Gift cards are becoming increasingly popular options as gifts for friends, family, and colleagues. The National Retail Federation reported a survey showing that 60% of shoppers prefer a gift card above anything else as a gift.
As an e-commerce business, it is essential to keep track of online shoppers’ desires and needs. You might have heard of e-commerce gift cards being implemented in many businesses.
Let’s take a look at what gift cards you can use and the benefits of using gift cards for your e-commerce business.
Gift Cards Ecommerce Can Use
There are three main types of gift cards that you can sell to your customers. You will need to decide which kind of gift card will be best suited to your business.
Electronic gift cards are the easiest type of gift card to implement into your business. The digital “eGift” cards can be purchased online by customers and can be sent as a gift to use on your store or your website. Electronic gift codes usually have a numerical code that you can use to redeem at the checkout terminal.
You can use barcode gift cards to implement physical gift cards for your e-commerce business. You can use a unique barcode for each customer’s account. The customer’s information can be stored on the account, and they can have the option of adding more points to their gift card balance once it is at zero. Barcodes can be scanned through a barcode scanner, which your business will need to have. They can also be scanned through smartphones and tablets. QR barcodes require 2D scanning, which is available on smartphones and other smart devices.
Magnetic-Stripe gift cards are another option if you want physical gift cards for your business. The cards act the same as debit and credit cards. They are swiped through the debit and credit card terminals, and the amount is deducted from the customer’s account. Customers are allowed to reload their gift cards once they are depleted. Just like any other card, the magnetic stripe of these gift cards can be damaged through wear and tear if they are not carefully taken care of.
Benefits Of The Different Type Of Gift Cards
To help you decide what type of gift card to use, we’ve listed the benefits of using the different gift cards.
Electronic gift cards are easy to implement into your business. No extra software is needed to use or scan electronic gift cards. The purchasing process for customers is also more straightforward. The unique barcode of the eGift card protects it from fraud. Electronic gift cards are convenient and secure. There are no production costs for eGift cards.
Barcode gift cards take the least amount of time to scan. Not much data security is required for barcode gift cards, and they are secure. The gift cards can be reused and reloaded.
Magnetic-Stripe gift cards are the most secure out of all the other gift cards. You can be assured of the security, confidentiality, and integrity of your data. Most brick-and-mortar stores can easily and securely accept magnetic-stripe gift cards.
The Effects Of Gift Cards On Ecommerce
There are pros and cons to using gift cards for your e-commerce business. You will need to consider these advantages and disadvantages and decide if the good outweighs the bad for your business.
Pros
Gift cards are appealing to customers. They are an easy gift idea for online shoppers to purchase. For this reason, using gift cards on your store or website could increase your sales and profits.
When gift cards are given as gifts by customers, this helps increase brand awareness for your business. The person receiving the gift card might not have known that your brand existed. The gift card will inevitably give you another customer. Once they view and use your products, they are likely to buy from you again.
Your business will receive funds before an item is purchased from the store or website. This could allow you to use the money elsewhere where it is needed.
If an item the customer wants to purchase has a higher price than the amount on the gift card, they will pay the difference. This can boost sales.
Returns could also decrease. The customer will be sure of the item they want to purchase, more so because they are using a gift card.
Cons
Due to gift cards not being a “normal” purchase, administration and bookkeeping can become complicated if gift cards are used often for purchases. This increases the chances of there being errors.
Implementing gift cards into your business can be costly. Some gift cards will require production costs to have them available for your business. Shopping cart platform providers could also charge you an additional fee for using gift cards.
If there any glitches or errors occur in the system, this could result in many customer problems. Customers may have trouble using their gift cards.
The exchange and returns process could become problematic with customers who used gift cards for their purchases.
The chances of fraud could increase if you do not have a secure gift card system. That’s because people could use fraudulent gift card barcodes or codes.
Odoo Gift Cards
Odoo is an enterprise resource planning software (ERP) software that allows your e-commerce business to sell gift cards on your website or online store.
You can sell multiple gift cards in various denominations, for example, $20, $50, or $100. Once a customer purchases a gift card from you, Odoo creates a unique code sent to the customer via email to use. If a customer purchases multiple products, each one will have a unique code that will be sent to them.
It’s simple to create a gift card. All you need to do is to go to your configuration settings on your website and select the type of gift card you would like. You can choose either an “E-Gift Card Message” or a “Physical Gift Card Message.” The other steps, as well as other Odoo modules pertaining to gift cards, can be found on their website, or otherwise on this link.
We hope you found this guide to using gift cards for e-commerce businesses. And, if you need further assistance learning how you can implement gift cards for YOUR business, call us at +1 (416) 628-5522, or email us at [email protected].