Adding a voucher system to a shopping cart.

Is it worth the effort?

[jecasc]

I am thinking off adding the possibility to buy gift vouchers online and redeeming them by filling in a voucher code during checkout.

However since this is not easy to implement into my existing shopping cart I am wondering if people even buy vouchers for online shops.

And what is the best way to implement this? Simply send the voucher code by email or as a letter?

What experiences have you made with vouchers? Is it worth the effort?

[Ledfish]

The one problem with vouchers and online gift certificates is that they seem to have a lot of potential for fraud.

[corbing]

We sell a fairly small number of gift certificates (we'll probably do 40-50 in December). We sell maybe a dozen a month through the rest of the year. We allow the customer to choose to have it either snail mailed or emailed to themselves or the recipient.

There are two great things about gift certificates. #1 it usually creates a new customer (the recipient) who may not have heard about you in the past. If they just buy a gift, the recipient usually doesn't know where it came from.

And, #2, almost every time a gift certificate is redeemed it's for an order that is significantly more than the face value.

Also, it's amazing how many gift certificates are never redeemed. We have gift certificates going back over five years that have still never been used. Frankly, we'd rather have them used (to get that new customer). But, cash in the bank...