Your staff can’t be there at 2am when a client remembers that party tomorrow — but your online gift card system can. Source: iStock Photo
Let’s face it: everyone shops for gifts online these days. By now, most people know that when they’re looking for a gift, the first place they go is Google. Even your grandmother has an Amazon account.
It’s safe to say that in the majority of cases, if you’re a business and you’re not selling gift cards online, you’re missing out on easy sales.
We’ve studied the patterns of our customers’ online sales, and most online gift cards are purchased between 11 am and 4 pm—when you are your busiest with service—so having online gift cards is like having an extra person on the front desk…but not on the payroll.
Online sales are not limited to business hours. We have gift card sales processed every hour of the day—truly 24 hours, and this is when FREE SalonBiz online gift card sales really shines. When they’re looking for gifting ideas online, you’re there, optimized and ready, happy to help.
Top 5 things you might not know about our online gift cards:
1. They’re FREE and So Easy to Set Up
Setting up the Gift Card widget on your site is incredibly easy, and it’s included with your SalonBiz salon management software subscription.
To enable gift cards, it’s just a click in SalonBiz Central. For the website, it’s a line of code you or your developer can drop on your site. It’s easily customizable, and fully integrated into your salon software. The only thing you have to process in the morning are physical cards if you choose to mail. (more on that below).
Worried about the headache of setting up an ecommerce account? We have that covered, too. Contact us and we can walk you through the process. We’ve already done the homework to make it easy for you.
2. It’s Your Choice: Deliver e-cards or Ship Physical Gift Cards to Online Buyers
Your online gift card sales don’t have to be strictly electronic. There are two ways to handle that, and it comes down to your preference. If it’s only an occasional thing, you can set it up so that you get an email any time you sell a physical gift card. (Need help? Give us a call and we’ll help walk you through it.)
If it’s a more frequent thing for your salon to mail gift cards, you can have your front desk run a daily report in the salon software of online activity to get a list of all the gift cards that need to be physically mailed. At the same time, you can have them update the gift card that’s in the system under their account with the serial number from the physical gift card, so everything is traceable
3. You Can Even Make Them Pretty
During set-up, you can choose the colors that match/coordinate with your website, so the widget itself blends in with your overall aesthetic.
We brought it even further and made it easy to customize the look of the actual online gift cards they purchase. We have a set of pre-made designs for occasions like birthdays, weddings, holidays, etc., but we also allow you to upload a set of (six) custom-branded gift cards with your logo or chosen designs.
Have fancy physical gift cards in your salon? Want the online ones to match? Upload your design and it will be one of the options they can choose upon checkout.
4. Set Up to Sell on Social Media
Want to take the step of actually monetizing your social media presence? Once set up, it’s easy to drop onto your site so they can purchase gift cards from your Facebook page… or any webpage you want to put that code on.
5. Makes Executing Online Promotions Easy—even discounts on packages
Ease of use is one of the most beneficial aspects of the SalonBiz Online Booking and Gift Card Sales system. You have your choice of allowing any denomination or choosing dollar increments.
Setting up promotions is simple:
- Choose your discount amount or set conditions (i.e. combination of specific services for package promotions)
- Choose your dates & times that the promo will run.
- Click Save.
Really, any promotion you want—if you can dream it up and get someone to make a pretty promo page—then you can try it online to see how it works before you roll it out to the salon.
Marketing Tip: Gift packages are great for sales, especially for day spas or salons that are selling spa services, and SalonBiz makes it easy. If you do manicures, it’s simple to set up a package like a mani/pedi combo that’s discounted a little bit to incentivize the buyer. And although you’re slightly discounting service, you’re upping the ticket total. So you have a higher dollar purchase with similar actual value to the salon, but increased perceived value to the customer. Everyone comes out winning.
Time to Get Selling
Are you a SalonBiz salon software subscriber who wants some help getting going? Ready to become part of the SalonBiz family and start selling gift cards online today? Give us a call.
You never know who’s going to be looking at your website tonight!
