Do you want to start selling digital gift cards at your eCommerce store? If so, this guide to WooCommerce gift cards will help you get started.
Selling e-gift cards at your online shop gives customers a way to make a purchase, even if they’re not sure what to buy. If you offer gift cards, people can now buy a present at your store that they can give to their friends, family, coworkers, and anyone else.
Rather than turning away potential customers who can’t find the perfect gift at your store, you can offer them the chance to purchase a gift card they use later or give away.
In short, gift cards are another way to increase sales and sell more items at your WooCommerce store.
Read on if you’d like to know more about the easiest way to add gift cards to a WooCommerce store.
The WooCommerce Gift Cards Extension
The Gift Cards extension by WooCommerce is probably the best tool for adding the ability to sell gift cards from your WooCommerce store.
There are a few freemium gift card plugins out there, but their best features tend to only be available in the paid versions. Due to this, you might as well choose the $49-a-year WooCommerce Gift Cards extension.
You can request access to a demo site that lets you try out the WooCommerce Gift Cards extension for free. You can also try it on your own site without financial risk, thanks to the 30-day money-back guarantee.
How Does the Gift Cards Extension Work?
Essentially, the add-on lets customers purchase e-gift cards to redeem at your store.
Unique codes are generated for each gift card that’s sold. Customers can then enter that code to redeem the card value. This can either be done at checkout or when adding the gift card value to their customer account. It’s possible to have the gift cards sent to another recipient on a specific date, making them ideal for gifting.
Some of the reasons to consider using the Gift Cards extension include:
- User-friendly front and back end interfaces.
- Supports future delivery of gift cards on specific dates.
- Lets customers add gift cards to their account balance.
- Can send gift cards to multiple recipients.
- Multiple gift card variations for different occasions.
- Supports personal messages on digital gift cards.
- Managing and reporting features to help you track gift cards.
- Compatible with the PDF Product Vouchers add-on for creating printable gift cards.
- Compatible with the Name Your Price add-on for allowing customers to choose a custom gift card value.
Overall, this extension is easy to use and a convenient way to start selling gift cards at your WooCommerce store. Let’s take a look at how it works and the process of offering e-gift cards at your store.
How to Sell Gift Cards at Your Store
If you decide to use the Gift Cards extension for WooCommerce, you’ll find that adding this type of product to your store couldn’t be easier.
To give you an idea of how the extension works and what the process of enabling WooCommerce gift cards is like, here’s a quick walkthrough of the experience of using the add-on as well as an exploration of exactly what it can do.
Installing the Extension
Once you’ve purchased the Gift Card extensions from the WooCommerce site, you can download the plugin file to your computer.
After that, you can upload it to your WordPress site by clicking on the Plugins → Add New menu item in your WordPress admin dashboard area.
From there, you can click on the Upload Plugin button, then the Choose file button. Now, browse to the location on your computer where you download the file to. After selecting the file, click the Install Now button, followed by the Activate Plugin button.
Creating a WooCommerce Gift Card
Once the extension is installed and activated on your site, you can create your first gift card by either creating a new product at your store (Products → Add New) or by clicking on the Marketing → Gift Cards sidebar menu item. Both options ultimately take you to the same place, which is the Add new product screen.
To make sure the product you create is a gift card, scroll down to the Product data area of the Add New product screen and check the Gift Card box.
Simple or Variable Products?
Gift cards can be created as either simple or variable products.
Use simple product mode if you just want to list a gift card with a single value, such as $10. If you want to sell gift cards at a number of price points, such as $5, $10, and $20, and let the customer choose which one they want to buy, choose the variable product type.
To create a simple gift card, all you need to do is enter a product name and set a price.
You can also add a product description and product short description as you can with any WooCommerce product.
If you want to let the customer choose how much they want to spend on the gift card, you must create a variable product type rather than a simple one. You can then add a number of price points from which the customer can choose. As mentioned, if you want to give customers complete freedom to choose how much to spend on a gift card, you’ll have to purchase and install the Name Your Price extension.
Select Variable product from the Product data dropdown menu to create a variable product.
Next, click on the Attributes tab from the sidebar menu and then the Add button.
Now, you can enter the prices that you’d like to sell the gift cards for, such as $5, $10, and $20, separating each price with the | character. Enter a name that will be displayed to customers. Then check the Visible on the product page and Use for variations boxes, then click on the Save attributes button.
Once you’ve saved the attributes, click the Variations tab on the sidebar.
Next, select Create variations from all attributes on the dropdown menu, and then click the Go button.
Setting the Card Prices
If there’s a message saying the variations do not have prices, click on the Add price button. You can then add a price for any variations that don’t have a price. If you want to check that each variation has the right price, click Edit next to each one to see its details. You can then enter the correct price in the Regular price field.
Now, if you preview the product by clicking on the Preview button in the top right corner of the screen, you can see if the gift card is set up correctly.
If everything is working as expected, you can publish the product to make the gift card available to your customers.
Gift Card Emails
Now visitors to your store can buy digital gift cards, which are either sent to them or a recipient of their choice via email.
The recipient can then use the code that’s sent via email either at checkout or to top up their account balance at your store.
The Gift Cards page inside your WordPress dashboard area (Marketing → Gift Cards) lets you see the gift cards that have been issued and their status.
Some of the other aspects of the Gift Cards extension you might want to explore when adding this feature to your site include:
- Add a custom image to the recipient email (Product Data → General).
- Edit the default email message text (WooCommerce → Settings → Email).
- Create multiple gift cards, each with their own product descriptions and images.
- Refund gift cards.
- Create expiring gift cards.
You can view the full documentation to see exactly what you can do with the extension or request a free test site to try it for yourself.
Summary
Adding digital or e-gift cards to your site is very straightforward with WooCommerce and the Gift Cards extension.
Whether you decide to list a simple gift card that’s only available at one price point or create a variable gift card that can be purchased for a range of prices, it won’t take you long to add this type of product to your store.
If you have any questions about adding gift cards to WooCommerce, comment below.
