Focusing on the Holidays Means Understanding Gift Cards

Gift cards are one of the oldest holiday traditions, especially for those relatives who seem to have everything already.  A gift card puts the freedom into the hands of the recipient and helps gift givers show appreciation for others without them having to worry about getting a duplicate item or something the giftee won’t like.  With the boom we’ve seen in eCommerce in recent years, gift cards are more flexible than ever.  However, being involved in the business yourself, you might find yourself wondering exactly what value there is in gift cards for eCommerce stores themselves. The great news for eCommerce merchants is that gift cards for eCommerce stores are beneficial not only for the buyer but for the seller as well, and these benefits warrant exploration.  If a merchant is going to spend the time necessary to implement easy-to-use gift cards for their customers, they should be informed on what outcomes they can hope to achieve with that gift card system.  While gift cards aren’t quite akin to the proverbial money tree, they can be an incredible source of extra profits with very little downside.

Gift Cards for ECommerce Stores Drive Sales and More

In our recent article about eCommerce companies preparing themselves for the post-holiday rush, we briefly touched on the benefits of gift cards.  A particular statistic bears repeating for those who are hoping to learn more about gift cards in eCommerce: Customers buying with gift cards tend to spend 20% more when they buy.  This statistic is the result of multiple causes.  First off, when customers buy with a gift card, they tend to overspend.  Customers prefer to use all of a gift card rather than leave remaining funds on the card.  Secondly, once customers do overspend, they’re likely to simply choose to round it out with another item rather than spend a few extra cents on their personal card. In addition to the direct benefits to sales that gift cards bring by encouraging purchases, gift cards for eCommerce stores fulfill another valuable purpose.  When a customer buys with a gift card, it provides an additional incentive for them to create an account, sign up for communication, and check out as much of your site as possible.  Customers with a gift card in hand may not be familiar with your brand yet; they may have never even visited your site.  In order to get the most out of their gift, they’ll need to explore, and your company can prepare for that by offering bonuses, welcome bundles or guides, and specials to those who are first-time buyers with a gift card.  Customers who remember the experience they had with a gift card fondly are likely to return, and it is up to individual companies to ensure that those customers brought to the site by a gift get a special welcome. Another reason that gift cards are so valuable to online retailers is that their cost of entry is comparatively low.  Online, gift cards don’t even need to be a physical item (although that is an option.)  Gift cards for eCommerce stores can be a digital pass, email code, or a printout sent digitally to the giver of the gift.  The only costs, therefore, are in developing or adopting a system for handling store credit online.  The great news about this particular challenge is that numerous tools already exist to handle gift card generation, payment, and expiration for nearly every major eCommerce platform. As an example, Shopkeeper Gift Cards is an app for Shopify Pro that allows customers to personalize the design of the gift cards they buy while equipping eCommerce owners with incredible tools for tracking, measuring, and creating value from gift cards.  This Shopify app goes above and beyond the already-included gift card feature that Shopify offers to users of its platform, giving merchants even more power to grow their business with gift cards.

Happy Customers, Happy Company

Building rapport its essential online, and it’s one of the biggest hurdles faced by eCommerce companies.  Gift cards help with this challenge by taking the limelight away from the cost.  Customers using gift cards are less likely to focus on the cost, and more likely to focus on the experience.  No one likes spending money, though we all very much enjoy the result of our shopping expenditures.  Customers using gift cards get to enjoy the benefits of shopping, both in the experience of browsing and choosing a product and in the experience of receiving and using the product, without having to suffer the post-holiday financial stress or guilt.  This characteristic of gift cards is a huge boon to eCommerce companies since it thins the metaphorical wall between customers and online products that exists as a result of the nature of buying online. To wrap it all up nice, the benefit of gift cards for eCommerce stores is multi-faceted and mutually beneficial to both the store and the customer of the store.  Implementing a gift card system has incredibly low costs if handled with strategy and planning, and the payoffs can contribute to the building of long-term customer relationships.  With holidays already being stressful, providing an easy way for customers to access and enjoy your products is priceless, and many customers will remember that, even if it’s the first time they’re visiting your store. If you’d like to implement a gift card system and score the rewards that come with it this holiday season, 1Digital Agency can help you do just that.  Our passionate team is devoted 100% to eCommerce, so we know what it takes to build an effective gift card system from top to bottom.  Whether you need help implementing it on your site or simply need help getting the word out to your customers about what you have to offer, get in touch with us so that we can help make this vital time of year a huge success for your business.  Get in touch with us today at [email protected]!  

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