How to Sell Gift Cards on Your WordPress Site

0
773

Share on LinkedIn

Digital gift cards are an excellent way for businesses to supplement their cash flow and boost revenues, especially during this public health crisis like COVID-19.

Customers have always bought gift cards to use in the future, but they may buy them now as a way to support local businesses through this tough time. If you’re wondering how to set up your WordPress site to sell gift cards, we’ve got you covered.

Why Sell Gift Cards

Gift card sales reached a high of $160 billion in 2018, doubling their growth in a decade. While most people still prefer a physical gift card, the market for digital cards is increasing. Over half of all consumers surveyed in this study are interested in giving or receiving digital gift cards, so it’s clear that people’s appetite for them is getting bigger.

As a business owner, they improve cash flow in the short-term and allow customers to cash in on the purchase when life gets back to normal. Smart business owners will look at gift cards as a way to increase future business by upselling something else when they redeem it. Display a related item from your stock, make a suggestion on an adjacent service, or offer a discount for an expensive product.

New customers redeeming a gift card are also the perfect people to put on your email newsletter, segmented appropriately. This way, you can market to them directly as someone who likes gift cards and you’ll increase the insights you’ll have on your customers. The more customer insights you have, the easier it is to create new products, services, or marketing campaigns.

Now, let’s dive into how to sell gift cards on your WordPress site to sustain your business in the future.

1. Sell Gift Cards With a Purchase Form

To get started selling gift cards quickly through your website, you can do that by adding a gift card purchase form to it.

For this method, you’ll need to use a form builder plugin that lets you accept online payments via credit cards. (If your form builder doesn’t
allow you to accept payments, you’ll need to add an online store to your WordPress site; jump to the next section for more details.)

Your instructions may vary slightly depending on the form builder you use, but generally speaking, you’ll need to:

  1. Create a new form.

  2. Add the appropriate fields to it (buyer name, recipient name, email addresses, and gift card amount.)

  3. Set up your payment gateway to work with the form so you can accept online payments, such as PayPal, Stripe, or Square. The way these
    integrate with your form and site depends on your form builder and payment gateway, so refer to your builder’s instructions for more details.

  4. Write a confirmation message and email to send to the buyer or recipient email address.

  5. Include any other thank you steps, such as a redirect to a thank you page.

  6. Add the form to your website.

2. Sell Gift Cards With an Online Store

If you already have an online store on your website that uses a platform like Shopify or a plugin like WooCommerce, you can add gift cards to it easily. Add a gift card as a product to your store, set denominations for them, and make them available for purchase on your site.

If you don’t have a store yet, you can create one with WooCommerce on your WordPress site.

  1. Install the WooCommerce plugin on your site (it’s free). You’ll set up your online store with this and add the gift cards as products to it.

  2. Install a payment gateway plugin. This plugin integrates with WooCommerce and will let you accept online payments through a variety of processors, including PayPal, Stripe, and Square. These plugins are free to use, though they may take a percentage of your sales to cover their costs. Refer to each one for more details.

  3. Add the gift cards to the product list in whatever denomination you choose.

  4. Save or publish the gift card products. They’re now available for purchase through your online store.

  5. Verify their appearance on your site.

Use a Dedicated Gift Card Service on Your Website

If you think you’ll sell gift cards in the future, either online, in your physical locations, or with giveaways and contests, then you may want to consider a dedicated gift card service like Gift Up.

It’s a full-service gift card platform that works on any website, including WordPress ones, and lets you get paid immediately without any monthly or set up fee. They do take a set percentage for each gift card sold, but they’re waiving that fee during the coronavirus crisis, so
use this link if you’re interested.

After signing up, there are two ways to sell gift cards using Gift Up:

  • Create your gift cards on the Gift Up site and embed the generated code on your website.

or

  • Create your gift cards on the Gift Up site, install the Gift Up WordPress plugin
    on your site, and use it to embed the codes directly onto your site.

Either way, customers find the gift card link on your site and use Gift Up’s connection to payment processors to accept the payments via credit card, PayPal, Apple and GPay, and more. Here’s what the demo looks like on GiftUp:

3. Things to Do After Setting Up Your Gift Cards

No matter what method you use to sell gift cards on your WordPress site, make sure to update your customers to let them know you’re now selling gift cards. Consider sending out an email to your newsletter list and creating a few posts for your social media channels too. Send out messages semi-regularly to remind them since they may not see your messages the first time around. Your loyal customers will want ways to support you during this tough time.

Whether you’re looking to boost income during the coronavirus crisis or you’re looking to add a new income stream to your website, selling gift cards is an easy way to do it. Use one of these methods to add gift cards to your site quickly and boost your revenue.

Syed Balkhi
Syed Balkhi is the founder of WPBeginner, the largest free WordPress resource site. With over 10 years of experience, he’s the leading WordPress expert in the industry. You can learn more about Syed and his portfolio of companies by following him on his social media networks.

ADD YOUR COMMENT

Please use comments to add value to the discussion. Maximum one link to an educational blog post or article. We will NOT PUBLISH brief comments like "good post," comments that mainly promote links, or comments with links to companies, products, or services.

Please enter your comment!
Please enter your name here