Bill Gates once famously said, “If your business is not on the internet, then your business will be out of business”.
In hindsight I think he was absolutely right about it! The internet age seems to have moved faster than the speed of light! 😉
Which makes me think what would happen if Santa Claus existed in reality? Would it be feasible for him to steer around in his sleigh and wriggle through chimneys to distribute gifts in this concrete age?
Or would Santa consider going online with a Gifting website??
That thought there is my Eureka moment for this post. It gets me investigating further on the why, what and how of building a gifting website with WooCommerce.
Why Should You Build a Gifting Website With WooCommerce?
- It’s free
- It has a host of economical plug-n-play extensions available
- It’s more than just an eCommerce system
- It’s Easy to use
- It’s simpler to customize than most e-Commerce systems
- Incorporating Google Analytics is easy
- Great documentation and support
- It’s popular, so you’ll find lots of help
What Are Your Options for a Gifting Website With WooCommerce
If you intend to build an eCommerce website solely around the concept of gifting then as many aspects of gifting as possible should be taken care of. However, if you want to scale up the system slowly then gift cards, gifting options for physical goods, and gifting of subscription based products would make for some good kickoff features.
Let’s take a look at how to incorporate these features into your gifting website with WooCommerce on a budget.
Gifting eVouchers or Gift Cards
If the gift vouchers on amazon are a blessing in disguise for you then it is a feature that you must consider incorporating on your gifting website. Even if it isn’t as much of a blessing as I’d like it to be you should still consider the inclusion. You’ll eventually know the importance of gift cards sometimes also known as e-Vouchers.
This feature can be included effortlessly with the WooCommerce Smart Coupons extension. This extension allows users to create a gift certificate which does not have an amount defined at the time of creation. A customer can purchase a gift certificate of the required amount and forward it to the intended recipient at the time of checkout. The plugin also allows the owner to set an expiry date for the gift card and set a limit to the number of times it can be used.
If you’re going to protest that the plugin priced at $99 is steep for the functionality then just wait a while cause I’m not done just as yet. The plugin also allows a host of other features related to discount coupons which makes the plugin worth your effort and worth every penny. (You can take a look at the complete documentation here)
Gifting Physical Products
If you’re selling gift cards from your website then it is obvious that you must be selling tangible products too. The next step towards the development of the gifting website would be to provide customers with an option to gift these products to anybody they might want.
To achieve this here’s what you’ll need
- A setting such as a checkbox to classify the purchase as a gift item.
- A text area for a custom gift message must be present.
Both these requirements can be fulfilled using the WooCommerce Gift Wrap Cart Order. This plugin allows shop owners to define various gift packaging options which are created as products. These products are separated out from other products with the help of a category option. Shop owners can also charge the customer for the gift wrapping option. It’s important to note that this option can be availed by the customers on the cart page once all their purchases are completed which means the gift wrapping is applicable on cart level.
Gifting Personalized Products
Gifting is all about pleasing the recipient. People are turning towards personalization in order to be successful in doing so. If that is the customer’s end goal then yours should be to give them ways to be able to do this.
One way to achieve this would be to allow them to select an assortment of products and create a gift box. For example purchase of chocolates is on an all time high during festivals and days such as Valentine’s day. If you specialize in selling a variety of chocolates then allowing customers to create an assorted box would enable them to create a personalized experience for the person receiving the gift. Similar assortment can be created for a variety of other products like candles, flowers, cookies, cupcakes etc that are usually bought in bulk. This feature can be achieved using the WooCommerce Custom Product Boxes extension.
Imposing products with images and text is another popular choice of personalization. This mostly holds true for products like t-shirts, mugs, diaries etc. A ready to use plugin in this respect is WooCommerce Products Designer extension. Here’s a preview of the plugin in action.
Gifting Subscription-Based Products
Last but not the least providing users with an option to gift subscriptions product will help you take your website to the next level of awesomeness. This feature though, won’t be out of the box like the one’s discussed earlier. Some amount of customization would be required to be able to achieve it. To get this feature going, we’ll be using the WooCommerce Subscriptions plugin to provide the basic option of selling subscription based features.
So we can sell subscription based products from the website. What next?
The next step would be to allow customers to be able to gift these subscriptions to users. Here’s what we’ll require:
- A setting such as a checkbox to classify the purchase as a gift item.
- If the checkbox is selected the customer will be asked to enter the gift receiver’s name and email address and could be given an option to add a custom message.
- After the purchase is completed, a subscription would be created under the name of the one purchasing the subscription and a confirmation email will be sent.
- The gift recipient would then be sent a notification email about the gift along with the subscription credentials which he can use to start using the product or service gifted to him.
Books, magazines, healthcare and grooming products make for some good subscription-based products that can be included to the gifting website. Apart from that various kinds of services also make a good option in this regard.
Everything discussed until now is just the tip of the iceberg. The opportunities are endless and I’ll keep exploring these opportunities for you in upcoming posts. In the meanwhile if you have liked the idea of building a gifting website with WooCommerce and have more questions then start using the comments section immediately!
Until the next time, Adios 🙂
Images by freepik
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