Points

Reward customers for spending with you, and give them somewhere to spend the reward.

Route

/admin/points

Overview

Customers earn points on every order. They spend them in a store you stock: site credit, competition tickets, physical items you post out, or digital items you email. You decide how fast points build up and what they're worth.

Everything is off until you switch it on, and turning it on doesn't back-date anything: customers start earning from their next order, not their last hundred.

Points vs site credit. They are not the same thing and it's worth being clear about the difference before you set your rates:

	Site credit	Points
What it is	Money, in £	A separate currency you invent
Where it comes from	Wins, refunds, your grants, top-ups	Earned automatically on orders
What it buys	Anything on the site, at checkout	Only what you put in the points store
Can it be withdrawn	No	No

Points are the loyalty layer that sits above credit. A customer can spend points to get site credit, which is one of the things you can stock, but never the other way round.

Switch points on

1. Go to Settings → Points.
2. Turn on Enable points.
3. Set Points earned per £1 spent. One point per pound is the easy starting point, but any number works. 10 per pound makes balances look bigger, which some sites prefer.
4. Choose what points are earned on:
   • Card payments only: customers earn on what they actually pay by card.
   • Card payments and site credit: they also earn when they pay with credit.
5. Save.

Customers now start earning. They can see their balance on their wallet page.

Which should I pick for "earned on"?

Card payments only is the safer default: you reward new money coming in.

Card payments and site credit is more generous, and it rewards customers for spending credit they've won. Read the warning under Don't let your rates feed each other before you choose it.

What never earns points

• Buying site credit. A top-up never earns, whichever option you pick. If it did, a customer would earn once for buying credit and again for spending it, collecting twice on the same pound.
• Free postal entries. No money changed hands.
• Free tickets won as prizes. Same reason.

Points are always rounded down, per order. At 1.5 points per pound, a £9.99 order earns 14 points, not 15, so nobody can build a balance faster by splitting a basket.

Reward people for turning up

Points normally only arrive when someone buys something, which means the customers who already spend get rewarded and everyone else gets nothing. Give points for visiting changes that: a customer collects points the first time they open your site each day, whether or not they buy anything.

This is the setting that builds a daily habit. It's also the one that costs you money for nothing in return, so set the number low and read the figure underneath it.

Under Settings → Points, turn on Give points for visiting and set Points per visit. Once your store is open, the page tells you what a daily visitor would collect in a month and roughly what that's worth in site credit. Check that number is one you're happy to hand out for free.

A few things worth knowing:

• It's a visit, not a login. Customers stay signed in for weeks, so waiting for them to log in again would reward almost nobody. The points land on their first visit of the day.
• Once a day, whatever they do. Opening ten pages earns one lot of points, not ten.
• The day rolls over at midnight, UK time, for everyone.
• Customers on a break don't collect. Anyone who has self-excluded, or whose account is locked, earns nothing while that lasts. They start collecting again from their first visit after it ends, and they don't lose anything for the days in between.
• Set it to 0 and the award is skipped entirely, same as turning it off.

Name them what you like

Under Settings → Points:

• What you call them: "Points", "Gems", "Coins", whatever suits your brand. Use the plural; it's always shown after a number.
• Icon: any emoji.

Customers see the two together after the figure, like 1,250 🪙 Points. Because it's always shown that way, you never have to worry about "1 Point" versus "2 Points".

Stock the store

Nothing is spendable until there's something to spend it on.

1. Go to Settings → Points and turn on Open the points store.
2. Set Points needed for £1 of site credit. See Pricing site credit below.
3. Go to Points in the sidebar and click Add item.
4. Choose what it is:

Type	What the customer gets	When they get it
Site credit	£ added to their wallet	Straight away
Competition tickets	Tickets in a competition you choose	Straight away
Physical item	Something you post out	When you post it
Digital item	A code, a download, a link	When you email it

5. Fill in the name, an optional description and image, and the price in points.
6. Set Stock if you only have so many, or leave it blank for unlimited.
7. Save.

The store lists items cheapest first, so a customer scrolls from what they can afford today towards what they're saving for. There's nothing to arrange by hand; reprice an item and it moves itself. Your Points list in the admin is sorted the same way, so what you see is the order customers see.

The store lives at /points-store on your site. Anyone can browse it, signed in or not; it's a shop window as much as a checkout. They only need an account when they hit Redeem.

TIP

There's a Points Store link in your site footer as soon as you open the store. To put it in your main menu too, add it under Pages & CMS → Menus.

Pricing site credit

Site credit items are the one type you don't price by hand. You set the credit amount (say £5) and the price comes from your Points needed for £1 of site credit rate.

