Gift Card Systems - Recommendations Please?

Hi!

We need a Gift Card system for our furniture store (N&B Exports - the place is decimated right now while we remodel ).

We have about 500 items that would need to work with the Gift Card system. How do these systems work? I have never used a gift card system to buy anything for anyone. In general when buying gifts f it is not transfer and i cannot send it from XSL then i do not buy it.

Any help identifying the Gift Card systems out there would be most appreciated, along with any recommendations, advice, SLurls you have to offer.


Edit to Add: I think I am confused between a Gift Card system and a Gift Vendor system.....I am not sure.

Also, is this even needed if our items are Transferable? I know people like to send a gift though directly from the store instead of buying a box, etc..etc.. Is this right?

HELP!

Hi.

CCTV Giant offers the "Grab and Go" Gift Card System, fairly reasonable compared to others I looked at, and pretty easy to use.

ETA: Even if your items are transferrable, a gift card system is nice. You know how most men can't pick out clothes, but they can pick up a gift card

Hi Briana

I Im'd you in world. Be glad to unravel it all for you. In the end, its a matter of what works for you. Our system was designed in a retail environment....so we know how it acts in high volume scenarios and what to expect from your customers as well And like Honeybear said, its actually one of the economically viable ones on the market and has a history of more than 15 months in the field.

Cheers

CC

Here was how I approached that idea - I wasn't sure which way to go either but when I looked at the range of pricing in my stores it became apparent that a gift card system was probably not going to work because it was too restrictive in terms of price. Where I think gift cards do work is with stores with a fairly consistent pricing schedule.

Hippo offers a gift card thing that works with their vendors, but after playing with it a bit, I don't see any way that customers can buy just a card and give it to someone. So, if you are going to issue the gift cards yourself, that might be a consideration.

What it ultimately came down to - I needed a way for people to send an item as a gift. Now, things like clothing and hair, you likely don't want someone else shopping for you so a gift CARD is more appropriate. But houses and furniture are a little different and far less likely to elicit a response of "I can't BELIEVE you thought I would wear that horrible outfit!"

So, what I finally decided I needed was a gift vendor. I ended up using the Hippo system, but I hear there are plenty of good systems out there -- plus as XStreet becomes part of the SL viewer it will be much easier for people to send items as a gift that way.

I look a basic Hippo vendor and added signage and directions to indicate that it was a GIFT vendor. Every thing in the vendor comes in a gift box.

You mileage may vary, but that was the direction I went. The hard part was deciding what problem I was trying to solve, once I had that figured out, it was just a matter of finding a system to do what I needed.

It is a custom system or off the shelf? I think that others would be interested in the information if you could post something publicly about it. Thanks

I would say that if you are getting a gift card system just to be able to get around no trans, then you having trans items will obviate any need for that.

A gift vendor system allows you to pay for a specific item to be delivered to another person of your choosing.

A gift card system allows you to give a gift card to someone who then can claim their item upon card redemption.

Hopes this clears up the confusion Briana

Thanks for the replies!

Gabiele - it seems i am looking for the Gift Card system so that people can just hand out Gift Cards as gifts that can be used to make purchases.

<3

Yes I am interested in this information also.

Sent you an IM inworld about this

It seems most of the major designers use the same system, I don't use one yet (I request customers use XSt to send gifts), so I just went in world to look at who made the gift cards in my inventory and Blaze, Graves, Shiny Things, KessKreations, PopFuzz and Mischief all use Escort DeFarge's system. I've bought them for friends and been given them too.

In fact, I don't have any gift cards made by anyone else surprisingly!

The only gift card system I've used, as a customer, is the "Grab & Go" system. The cards are no-copy and transferrable, and you can give someone a card (even, I think, a partially used card) and it just works for them. If the card doesn't have enough on it for the purchase you can pay the difference. The only thing that it doesn't do that I wish it did was allow you to combine cards... when you have a car with L$42 left and a L$200 card and want to buy something that costs L$229, you can't just "fill in the gaps".

But that's probably not a HUGE use case. As a customer, anyway, I can recommend Grab & Go.

Hi Argent -- thanks for the props. The reason we don't 'fill the gaps' is because our merchants would lose their rearend and would be out of business within a week. If there is a way to game a store, to get free stuff, they will find it and exploit it.

We do have roughly 350 systems on the grid and also boast some very notable designers using the system, with more than 3000 vendors on their sims. All names you have heard of as well. I'd offer them up here but I'm not sure that would be the right thing to do. If you'd like some references, feel free to contact me inworld.

This was the point of offering a variety of systems at Grab & Go. Some people want simple -- some people want ALL the bells and whistles. We did develop this in a retail environment(fashion) so we did have a ton of feedback from customers and it also gave us a real good indication of what it would do and not do. With that knowledge, and listening to our merchant partners, we continually develop ways to make the system a tool for merchants rather than a store feature.

I'm not going to list out all the features like a spec sheet, I will tell you a few notable items: We do have a partnering system so multiple creators can share one card, under one roof. We are integrated and approved with First Meta's credit card. (this was a validation exercise for approval with a real bank) And, we are in the alpha stages of porting merchant sales data to a website for a backoffice accounting solution.

Hope this helps

CC

I don`t use the Grab and Go system personally, but I do recommend it when people ask for an affordable system. CCTV has good customer service as well, as you can see, so that`s a plus.

So if someone had a Gift Card for $2000L, but where only able to spend 1925 in the store, the remaining $75L is lost?

I do not understand how "Fill the Gaps" cost merchants money when really all they are doing is paying back what they were given.

What movie was it...Superman III where Richard Pryor got rich off of those unused 1/2 pennies?

