Manage Gift Registries

ProductCart has many advanced features that allow both your customers and the store administrator to create, edit, add products to and purchase products from a gift registry. Customers can create and manage their gift registries, or you can help them directly from the Control Panel by having access to features that are very similar to what they have access to from their storefront account menu.

In a nutshell, the Gift Registry portion of the system works as follows:

• You or your customers will create a gift registry and configure a series of options for it
• Products will be added to the Gift Registry. For each product, a desired quantity will be specified (e.g. a customer may need 8 beer mugs, and 12 dinner plates).
• The customer will notify friends and family of the availability of the gift registry, or visitors to the store will find his/her registry through a special search page. They will be able to purchase items off the registry and place an order.
• Both the registry owner and the buyers are notified of the purchase.

In the following section, we will refer to the customer that creates a Gift Registry as the Registrant. Customers can add a new registry to their account by logging into the store, and clicking on the Manage Gift Registries link. To add a registry, customers will click on the Create New Registry button.

In the Control Panel, to add a new Gift Registry, look for a customer, view the customer details, and then click on the View Gift Registries button at the bottom of the page. To view all Gift Registries, select Settings > Manage Gift Registries.

When you add a new Gift Registry, both in the storefront and in the Control Panel, you will first need to set a series of options for the registry itself. Then you will proceed with adding products to the registry. The options are:

• Event Type \\The event type, name, and date are shown wherever information about the event is displayed in the storefront. The event type is just a way for the customer to better identify the event (e.g. wedding, baby shower, etc.)
• Event Name (e.g. Paul & Jennifer’s Wedding)
• Event Date
• Preferred Delivery \\Registrants can specify where they would prefer that products are delivered. The delivery address could be the registrant’s main shipping address, or any other address. In the storefront, if the address is not already listed, the registrant can click on the Add New Address link to add a new one (this link is not available in the Control Panel). A pop-up window is shown. After an address is entered and the pop-up window is closed, the My Shipping Address drop-down menu is automatically refreshed and the new address is listed.
• Hide Registry shipping address
  If the registrant’s preference is to have gifts delivered to his/her address, this option allows the customer to hide that address from being viewed. This is a privacy protection tool. It prevents customers to see the registrant’s address.
• Hide Event
  When the registrant opts to hide an event, other customers that come to the store will not be able to locate the event’s registry when they search the registry database. The only way for them to locate and view the registry will be by clicking on a link that is sent to them using the Notify Friends feature, which is discussed later in this section. In other words, this feature makes the event “private”.
• Notify me of new orders
  When the registrant enables this feature, an email is sent to him/her when an order is placed for a registered item. The email contains details about who purchased the items, when, and what they purchased. Note that the email is sent when the order is processed, and not when it is received.
• Include Gift Certificates
  When this option is checked, Gift Certificates are added to the registry, if the store offers any.
• Active
  When this option is not checked, the registry is taken offline. The registry will not be shown in searches and no one will be able to purchase products off of it.

If one or more registries have already been created, the Manage Gift Registries page offers a summary of all of them. It displays the event name, type, date, whether or not the event is visible to customers that are looking for a registry, how many items have been registered and how many of these items are still available for purchase (in parenthesis).

Here is how the page looks in the storefront.

Customers can add products to their registry by clicking on the Add Products link and browsing the store as they normally do when purchasing products for themselves. Once products have been added to the shopping cart page (pc/viewCart.asp), an Add to Registry button is shown. This button is only shown:

• If the customer is logged in.
• If the customer is the registrant of at least one Gift Registry.
• It is never shown if the customer is a new customer, or if no registries have been added to the customer’s account.

When registrants click on the Add to Registry button, instead of beginning the checkout process they are taken to a page that allows them to select a gift registry from a list of gift registries previously added to their account, and add the products to it.

Once products have been added to the registry, a product summary can be viewed at any time by clicking on the View Products link. For each item in the list, ProductCart shows:

• Items. The amount of units of the product that the registrant would like to receive.
• Avail. The amount of units of the product that have not yet been purchased and therefore are still available for other friends to purchase from the registry.
• This information is not shown for Gift Certificates (if any), since unlimited Gift Certificates may be purchased.

Additional units of existing products can be added to the current ones by entering a number in the corresponding input field. New products can easily be added to the list, and existing products can be removed from it by checking the Remove check box. Note that products can be removed from the registry only if they have not already been purchased.

After creating a Gift Registry and adding products to it, the registrant can easily let friends and family members know about it, right from within your store.

From the Manage Gift Registries page, they will select Notify Friends. When the registry is hidden, this is the only way for people to reach the registry.

To use this feature, registrants will need to enter their name and e-mail address (ProductCart pre-fills these fields based on the customer’s information stored in the database), a list of addresses for family and friends to be notified (each address must be on a separate line), a subject for the e-mail, and the actual message. The message is partially pre-filled with basic event information and a link to the registry. The link to the registry should not be altered.

By allowing customers to create and manage a Gift Registry on your store, you can increase sales, improve customer loyalty, and acquire new customers as family and friends of the registrant visit your store to buy gifts for him/her. Make sure to make the customer’s experience as smooth as possible. In order to do so, review the following suggested tasks:

1. Edit Store Buttons
   There are a number of buttons that are unique to the Gift Registry features. Make sure these buttons match the rest of the buttons used on your site. The buttons are: Create New Registry, Delete Registry, Add To Registry (used on the shopping cart page to add products to a gift registry instead of checking out), Update Registry, Send Messages (used within the Notify Friends feature), and Return To Registry.
2. Add a New Store Link
   On your store, customers will locate a friend’s Gift Registry by using a special new search page. The page is called ggg_srcGR.asp and is located in the pc folder. It allows customers to search the Gift Registry database by name of the registrant or date of the event. Here is a screen shot of how the Gift Registry search page will look.
   
3. Disable Gift Registries
   In ProductCart v3.51 and above you can easily disable the Manage Gift Registries link shown on the customer account home page. It's one of the Store Settings located under the Miscellaneous tab. In previous versions of ProductCart, you can accomplish the same thing with a small code change. Open the file pc/custPref.asp and remove the following lines of code:

   <li><a href="ggg_manageGRs.asp">
   <%response.write dictLanguage.Item(Session("language")&"_CustPref_13")%>
   </a></li>
   

If you decide to create a page that describes to your customers how to create and manage a Gift Registry, feel free to use any of the content of this User Guide.

As mentioned above, customers will be either directly notified of a Gift Registry by the registrant, or will locate the registry through the Gift Registry search page. After finding the right registry, customers will be able to purchase products off the list of registered items.

• Customers will only be able to add to the shopping cart products that appear on the registry list. If they attempt to purchase other products, they will be notified that they should limit the order to products that are on the list. If they wish to purchase products that are not on the registry, they may do so in a separate order.
• During checkout, customers will be able to choose whether to have the products shipped to the registrant’s preferred delivery address or to an address that they specify.
• If the registrant opted to be notified when an order is placed, an email is sent to him/her after the order is processed.