When Govalo launched in late 2021, it was primarily an app designed to offer a better gift card for Shopify stores. Since then, we’ve developed a suite of new features and integrations that have turned it into much more than just a gift card app.
That being said, many merchants still think of Govalo as a gift card app. In reality, it offers gift subscriptions, giftable products, corporate gifting, and more. These combine to form a fully realized gifting strategy that creates solutions for all kinds of gift purchasing scenarios.
Let’s take a look at some of the features that you can make the most of as part of your strategy when you install Govalo into your store.
#1 - Out-of-stock integration
Available on all plans.
For many customers, gift cards are a solution to a problem they have when buying a gift. It may be they don’t know what to buy, or an item won’t arrive on time so they need an alternative. However, what happens when they do know what item to buy, but it’s out of stock?
In most cases, they need to go back to square one. And if they’re unfamiliar with the product, this can be frustrating. So, give them a solution right on the product page using your gift cards.
Govalo enables merchants on all plans to offer gift cards as an option when a product or variant is unavailable. This gives an alternative option, and will be especially useful during key gifting periods like the holidays when out-of-stocks are more common.
Click here to learn how to set up this feature.
#2 - Multiple images and products for gift cards
Available on all plans.
Whether it’s a birthday card, Christmas wrapping paper, or a “thank you” note, gifts often come visually personalized in some way. It’s just part of the traditional gifting experience. Gift cards can often be seen as impersonal as they look like a stock product, with little to no personalization. Therefore, if you bring gift cards more in line with what customers can do with physical products, you’ll greatly improve their digital gifting experience.
The first way to do this is through multiple images. Govalo allows you to upload up to 20 images per gift card product, giving you scope to design and offer a variety of themed images. These can complement the occasion for which the customer is purchasing the card, giving them the ability to add an extra touch of personalization.
You can also create multiple gift card products, rather than just the one offered by Shopify’s native gift card functionality. The benefit here is that you can create a gift card per occasion, creating and retiring gift cards throughout the year. This not only allows you to upload images for each gift card unique to different occasions, but you can also get clearer data on product sales and preferences you can use to enhance your gifting strategy.
Click here to learn how to set up multiple images, and here for multiple products.
#3 - Giftable products
Available on Premium and Enterprise plans.
A major part of developing a gifting strategy involves solving problems your customers may face when purchasing gifts. Gift cards solve many of these problems, but won’t always suit every customer and their situation. Say a customer finds the perfect gift - maybe it’s a jacket, or even a make-up product. However they don’t know exactly which variant to buy, and especially if it’s a gift they won’t want to go through the returns process as it kind of takes away from the experience for their recipient.
Let’s instead make that situation as easy as possible to solve using Govalo’s giftable products feature.
This feature displays the option to purchase a product as a gift on selected product pages. Here’s how it works:
- - When a customer opts to send a product as a gift, they enter the details of the recipient including a gift note and selected delivery date.
- - Govalo sends an email letting the recipient know they’ve been sent a gift.
- - The recipient is prompted to redeem and select their preferred product variant and enter their shipment details.
- - Once complete, the original customer is sent a prefilled checkout to complete the purchase and the merchant fulfills the order using the provided details.
This makes the process of selecting and purchasing gifts that much easier for every customer.
Click here to learn how to set up this feature.
#4 - Webhooks
Available on Premium and Enterprise plans.
When you build your online store, the platform you choose is just the beginning. Shopify allows you to customize your store experience with apps, integrations, automations, and more. Webhooks are an additional tool that allows you to build unique integrations without the need for app’s official integration.
Govalo’s Premium and Enterprise merchants have access to webhooks so that you can use services like Mesa and Alloy to connect events in Govalo to anything in your store. This means your team can design custom workflows totally unique to your store, so you can deliver the exact experience you want for your customers.
If you aren’t already using this feature, it’s one that can totally change how Govalo works within your stack and is worth checking out.
#5 - Gift subscriptions
Available on Premium and Enterprise plans.
Subscription commerce has changed how customers engage with ecommerce in their day-to-day lives. For many merchants, it has also led to high growth, higher retention, and stronger customer relationships. And what else is highly valuable for merchants? Gifting. Govalo integrates with both Recharge and Bold Commerce, meaning that if you’re using either to power your subscriptions you can start offering them as gifts.
So, what does this mean in practice?
Govalo’s integrations with Bold and Recharge take all the frustration out of the process of purchasing a subscription as a gift. When a subscription is purchased as a gift, the customer can add a gift note and select the delivery date much the same as a gift card. Or, they can have it sent to themselves to gift however they want. The key thing though is that the subscription doesn’t start until the recipient redeems it, and they create their own account complete with billing information. This is contrary to the usual experience where the subscription starts right away and requires the customer to pause, then later hand over the account to their recipient.
This feature is useful for merchants who already engage heavily with subscriptions, and especially in high gifting verticals such as food and beverage, and beauty. During key gifting periods throughout the year, gift subscriptions will serve as perhaps an even more attractive option than gift cards.
Click here to learn how to set up this feature using Recharge, and here if using Bold Commerce.
#6 - Bulk/Corporate gifting
Available on Enterprise plans.
What’s better than selling a gift card? Selling hundreds in a single transaction. Corporate gifting is a huge market, set to be worth over $312 billion by the end of 2025. Whether it’s to show appreciation to employees, a holiday gift for clients, or as part of a promotional event, corporate buyers are ready to buy gift cards. The only problem is that it usually takes for them to get in touch with a brand and go through a whole purchasing process to buy them in bulk.
That is unless you’re a merchant using Govalo for your gift cards. The app has a bulk gift card purchase feature that makes it easy for corporate customers to buy 100s or 1000s of gift cards in a single transaction right from your storefront.
All customers have to do is upload a CSV file with all the details of the gift cards they want to purchase, complete checkout, and Govalo takes care of the rest. They can download a template to make sure everything is formatted correctly, which includes gift notes and delivery dates.
Click here to learn how to set up this feature.
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