezimerchant will display the new Gift Voucher code...

You can now right click it and copy the Gift Voucher code to the clipboard...

From there you could paste it into a publishing program for the purposes of creating a printable certificate which you could then post to your customer.

When the customer attempts to purchase from your site, they will see the following in the checkout pages...

If they enter the correct code, the checkout will apply the Gift Voucher to the order...

After the customer has completed the order and you download it in ezimerchant, you will see the Gift Voucher information...

If you now go back to the Gift Voucher section of ezimerchant you will notice that the Gift Voucher you created has been removed from the Gift Voucher list. This is due to the Gift Voucher having been used...

You can see all the used Gift Vouchers by clicking on Used...

Used Gift Vouchers have a $0.00 remaining value. ezimerchant will also show you the Gift Voucher history...

This becomes useful if the customer uses the Gift Voucher to make an order that is less than the value of the Gift Voucher.. If this happens, the voucher will have a 'remaining' amount and the customer can use it on their next order.