COVID-19 continues to create unprecedented challenges for the retail industry. One positive trend to emerge is the growth in sales of ecommerce gift cards. 

Many consumers are making a conscious effort to support independent brands and retailers as they deal with store closures and stock issues. Purchasing gift cards is recognized as an easy way to inject cash flow. While sales of other products may be faltering and the practice is being widely encouraged on social media.

To support this, Shopify is making their gift card feature available on all plan levels, at no additional cost to their platform users. You may be enabling this feature for the first time as a result. Or maybe you’ve been selling e-gift cards for a while. There are a number of steps you can take to increase their visibility on your ecommerce store.

So, here are four simple tactics that you can implement as a merchant to put your gift cards front and center. 

Create Ecommerce Gift Card Redirects

Many online retailers are struggling to maintain stock levels right now. Instead of sending shoppers who search for sold-out items to ‘out-of-stock’ or ‘no results found’ pages, try creating redirects to customized gift card landing pages. Make sure to adapt your messaging to acknowledge that the shopper’s preferred product isn’t currently available. Encourage them to complete their purchase with a gift certificate at a later date. 

This approach isn’t just for low-inventory items, either. Check your site reports for insights into other search terms that typically produce irrelevant results or fail to convert. Maybe shoppers regularly search for a brand you don’t carry, or a product that’s only available in-store? Consider whether gift cards might be an appropriate suggestion on the landing pages for those keywords.