Frequently Asked Questions

How do I start selling Instant Gift Certificates?

It's easy! Put the right link on your website, and customize how the Instant Gift Certificate looks to match the look-and-feel of your website. We've prepared two incredibly helpful documents on how to get things started:

How do I get paid for gift certificates sold from my website?

When a customer purchases an Instant Gift Certificate from your website, SpaBoom stores that customer's credit card information securely for you. You are sent an email notification letting you know that you a sale occured. You then login to your SpaBoom account and retrieve the credit card information, and then run the charge for the amount of the gift certificate as a manual transaction (learn more) through your credit card processing system. Just like you would do for a a phone order.

Benefits to you with this approach are:

  • You receive 100% of the revenue from the sale, at the time of the sale.
  • You can use your existing credit card processing system.
  • Very cost effective for low volume sales.
  • SpaBoom handles fulfillment for you, so you don't have to handle the call, make a sale, process the gift certificate, package it or ship it.
  • Finally, the customer benefits by instant gratification. On average, we're seening sales increase by nearly 100% for holidays and special occasions.

SpaBoom clients who have a large volume of transactions can setup automatic processing using Authorize.net, PayPal Web Payments Pro, or Amazon Payments, all of which are supported by our system and take out the manual step of having to process the credit card for each sale.

How do WE get paid?

That depends. Because your credit card processing options and where the sale originated (your website versus a directory) will influence the fee, it is absolutely best that you get in touch with us directly by Contacting Us.

What is the Instant Gift Certificate experience like for my customers?

Check out our Spa Instant Gift Certficate Demo to experience what your customers experience when purchasing an Instant Gift Certificate (in this case, the demo is oriented from a spa's perspective.

Can I use my own designs for Instant Gift Certificates?

Absolutely! SpaBoom gives you the power to control what Instant Gift Certificate designs you make available to your customers. Whether you simply want to hide few of our designs, add a few of your designs, or completely replace our designs for yours; you are in control!

To make changes to the gift certificate designs presented to customers, go to GC Designs in SpaBoom. If you want to hide one of our designs, simply click on the design and make sure the "Hide?" checkbox is checked.

If you want to add your design, please read Creating Your Own Custom GC Designs, and also be sure to review Custom GC Design Requirements.

Who are you people?

We love both designing software and working in small businesses (heck, we are still one!). A company that can write software to serve the needs of the enterprising business owner was a logical decision, and we've enjoyed every step of the way. Read about some of our experiences and see what our clients have to say to get a feel for us as a company.

How did we get the idea for Instant Gift Certificates

Our founders are your average habitual procrastinators, and have bad habits of waiting until the last minute to buy gifts – especially for their loved ones! Almost three years ago, one of our founders (we cannot tell you which one, for his own protection) “forgot” about his upcoming anniversary until almost midnight the previous day of his anniversary. He decided to buy a gift certificate for his wife at the local spa, but quickly found that none of the local spas sold anything over the Internet. He was completely unsuccessful in delivering a meaningful spa gift to his wife.

After resolving his frantic search for a gift (by driving into town on the morning of his anniversary), he investigated and found out some interesting facts: Small business owners don’t have the time to keep their websites content fresh, don’t have the inclination or money to build decent ecommerce functionality, and that the Internet is an important source of leads and business (if done correctly).

Hence, SpaBoom was born. Inexpensive, great ecommerce functionality for small to medium sized businesses!