Lesson 57. Marketing — Gift Certificates

Gift certificates are provided by the add-on for the open source e-commerce platform. First, we are going to take a look at its settings.

Minimum and maximum amounts of a new gift certificate.

GC Code prefix. Prefix to be put before codes of all certificates created in your online store platform.

The number of gift certificates per page.

Allow to use free products. If selected, a certificate can be bundled with products that the recipient gets at no charge. The cost of the bundled products is paid by the customer who orders the certificate.

Allow to redeem shipping cost with gift certificate. With this setting enabled, gift certificates can be used to redeem shipping costs, not merely the order subtotal. That’s it about gift certificates settings.

In most cases gift certificates are created by customers of online store php script from a storefront. They purchased as ordinary products, and then send to recipients. You can send certificates via email, or use traditional mail to send a letter with a certificate inside. In turn in the Admin panel gift certificates are processed as usual orders. After the order is complete, the administrator activates the certificate.

Also, on the gift certificate page you can create new gift certificates, edit existing ones, and manage certificate statuses. Each status has its own notification. You can add new status as well. Now we can visit the email of the gift recipient.

The recipient receives a letter containing the certificate. It contains the information about gift and a code to activate it in the store. After the order with activated code is submitted, the status of the certificate is changed to Used.

And there is one more thing we would like to tell you. You can edit the look and content of your certificates via our new document editor. Just go to Design → Documents, and select Gift certificates: default. Use variables, snippets, and editor to change the default gift certificate. That’s it about gift certificates in CS-Cart ecommerce shop builder.