Gift Certificates

[Sir Yendor]

We just upgraded to Shop Sote Pro version 9 and want to learn about creating Gift Certificates. Can these be used with the shop anywhere function?

When I try to create a certificate, it seems as if I as the site administrator have to say who the gift certificate is from, who it is to, how much it's valued at and enter the receiving e-mail address. Isn't this something that can be done by the purchaser?

Thanks,

[Jim]

Yes the shopper would usually fill out that information. You can try a demo of how it looks from the shopper perspective on the demo store at : http://eval.shopsite.com/shopper/als/index.html
Click on the link Gift Certificates for future store purchases and you will see a simple screen that the shopper would see. (Note that depending on the template used the screen can look different but the functionality would be similar.)

The option for the merchant to create a gift certificate in the back office of the store allows the merchant to send replacement certificates if someone loses theirs or maybe to send one to a special customer or as a good will gesture for someone who had a problem with an order, without having to actually go through the order process.

[Sir Yendor]

Jim, thanks for the reply. When a person places an order for the gift certificate will it generate a coupon number or something that they're able to insert in the coupon code box?

Is there a way to design the look of the actual gift certificate someone get's e-mailed?

Thanks again

[Jim]

Yes, when a gift certificate is purchases a special code (2 parts) is generated that the recipient will use to redeem the certificate when they make a purchase from the store. The codes are entered in the Gift Certificate fields not the coupon field which is used for a different purpose.

The Gift certificate email is generated from a custom template so you can create your own template to give the look that you would like to the e-mail. The email would typically use html so if the recipient's email doesn't accept html messages it wouldn't necessarily look like what you expected. So you may want to make sure that it looks good in both text and html versions of an email.