BCSE Reward Points - Strategy and Implementation discussion

carpeperdiem · #1 03-12-2009, 12:55 PM

We are going to install the BCSE reward points mod.

Just wondering how others have structured their reward program, and if anyone can share how they did it, and real-world success stories.

Not asking for technical guidance -- but rather, marketing and merchandising discussion.

Our initial idea:

$1 spent = 1 point
One tell-a-friend = 1 point
One review posted = 1 point
New customers and new signups get 50 points at registration for free (have not thought about how to automate this).

minimum to redeem: 150 points
(150 points = $15 store credit applied at checkout)

essentially a 10% discount to the loyal customer for repeat business -- this is in addition to any sales or specials or bonus points.

Anyone care to share what worked for them vs. what didn't?
Any edits to make the mod better?
If you were doing this all over again, what would you do differently?
Did you "name" your points program?
Did you ever offer bonus points for a product or category - and did this achieve positive results?

I am going to install the mod now, but looking for some guidance from the brain trust.

Thanks,

Jeremy

Freakmode · #2 03-13-2009, 01:20 AM

Hi

We have been running it live for about 18months now.

For every ё1 spent you get 1 point

10 points equals ё1 discount off your next order with no minimum spend, we have a couple of people taking the pesh and get a free order but not many.

We have no expiry time on them.

We give 100% for customer referrals this gets used quite a bit.

The only issues you have with the rewards points mod is that if the initial customers payment does not go through then the points are lost until you cancel the transaction and they are put back on their account.

We get quite a few phone calls with customers wanting to know where their points have gone.

The other issue is if you are using AOM - if we change a customers order when they have used reward points the price gets screwed up badly (sometimes several thousand pounds out)

All in all a good mod but I would say that less than 5% of our customers actually use the points system despite getting emailed monthly with a statement of how many they have.

We probably have about ё30K in unused points.

It would be good if the mod made it more clear at checkout how many points you have available and their worth and prompted the customer if they want to use them or now. I am not sure if this would need to be done by Altered Cart though as we use 1 Page Checkout.

All in all a good mod and its make you a little different to the competition.

carpeperdiem · #3 03-13-2009, 07:02 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 01bodyjewellery

We give 100% for customer referrals this gets used quite a bit.

What do you mean by this? 100% of what?

Quote:

The other issue is if you are using AOM

Hmm... do you have the version 2 of the mod? There is AOM code in there...

Quote:

We probably have about ё30K in unused points.

LOL. Like the airlines. And the accountants (at least in the US) require us to book these as a liability!

Quote:

It would be good if the mod made it more clear at checkout how many points you have available and their worth and prompted the customer if they want to use them or now. I am not sure if this would need to be done by Altered Cart though as we use 1 Page Checkout.

Agreed. I am looking to improve the interface for the customer.

For example:

1. You must be a registered customer to earn and redeem points, but if your store allows anon chckout (we do) then we have to do a better job of encouraging customers to make an account, so that they can get their points.

2. Along with the anon customer issue, the anon customer will see "0 points earned" on their invoice -- I need to put an if in there to only show points to registered customers.

3. Using/redeeming points is somewhat of a mess. I'm going to look into ways to make it a) easier, b) obvious and c) idiot proof.

4. I think the points balance needs to be more prominent -- like in the auth box next to the username...

5. Tell-a-friend -- to me a very important part of this -- BUT the customer must be logged in before they can eve access the page. (BTW, I renamed the tell-a-friend page from crp_referral.php to the name of my points program -- every time I look at crp_referral, I think "crap referral" -- not a good page name.

Since we also have a tell-a-friend TAB on each product page, I'm going to try to integrate. --- I see a few obstacles:

a) if the customer is not logged in, we want to make a friendly page that is very clear, that they should either log-in or register, so that they can take advantage of this. BUT -- I do not want to give up the tell-a-friend for non-registered visitors... so I need to embed something -- and then provide an opportunity to register, then tell a friend -- see, it's getting complicated.

b) if customer is not logged in or registered, how do we get them to do this? What's the clean and pretty way?

My first task is to {if} out all the code for non-logged in or anon customers. I'll keep a log of what I do.

If anyone has a site with this system installed, and they don't mind me looking around, please PM. And PLEASE share any helpful ideas or concepts. This system can be much better if we simply de-geek it.

