With holiday shopping season upon us, your customers and their families are trying to figure out what to give their favorite cyclist. Make it easier for them with gift cards.
Your SmartEtailing site can reduce friction from the buying process by making it easy for shoppers to buy physical gift cards from your website.
Payment technology provider First Data conducts annual research on consumer gift card behaviors. Recent studies reveal the value of leveraging your website to sell cards. The 2014 report found, "respondents are increasingly choosing to go online to purchase gift cards. Online purchases of gift cards increased substantially from 26% in 2013 to 34% in 2014, while on-premise purchases in store, at restaurant or entertainment locations decreased dramatically from 51% in 2013 to just 44% in 2014."
The 2017 study stresses that gift cards change shopper behavior, noting that 53% of consumers will visit a store more often when they have a gift card and 75% will overspend on the value of gift cards they redeem.
November and December prove to have the highest consumer interest in purchasing gift cards. A search on Google Trends for "gift cards" shows that during this period there is a consistent spike in searches for gift cards by consumers. This is prime time to prepare for marketing and selling gift cards.
Consumers love gift cards because they are quick and convenient. Friends and family may be spread out across the country and if someone doesn’t know what cycling gear to give, a gift card solves the problem. The recipient can purchase exactly what he or she wants locally from their favorite local store.
For the retailer, gift cards are good for business because they drive customers into the store. The same 2017 First Data report found that consumers spend an astonishing $38 more than the value of a gift card when they visit. That’s up from $28 in 2016. The more gift cards you can get into your market at the end of this year the better you are situated to start your next year.
While consumers are increasingly wanting to buy their gift cards online, they still prefer to utilize physical gift cards. First Data found that, "consumers purchased an average of 6.5 physical gift cards on an annual basis, steadily climbing from 5.9 in 2016, 5.5 in 2015, and 4.7 in 2014."
SmartEtailing helps retailers efficiently add the ability to purchase physical gift cards from their local bike shop website. If you haven’t already added gift cards to your site, here are the steps.
*If no pre-built designs meet your needs, select any of them and import into your catalog. Go to the Images & Video tab and replace the pre-built image with your own. Please see our Users Guide for further instructions.
Now that you have gift cards in your catalog you need to make it easy for your existing customers and organic website visitors to find them.
If you want to know more or need help with anything we discussed here, please contact SmartEtailing Support and one of our friendly team members will be happy to assist.