Marketing Your Shopping Cart with Gift Certificates

If you have a retail business it is great tool to be able to sell gift certificates. Most commercial shopping carts have the ability to sell and redeem gift certificates but you need to offer the option to your customers.

In many cases people would buy something but in a gift situation particularly in the last quarter of each year a gift certificate is preferred. It prevents the person from buying merchandise that is not perfect for the person they are shopping for.

Unlike a store if you ship a product the shipping costs money and a return costs money which a return could wipe the value of the purchase. If you buy a gift at walmart anyone can return it to walmart. But as a virtual store you should consider that returning a gift is a serious inconvienece and cost prohibitive.

The pageBuzz shopping cart has a fully integrated gift certificate purchase and redemption process that is seamless and easy to use for both the merchant and buyer. Th cart keeps a paid balance until the users redeems all or part of the gift certificate.

Let's say you sell baseball cards or coins or any other collectible. Since your inventory is always changing the holder of the giftcertificate can check back often to see if you have what they are looking for. This keeps the user glued to your website and buying your products.

If you happen to get in a coin they need and it is $15 and they have a $25 credit they can order the coin and still have money to shop later. This lets a gift go on for a long period of time until the desired items become available.

It is also a great tool to sell items that have not been released yet. For example when the iPhone was about to be released you could not give it as a gift because it was not available in spite of the millions of people ready to buy one. As a gift people could purchase the gift certificate ahead of time and then order the item when it is in stock.

As an etailer you need to understand your market and use every tool you have at your disposal. If you have a shopping cart on your website you should explore all the resources available to you.

Programs like gift certificates and affiliate programs are invaluable to marketing your business online and they are very common features in most shopping cart distributions.

Don't overlook the tools you have right at your finger tips.