First Meta? What is that? A credit card in SL - zomg why would anyone want the potential to create debt in SL?

Maybe I am missing something here.

yes it is an inworld credit card and people do use it (I have it in my store)

maybe they like to roleplay, or maybe they can only get lindens at a specific time, so this enables them to spend all the time, without waiting for the lindens, or... or.. or...

I do not ask them why they use it, none of my business, nor do I think it is crazy to use it

as for the fill the gaps, a lot of merchants send out cards as gifts, as well as offer them at a reduced rate, that could cause a loss of money if they could be combined.

oh!! CCTV, could you send me info about the new system that works with first meta? I think you did awhile ago, but I think that was around the time I was ill... not sure.

my inventory is scary to try to find anything in.

I want to offer cards again, now that it works with first meta


to anyone, I would recommend the grab and go as well, easy to set up, and easy for the customer to use.

(and inexpensive, unlike the other one mentioned, if I remember correctly was very costly)

TMC is another good system. It is costly, I believe it is $15K. Which is more than most are willing to dish out for a gift card system.

The main thing I do not like about TMC is the creator insists on branding the card with his Logo. So, if you have a shop, which is all about YOUR name, YOUR presence, and YOUR brand, with the TMC gift card system, his logo is on it. It took me a year before I gave in and got one. I`m not into promoting another brand in my shop.

Because the gift card system is only real busy around christmas time, and sporadically, and rarely, throughout the rest of the year, it was very importatnt to me that the GC system put those paying in cash above those paying in card. What I mean by this is, all of the other systems I found seem to cater to those paying with the card: You click the product and it asks you "Card. Cash. Meta", for example. I didn`t want that. I needed something that allowed you to click and pay in one easy step. TMC was the only one I found where it was set up that way. Since about 98% of purchases are not done with a gift card, this was a VERY important feature for me. If a consumer is not using a gift card, why should they have to go through the pie-menu step? Those small percentage of people who are using a card, need to right click to get the pie menu with the TMC system. Perfect.

The above "cons" listed are not to bad mouth TMC, it is a good system, the creator obviously knows what he is doing, its a very very trustworthy system. But the price tag and branding are the 2 downfalls IMHO.

If what I explain above is not a neccessity to you, definitely check out other systems on the market. And see a demo. I know CCTV does demos which is great.

Choose wisely, this isn`t something you want to have to replace.

Sounds like Grab and Go needs to have a "coupon" (that the merchant gives away, and can't be combined) as well as a "gift card" (that the merchant sells, that can).

Grab and Go is like that. You right click and select "Pay", and pay Lindens, or you right-click and select "Card" (in the touch position), and pay with the card you're wearing. Then it's up to whether the merchant makes "pay" or "touch" the default action, no?

(its not letting me quote you)

@ Argent Yes It is like that. Exactly like that to my rememberance. That seems to be how all the systems are..Except TMC.

With TMC you left click it and when you do that a little screen pops up and it presents you with the dollar amount, you click that to buy. Its similar to what you get when you buy something from a split-profit script vendor..You know, that little box with the ovalish shape with the money value written inside... Im awful at explaining things.

Anyway, that is what I needed. I didn`t want a system where the user had to right click and get a pie menu. I wanted them to be able to left click and pay.

bri, you do realise that doing this gift card thingo will:
a) force us to scrap the custom coded vendors we use, leaving me with no means to buy stock for $0 thus leaving you to do all the customer service
b) require you to restock a vendor each individual item in the store
c) necessitate the need for you to rebuild all the demo rezzers to include the new vendors

I use the TMC system as well and have been very happy with it. If you have an odd little amount left on the card, you don't lose it, you just have to pay the difference when you make your purchase. The only time I ever had an issue was with setting it up. SL broke the server script apparently the first time I put it down, and Escort was very helpful in getting it all sorted out. I get people buying gift cards quite often year round. One nice feature also is that you can have gift card sales. Instead of going around and marking down all the individual vendors, just tell the gift card vendor to sell a particular value card for less. For example, you could sell a L$1000 card for L$500 or whatever.

Yes, I know what you're talking about.

What I'm talking about is that what pops up when you left click is something set by the merchant in the edit box... the SL edit box. Not generally in a script. So it's not something inherent in the card system. I can't see the card system preventing the merchant from deciding whether the default is "touch" or "pay".

TMC allows the buyer to right or left click the vendor. If you left click on the vendor, you get the blue pop-up box asking if you want to use your card, and if you right click the vendor, you get the pie menu with a "pay" option or a "card" option.

Yes-I-understand-what-you're-referring-to. Honest, I do. Please grant me the courtesy of listening to my question.

I am asking you, is this something the merchant has selected, or is it a characteristic of the payment system? Are you sure?

Because this is NOT something that is normally set by a script, it is set by the merchant when they set the box up, regardless of what the script inside the box is. Go in-world, create a prim, and look in the lower left corner of the expanded edit menu. See the pulldown that selects the left-click action. Notice that one of the options is "touch", and another is "pay". If the merchant selects "touch", then left clicking on the object will touch the object and it will bring up the card dialog. If the merchant selects "pay", then left clicking will bring up the Second life pay dialog in the center of the screen.

So, my question to you is, have you actually determined whether the script is changing this setting, or are is this simply a matter of the owners of the boxes you were examining never having bothered to change that setting from the default "touch" themselves?

Even if the script has used llSetClickAction() it should be possible to change it. I suppose it depends on how often the click action is set but would seem strange to keep changing it.
I would imagine it would get set upon rez/reset etc and then the owner would be free to change it.

Personally I really dislike touch to pay, I almost always touch something with that enabled by mistake.