WapleSpunK
February 24th, 2009, 09:11 AM
No idea if this exists or is easy. I have gift cards that I give to people to buy things from my web site or in my store.
To use them on the site, I need to manually log into my sales site and create a code so the system recognizes it when the person enters the coupon code in their shopping cart. When people order from me personally, I need to make sure it's a vadid card that hasn't been used already so I open an excel file and look for the code.
I'm about to give out 200 $25 gift cards to a charity event and I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle this without having to manually write a code on each one and create the code on the web site. I'd rather create the code when they activate it because a lot of people may never use it. My idea was for them to go to a web page where they enter their contact info and when they submit it they are shown a code that they write but it'd have to send the code to me as well, along with their contact info.
However, even that has it's flaws as they can activate the card, make the purchase, activate another card, make another purchase, and so on. Since they'd be using a blank card they can just enter bogus info every time.
Maybe they fill out the form and I have to manually send them the code to the email they specified. That way I can sort of monitor it based on email address. Seems like I'd still have to write some sort of unique code on the card so that I know they aren't just doing the same one over and over. If I write a random code like FR03AJ4 on the card, I can enter it also into an excel sheet. when they send the email they enter that code. I'd check that it exists and if so I create the coupon and tell them it's done.
Sort of thinking this through. does this seem logical? See any flaws? The only one I see is that it may take up to 24 hours for me to create the code if I'm not around a PC.
To use them on the site, I need to manually log into my sales site and create a code so the system recognizes it when the person enters the coupon code in their shopping cart. When people order from me personally, I need to make sure it's a vadid card that hasn't been used already so I open an excel file and look for the code.
I'm about to give out 200 $25 gift cards to a charity event and I'm trying to figure out the best way to handle this without having to manually write a code on each one and create the code on the web site. I'd rather create the code when they activate it because a lot of people may never use it. My idea was for them to go to a web page where they enter their contact info and when they submit it they are shown a code that they write but it'd have to send the code to me as well, along with their contact info.
However, even that has it's flaws as they can activate the card, make the purchase, activate another card, make another purchase, and so on. Since they'd be using a blank card they can just enter bogus info every time.
Maybe they fill out the form and I have to manually send them the code to the email they specified. That way I can sort of monitor it based on email address. Seems like I'd still have to write some sort of unique code on the card so that I know they aren't just doing the same one over and over. If I write a random code like FR03AJ4 on the card, I can enter it also into an excel sheet. when they send the email they enter that code. I'd check that it exists and if so I create the coupon and tell them it's done.
Sort of thinking this through. does this seem logical? See any flaws? The only one I see is that it may take up to 24 hours for me to create the code if I'm not around a PC.