Whether you are an influencer with a growing TikTok or Instagram following, a podcaster, or an entrepreneur you may have resale partnerships with brands and using affiliate links. As an influencer or entrepreneur offering promotional vouchers and discounts for partner brands and businesses, how can you create a smoother voucher redemption experience? In this post, we will outline how you can set up a simple solution to sell and issue digital vouchers through your own website, using Shopify as an example.

Why You Should Be Selling Your Digital Vouchers Directly

If you are a social media influencer on Instagram or a podcast host, you may be including a promotional code for a brand partner to help their sales. But currently, you do not know how many offers are actually purchased or redeemed once your audience leaves your site. As the world has increasingly relied on ecommerce and online retail channels, taking a proactive step to not only promote brands with affiliate links, but directly sell vouchers can help you learn more about your audience and convert them into customers for both you and your brand partners.

As an online influencer or entrepreneur, let’s say you want to set up your own branded online store where followers and customers can quickly purchase discount vouchers for the businesses and partners you promote. What are ways you can quickly build a professional store to test sales? What are ecommerce features to take advantage of and potential pitfalls?

As a Shopify Expert, we are going to focus on the Shopify platform, but you can also adapt these principles when evaluating other ecommerce solutions. When exploring an online retail solution, here are the factors you should consider:

• Using a mobile-responsive store theme
• Checking that products can be easily added
• Making use of ecommerce tools and apps
• Testing the redemption flow for your products

Using Shopify to Sell Evouchers for Partners

Here’s an example scenario: you have a $10 off discount for a partner restaurant, so you can sell a $50-value voucher when the customer pays $40. When one of your customers makes a purchase, they get a unique QR code, which they can redeem when the restaurant scans it. By using this automated process, you are able to track the number of sales you make and ensure that a voucher is marked as redeemed once it is used. Vouchers can be used for discounted service packages, special gift items with a store purchase, and other promotional schemes.

Shopify offers many beautiful no-code store themes that can get you started in days and offers a 14-day free trial. You can test multiple themes, from single-page ones for restaurants to ones for larger product catalogues. You can explore Shopify’s themes here.

On Shopify, you can create products without any coding, upload photos and media, and select a price. Add the vouchers for your brand partners or digital products and you can begin selling immediately. For example, you can create an item called “Gift Chocolates”, set the price, and create QR code that will act as the digital voucher. As a digital product, you do not even have to worry about order fulfillment and shipping. Instead, you can use our app, Wave Vouchers, to generate a unique QR code for every item purchased, which is e-mailed to your customer and can be redeemed offline when scanned.

Shopify comes with powerful ecommerce features such as multiple payment options, including Shop Pay (which takes credit card payments), PayPal, and local payment gateways that may include WeChat and Alipay. If you already have a business account to transfer funds, then you will likely be able to set up a payment method within a few days to begin earning. As Shopify offers solutions that vary by country, check the list of payment options for your country here.

Finally, make use of the Shopify App marketplace to find apps that meet your needs, such as e-mail integration, or a rewards program.

You can also download our free Shopify Guide for Hong Kong to get all the details of setting up your Shopify store, from theme selection and multi-langauge options to adding products and payment options.

Create a Seamless Redemption Process

When selling digital products like vouchers, an automated redemption system creates a great user experience for both your customers and the brand partners that you are working with.

Currently, many online businesses creating vouchers have a hassle with offline redemption because offline staff need to manually find an order number. Shopify by default creates unique order numbers, but it does not automatically generate unique QR codes, which means that staff in stores will have to manually search for an order number to verify it. You can use our app, Wave Vouchers, to fill the gap between an online order and a quick online scan redemption to offer your customers and business partners a superior shopping experience.

Communication is also key. Make sure you clearly communicate with your brand partners how your QR codes work and that their store staff have a clear step-by-step process to scan and mark your vouchers as redeemed. The faster your brands can process a voucher, the better a customer experience, which reflects well on both you and your brand partner. Also communicate with customers clearly that they are purchasing a voucher and they need to have a valid e-mail to receive the QR code to scan. Reach out to our product team to learn more about how you can integrate vouchers.

Marketing Your New Store

Having an online store is not enough. Once your online store is set up, marketing the store will help you get initial traffic. In addition to any social media or e-mail marketing channels that you may already have, consider leveraging Shopify’s Facebook and Google integrations to run ads directly from the Shopify admin. This will help you monitor the channel performance and your conversions as well.

Ecommerce platforms like Shopify have made it easier than ever for everyone to start selling online. By staying ahead of the curve and offering your audience a direct way to purchase from you, you are able to have more access to community data and grow your business. If you would like to learn more about how you can create vouchers, explore the Wave Vouchers app and reach out to our product team!

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