BCSE · #4 03-13-2009, 07:38 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by carpeperdiem

This system can be much better if we simply de-geek it.

I'll try to refrain from taking offense to that.... :P

I hope everyone knows, we are always open to revamping/improving our software. Especially if it's something that many people would want. If you have any DE-GEEKING suggestions...Drop us an email to support and we'll see what we can do and put it in our next opening.

Remember, this module was made many moons ago( 5 years?), we have done some revamping of it, but not had enough resources to do what I want with it. So if you have suggestions, let us know.

We don't know of any X-AOM current problems btw. So make sure you have the code in there that is part of one of the optional installs.

Thanks,

Carrie

carpeperdiem · #5 03-13-2009, 08:45 AM

Quote:

I'll try to refrain from taking offense to that

Carrie, I still love you! By its nature, ecom applications will have geek all over them... when I say, "de-geek" I am referring to language, and making the customer experience easier.

For example, if-ing out some display code for anon customers (or, even better, how about if we make it a marketing tool -- "...As a registered customer, you would have earned x points. Register now and we'll restore your points and you'll get all the benefits of joining name-of-program".)

I am going to share all my edits with the community and of course, you are more than welcome to use/lose as you want.

SO far, it appears that the code is solid and does what I expect it to do. So thank you. This is entirely about integration and user experience. A tech-savvy customer base will have different expectations than my SAHM (stay-at-home-mom) crowd. Not that there aren't SAHM's that are tech-savvy, but I use my wife as the first round of usability testing. She is the first to bitch about a difficult to use site, and what's obvious to me, is not always to her. In fact, what's obvious to me is usually so far off her radar, I have to really try to think like her when designing interface elements.

In addition to the elements I discussed before, I will be trying to make the "pay with points" transaction easier and more intuitive. FOr example, for anon customers, in my opinion, the option to pay with points should be hidden. Also for registered customers with point balance of zero. Then, for customers with points, the pay with points should be before you get to any payment options. Thinking out loud: maybe this could go into an iframe/shadowbox. I think this is all cosmetic.

And of course, I'm stripping as much table code out of the mod as possible -- yeah, 4.1.x is a table based system, but that doesn't make it mandatory for every little piece of code.
I will share my edits with the community.

Still anxious to hear from anyone who's lived with this mod for a while and has anything to share.

Jeremy

BCSE · #6 03-15-2009, 08:34 AM

I know I was just teasing.

The original reason, just FYI, for the points being a "payment method" was to reduce changes to X-cart. But possibly this isn't necessary anymore.

You can "fake it" and do it earlier if you know what you're doing I bet.

I could try to comment on how points do for us. We find a lot of people do reward points on our site. Maybe because it's more geared toward business owners. There are those few people that have thousands of points worth lots of $, but most people regularly use theirs.

We do:
Spend $1, you get 1 point.
Every 15 points equal $1.
That equates to approximately 6.67% of your order back as a discount on your next order.

So you spend $100 with us, you get $6.67 back on your next order.

I think a lot of reward programs are much smaller percent, like 1-3%.

Carrie

carpeperdiem · #7 03-15-2009, 04:27 PM

We've been systematically putting things in place.

A few concepts: the experts seem to agree that the "carrot and stick" approach is what works best for many retailers... the customer wants a "goal" to work toward, and simply getting a small discount on their next order is not enough of an incentive for many. Therefore, we set a threshold for redemption... in our case, 150 points. However, we are gifting every registered customer 50 points upon the program's inception, and we are giving 50 points to all new registered customers.

To do this:

1. We established a membership group, with the program name;
2. If not a member of the group, no redemption method avail at checkout (use payment methods in the admin);
3. IF a member of the group, available points are now displayed in the payment methods field.
4. IF a member of the group, an if either displays current points, but "not enough yet" message, or;
5. If a member of the group, an offer to redeem (if threshold is met) and the redemption field is pre-filled with the available points (and field size is now only 6 characters -- if someone has more than 99999 points, it is unlikely that they will be redeeming them without discussing this with us.

here's some code:

1. /customer/main/payment_points.tpl
this replaces what came stock -- I could use language variables, but I didn't.

