Gift Certificate offer affecting cart screen

soopermark · Post by **soopermark** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 9:31 am

Hi,

I noticed that sites using Shopsite's gift certificate feature have the "Gift Certificate" info on the cart screen, not at final checkout.

Is there a way to offer gift certificates but allow customers to redeem them at final checkout only, with no mention of Gift Certificates at the cart?

I think it is a bit of a turnoff for customers who do not have gift certs, to be confronted with "Enter your gift cert" comments before you even get to checkout. A more elegant way is to allow all customers (whether they have a gc or not) to proceed to checkout without any mention of gc. Then let the gc people enter it at checkout. Please let me know if this is possible, thanks!

Post by **Jim** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 11:43 am

This is not possible. All calculations for the order are done on the shopping cart screen. So the shopper knows exactly how much the order is going to cost before they give any personal information (other that zip code).

You can configure the text on the shopping cart screen to make the gift certificate less obvious if you want.

soopermark · Post by **soopermark** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 11:57 am

Hi Jim,

Thanks for your message. Perhaps a dumb question but is it possible to allow for gift certificates (I understand the rationale for requiring that on the cart page, not the checkout page) and also not require zip code to be entered on the cart page? We use base-plus and do not require a zip code on the cart screen to calculate rates. I have noticed other sites offering gift certs w/Shopsite, and all of them also (perhaps coincidentally) force customers to enter their zip code on the cart page. Thanks for letting me know!

robm · Post by **robm** » Sat Jul 07, 2007 1:31 pm

There are a few things that will make the zip code appear on the cart page:

- Enabling Sales Tax computed by zip code
- Using any realtime shipping option such as UPS or FedEx
- Using a custom shipping add-on script
- Enabling free shipping in ShopSite

If any of the above features are enabled, then the zip code box will appear on the cart screen. Enabling gift certificates will not force a zip code box on its own.