Who doesn’t love to shop a great sale? Or how about buying a regularly priced item with a discount coupon? If you have a Premium Zibbet shop you can easily put everything on sale with a few mouse clicks or create a customized coupon tailor made for your shop.

Sales Mode allows you to discount everything in your shop, including adding free shipping. In less than five minutes you can put your shop in sales mode. This great feature eliminates the need to spend hours re-pricing each item individually or having to issue a refund after a purchase has been completed. It’s so simple…

On your My Zibbet page, scroll down until you see the Promote section on the right side of the screen. Click Sales Mode.

Click Turn On.

Next, enter the percentage discount as a whole number between 1 and 100. If you want to include free shipping, click the appropriate box. Notice that as you enter this information, the text in the box in the lower right corner automatically updates to include your changes. If you want this text to appear under your shop’s welcome message, click the appropriate box. Please note that you have the option of entering your own message in this box. The content of the box will appear in bold on your shop’s front page.

Click Save Changes. The price of every item in your shop will be discounted by the percentage you specified. When the sale is over, simply return to Sales Mode and click Turn Off. It’s that simple. Really!

Creating coupons is almost as simple as putting your shop in Sales Mode. Again, on your My Zibbet page, scroll down until you see the Promote section. Click Coupons & Gift Certificates. The Create A Coupon/Gift Certificate screen will appear. You will first have to select the type of coupon that you want to create.

The names for the different coupon types are very self-explanatory. The options for each type are all the same and appear after you select the type and enter its value.

In the example above, I’ve selected a coupon that will give the buyer a percentage off of the total for the items they choose to purchase. I’ve set the discount for 50% for orders totalling at least $50. Enter zero if you do not want to require a minimum purchase. A coupon code will automatically be generated when you create a coupon. In my example, I’ve opted to enter my own code, “GRAND”, because I’m having a grand opening celebration. I’ve set my coupon to expire at midnight on July 14. If you leave the Expiry date field blank, the coupon will not expire. I’ve chosen to apply the use of my coupon to all items in my shop. However, you can select a single section in your shop if you want to limit the coupon’s use.

I’m limiting the use of my coupon to the first five customers whose orders total $50 or more because I want to encourage buying and I want to reward my first five buyers with a 50% discount. You can leave this field blank if you do not want to limit the number of uses. I’ve not checked the Automatically apply coupon box because I want my buyers to enter the coupon code themselves at check out. By checking this box you can have Zibbet automatically apply your coupon code to eligible orders at the time of check out. I’ve limited my coupon to one use per customer because I want five different customers to benefit from this discount. Finally, I’ve excluded the use of any other coupons that I may have active at the time.

Before you click the Save Changes button, double check your entries to be sure they are what you intended. The details marked with an asterisk (*) cannot be changed after the coupon has been saved!

After you have created your coupon, it is up to you to distribute the coupon code to potential customers. I always include the code at the bottom of my welcome message on my shop’s front page. Facebook and Twitter are great tools for spreading the word about your coupon. Zibbet’s Community Promotions forum is a good place to post an announcement. You can also send your coupon code by e-mail and/or regular mail to a mailing list of subscribers.

While coupons provide your buyers with discounts, gift certificates are for a specific dollar amount and are treated as money in a Zibbet transaction. You have the option of distributing gift certificates yourself or of creating an item listing in your shop for someone to purchase a gift certificate to give to someone else.

To create a gift certificate, select Gift Certificate from the drop down menu. After you enter the dollar value for the gift certificate you can enter the details. In the example below, I’ve set the value of my gift certificate at $50. I’m going to use the automatically generated code. As with coupons, you have the option of entering your own code. Discount coupons can have a one-to-many relationship with buyers. That is, one coupon code can be used by multiple buyers. However, gift certificates must have a one-to-one relationship with a buyer. Each gift certificate recipient must be given a unique code. For this reason, it is probably a good idea to use the automatically generated code for gift certificates. By clicking the Exclusive coupon box, the buyer can’t use a gift certificate in conjunction with a discount coupon or another gift certificate.

In order to sell gift certificates, you need to create one or more gift certificate listings. You may want to offer several denominations for buyers to choose from. Each denomination requires a separate listing. When a gift certificate listing is purchased, you create the gift certificate code as described above and send the code to the buyer. Gift certificates do not expire except by being completely spent. Several Zibbet shops have gift certificate listings. Take a look at these gift certificates for ideas on how you can create your own:

Sales, coupons and gift certificates are shopping pleasures that we all enjoy. Zibbet makes it easy for you to design and implement shopping experiences that are sure to make your customers happy!

For more information on these Zibbet features, be sure to take a look at Coupons & Gift Certificates and New Feature: ‘Sales Mode’.

Best wishes for much succes on Zibbet!

On Sale photograph from The Hat Shop on Zibbet

Vicki is committed to assisting her fellow Zibbeters improve their shops for successful online selling. She is the owner of three Zibbet shops: LOC Design Studio, Denim and Pearls and A Stitch and a Prayer. You can follow Vicki on Twitter and through her LOC Design Studio blog.

Tags: coupon, Coupons and Gift Certificates, Gift Certificate, sale, sales mode, Success on Zibbet