Code:

<div style="width: 480px; border: 3px solid #FF07CE; padding: 9px; margin-left:auto; margin-right:auto; " >

{if $points ge 150}
<h4>You have <span id="checkoutPoints" style="font-weight:bold;">{if $points ne ""}{$points}{else}0{/if}</span> ProgramName points available for redemption.</h4>

{$lng.lbl_crp_points_payment_cust}&nbsp;<input type="text" name="points_to_use" size="6" value="{$points}"/>

{else}
You have {if $points ne ""}{$points}{else}0{/if} ProgramName points. Once your ProgramName points total reaches 150, you will be able to redeem your points here. Please select an alternate payment method above.
{/if}
</div>

2. IF YOU USE Altered Cart's one-page checkout - and you want to put the amount of points into the payment method extras field, do this:

file: /skin1/modules/Checkout_One/checkout_one.tpl

FIND:

Code:

{if $payment_methods[payment].payment_details}{$payment_methods[payment].payment_details}
{/if}

REPLACE WITH:

Code:

{if $payment_methods[payment].payment_details}
{* BEGIN var in payment details mod *}
{* {$payment_methods[payment].payment_details} *}
{eval var=$payment_methods[payment].payment_details assign="paydtls"}
{$paydtls}
{* END var in payment details mod *}
{/if}

Then, in payment options, add this to the "special instructions" field:

Code:

Pay with ProgramName Points! (10 points = $1.00)<br />
You have <strong>{$points}</strong> ProgramName points.

A note to Altered Cart C1 users: If you have multiple payment methods and you hide a payment method ONLY to a specific membership level, the white/grey color loop in payment options will get messed up if you hide the payment method NOT in the last spot. For example, if you choose to make the ProgramName payment method POS 2 out of 4, and the customer is not a member, then it will look grey/grey (instead of grey/white) - the workaround is to make the membership-only payment method the last POS.

3. IF YOU DO NOT USE Altered Cart's one-page checkout - and you want to put the amount of points into the payment method extras field, do this:

file: /skin1/customer/main/checkout.tpl

FIND:

Code:

<td>{$payment_methods[payment].payment_details|default:"&nbsp;"}</td>

REPLACE WITH:

Code:

{* BEGIN edit to include smarty var in payment details *}
{* <td>{$payment_methods[payment].payment_details|default:"&nbsp;"}</td> *}
{eval var=$payment_methods[payment].payment_details assign="paydtls"}
<td>{$paydtls|default:"&nbsp;"}</td>
{* END edit to include smarty var in payment details *}

(thanks to Ralph Day "geckoday" for this code!)

Then, in payment options, add this to the "special instructions" field:

Code:

Pay with ProgramName Points! (10 points = $1.00)<br />
You have <strong>{$points}</strong> ProgramName points.

4. We added ProgramName points balance to auth.tpl

AFTER:

Code:

{$login}<br />{$lng.txt_logged_in}<br />
<br />

INSERT:

Code:

Your ProgramName point balance:&nbsp;{$points}<br /><br />

This is part one -- the next step is to make a static embedded page with ProgramName info and ways to register, etc...

More to follow...

carpeperdiem · #8 03-16-2009, 12:41 PM

Quote:

I tried to find the files/templates that you mentioned in step 3 and step 4, but could not locate them

Becky,

Are you using an FTP client? If not, you will only make a mess. DO NOT use the xcart wysiwyg editor. Remember, if it's a template (.tpl) it's going to be in skin1. SO when we refer to auth.tpl it's really, /skin1/auth.tpl

As for ezCheckout, I am not familiar with this code, and I'm sure if you look though the ezcheckout templates, you will find the var, $payment_methods[payment].payment_details in there --- then simply substitute the new code for the old.

I started this thread to discuss the creative elements of reward points, not to address specific template editing issues or discussion of text editing tools. Hope we can stay on-topic.

abeight · #9 03-29-2009, 01:17 PM

I think step 4 should be in authbox.tpl not auth.tpl.

amy2203 · #10 05-14-2009, 03:09 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by 01bodyjewellery

Hi

All in all a good mod but I would say that less than 5% of our customers actually use the points system despite getting emailed monthly with a statement of how many they have.

Can I ask how you email them all a monthly statement? I'm looking to do the same, but struggling to find a good solution,

Thanks,