With the holidays approaching, web sites are gearing up for the last push of sales for 2007. One thing that still amazes me is the lack of gift certificate or coupon options available on so many ecommerce sites.

Even if your site doesn’t directly sell a product online, you should consider offering some form of ‘gift giving’ options. A cleaning service for example doesn’t offer a tangible item, but many out there (including myself) would love to receive a certificate for home cleaning services.

It’s actually pretty easy to offer such options on your site. Many shopping cart programs come with this feature. Start by asking your programmer or web design service if this is part of your cart program or if they have a script available to install.

If you manage the web site yourself and shopping cart certificates are not an option, consider offering your own version using PayPal.

Another creative way is to create your own using a simple printshop program. Place links on your site offering gift certificate denominations of 10, 15, 25, 100, whatever you choose.

Some other options:

Try to partner with sites that offer programs such as http://www.giftcertificates.com

Pre-paid cards are another option: http://www.parago.com/GiftcardPrograms

Keep in mind if you do decide to offer gift certificates or coupons that you have a way of tracking the purchased items. If someone does purchase via a shopping cart or PayPal you should be able to add a tracking number, code, phrase, etc that will allow you to enter whenever the certificate/coupon is used either in your site or at your store.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 23rd, 2007 at 1:57 pm and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.