At 100 points per £1, a £5 credit item costs 500 points. Change the rate to 200 and every credit item in your store reprices instantly. No going through them one by one, and two credit items can never end up disagreeing with each other.

If you want one bundle to be a deliberate bargain, tick Charge a different price for this one and set the points yourself. The store shows how it compares to your rate.

Changing the rate never changes what a past redemption cost. Someone who paid 500 points for £5 last week still shows as having paid 500.

A note on competition tickets

If the competition sells out, or the customer is already at your per-customer ticket limit, the redemption is refused and they keep their points. They are never given part of what they paid for.

Digital items

Not everything worth giving away is postable. A discount code for your shop, a downloadable guide, a link to something members-only: pick Digital item and it works like a physical item with the posting replaced by an email from you.

The difference that matters: a physical item can't be redeemed at all unless the customer has a full delivery address saved, and plenty of customers have never had a reason to add one. An email item asks nothing of them. They're told you'll send it to the address on their account, and it's that address you'll see in the queue.

Nothing is stored against the item and nothing is sent automatically. You send the code or the link yourself, from wherever you'd normally send it, then mark it as sent.

Fulfil a redemption

Site credit and competition tickets are handed over the moment a customer redeems. Physical and digital items need you.

1. Go to Points and open the Redemptions tab. It opens on Waiting, which is the queue that needs you.
2. Click the eye on a row to open it.
3. Post it to shows the customer's address as it was when they redeemed. Use this one. If they've changed their address since, this is still the one they were told you'd post to. For an email item you'll see Email it to instead, with the address on their account.
4. Optionally add a note (a tracking number, say).
5. Click Mark as in progress while you're packing or preparing it, then Mark as sent once it's gone.

The Points entry in your sidebar carries a badge showing how many are waiting.

Cancel a redemption

If you can't fulfil something, open it and click Cancel and refund. The customer gets their points straight back and the item goes back in stock.

You can only do this before you mark it as sent. Once it's sent, it's sent, and refunding the points then would mean the customer got both.

Customers who redeem anything that lands in your queue get a confirmation email: for a physical item it shows the address you'll post to, and for an email item it shows the address you'll send to, so they can tell you if it's the wrong one. Instant redemptions don't get an email; the customer sees the result on screen and it appears in their wallet or ticket history immediately.

Show what an order will earn

Under Settings → Points, turn on Show what an order will earn at checkout. Customers then see a line under their total: "You'll earn 25 🪙 Points with this order".

It's a nudge, not a promise about a specific number. The figure is confirmed when the order completes.

Don't let your rates feed each other

If you earn points on site credit and your earn rate is at least as high as your credit rate, you have a loop that never runs out: every £1 of credit a customer redeems earns back at least £1's worth of points.

The settings page warns you when your two rates are in that position. It's a warning rather than a block, because you might have a reason, but check it before you save.

The safe way to be generous is to raise your earn rate while keeping the credit rate well above it. At 1 point per £1 earned and 100 points per £1 of credit, a customer needs £100 of spending to earn £1 of credit. That's a 1% reward, and it can't run away.

Refunds

Refunding an order doesn't take points back. A customer who buys, earns and then gets refunded keeps what they earned.

This is a deliberate trade for simplicity, and the same way referral rewards already work. It's only worth money to someone if your rates are generous, which is the other reason to keep the credit rate well above the earn rate.

Who can do what

Role	Store items	Redemptions queue	Rates and naming
Administrator	View and edit	View and update	Yes
Shop Manager	View and edit	View and update	Yes
Marketing	No access	No access	No

Shop Managers run the redemptions queue for the same reason they run the winners queue: posting things out is the job.

Marketing has no access at all: the redemptions queue and points balances show what individual customers have spent, and Marketing is deliberately kept away from customer financials.

Common questions

Can customers turn points into cash? No. Points buy what's in your store, and nothing in it can be withdrawn, site credit included.

What happens to points if I turn the feature off? Balances are kept exactly as they are. Customers stop earning and the store disappears. Turn it back on and everything is where they left it.

Do points expire? Not at the moment. Worth keeping in mind if you turn on points for visiting: those balances build up on their own and nothing ever drains them except your store.

Does a customer have to do anything to claim their visit points? No. They land automatically on their first visit of the day. There's no button to press and nothing to remember.

Can I close the store but keep customers earning? Yes. Turn off Open the points store and leave Enable points on. Useful while you're restocking.

Can I give a customer points by hand? Not from the admin at the moment. Support can do it if you need a one-off correction.

Related

• Wallets & Withdrawals: site credit and cash balances, and how customers buy credit directly.
• Referrals: one-off rewards between two customers.
• Influencer Affiliates: ongoing commission paid to influencers on the players they bring in.