For the eyes of the business owner

As an online retail owner you will gain many benefits by offering gift cards in your store:

• Offering gift cards increases revenues. Almost every online store now offers gift cards.
• A larger number of customers prefer virtual gift cards over plastic because they receive their card immediately after completing their purchase.
• Reduce your carbon footprint by eliminating printing and paper usage.
• Virtual gift cards eliminate the cost associated with the physical card purchase, storage, printing and postage.

From a developer point of view

The VGC system was created with developers in mind. As a hosted solution, we take care of most of the setup and the development to implement and integrate this system into your e-commerce application. We pride ourselves in offering a solution that minimizes the time it requires to implement this solution and reduces the need for extra development; typical implementations can be achieved within a 2 week period. Some of the features that will help you successfully and quickly implement this solution are:

• Accessible from anywhere due to its web based architecture.
• No need to create or maintain external databases. We securely maintain all data for you.
• Fully secure; we use SSL for communication, and we do NOT store private customer information, it all stays within your organization.
• Platform independent; it works with all web server technologies.
• You have the option to use the SOAP/XML based API, or a COM wrapper for legacy systems.
• We'll provide snippets of code that will allow you to be up and running quickly.

Check out the system from merchandizer point of view

As a merchandiser, you are always looking for opportunities to increase your reach; maximizing your basket size, and guaranteeing loyal customers. Our Virtual Gift Card can help you:

• Multiple Templates. Create multiple gift card templates and provide your customer with choices. Provide season specific designs, and highlight special holiday/events/sales.
• Customer Service. Empower your customer service to keep your customers happy (and shopping!). Fix customer service issues by providing tokens of appreciation via gift card; after all, the balance will be spent buying new merchandise.
• Bottom Line. Increase your bottom line by replacing costly credit card refunds and credits by issuing gift cards. Not only do you save the credit card processing fees; but you keep the customer coming back for more.
• Loyalty. Our Virtual Gift Card system is also a Loyalty Program. Keep track of your customers' purchases and reward them with gift cards. The best part, one card works both as a loyalty card and a gift card; which means they can convert their point and use them as they shop, increasing the cart size.
• Co-Branding: Minimize cost by sharing the ability to issue gift cards with your suppliers. Allow suppliers to advertise through the template design and open a new revenue channel. Great for introducing new lines, or emphasizing new products.

Purchase Process - Instant Customer Gratification

• Shoppers can choose and add to basket from gift cards designed by you
• Shoppers can purchase multiple gift cards at different dollar values in a single checkout process
• After checkout, each card is generated and emailed to the shopper as a PDF, with a unique card number
• Send the gift card directly at the point of checkout by providing recipient's email along with a personalized note

Redeeming Gift Cards - Convenient and Gratifying

• Gift Card appears as a payment type in the checkout process.
• Shoppers can pay by combining their gift card balance and a credit card.
• Unused gift card balance is stored for future use.

Customer Service Dashboard - Offering store credit instead of refund

• With the dashboard, your CSR can issue a VGC to customers while on the phone.
• CSR can check balance, add balance, void lost cards, issue replacement cards, search for cards and view all historical transactions on each card.
• Every transaction is stamped with the CSR identification code for audit purposes.
• Transactions and balances can be exported to Excel for reporting and accounting purposes.
• Customers will be able to hold and reuse the same card over and over by adding to their balance.

How Commerce Generation makes this an easy decision?

• Our Virtual Gift Card system is fully hosted and works as a web service.
• Provides instantaneous customer gratification by emailing the card(s) as PDF.
• Eliminates expensive card printers, shipping expenses and delays.
• Seamlessly links your website to our web services to offer state-of-the-art functionality and flexibility to your customers.
• Our secure dashboard lets your CSR issue cards on demand for store credit, check balances, add funds, void lost cards, provide customer service, view/search transactions and extract data for reporting, auditing and accounting purposes.

Learn the benefits to the Virtual Gift Card System

• Our Virtual Gift Card system is fully hosted and works as a web service.
• Provides instantaneous customer gratification by emailing the card(s) as PDF.
• Eliminates expensive card printers, shipping expenses and delays.
• Seamlessly links your website to our web services to offer state-of-the-art functionality and flexibility to your customers.
• Issue cards on demand for store credit, check balances, add funds, void lost cards, provide customer service, view/search transactions and extract data for reporting, auditing and accounting purposes.