Regular customers: why a point balance outlasts the next voucher

The second order decides the maths

The cost of the first sale is a one-off: the ad, the click, the new-customer discount. Whether it was worth it is settled by the second and third order. A customer who buys once and disappears is almost always a loss; one who buys four times carries the advertising for three more.

That is why a loyalty programme is not a discount instrument but an investment in the second order. It only costs you something when the customer actually comes back - unlike an ad, which costs money even when nobody buys.

A voucher is an event, a point balance is a state

A voucher code works exactly once. It arrives by email, it is redeemed or it expires - and the relationship is back to zero. A point balance sits permanently in the customer account and grows with every order. It is visible between two purchases and does not depend on an email that might land in the spam folder.

Voucher

one-off, ends on redemption, works only while the email is read

Point balance

permanent, grows with every purchase, visible on every visit

Consequence

the next order has a reason that cannot expire

That is the real difference: with a voucher the shop has to create the occasion. With a point balance the customer brings it along.

What a growing balance does in a customer's head

A balance that is already halfway to the next reward feels like something you own - and people do not give up what they own. That is exactly why the loyalty page in the customer account shows more than the balance: it shows how far it is to the next reward and to the next tier.

It becomes visible in four places in the shop:

• Product page - "With this product you earn X loyalty points."
• Cart - the points this order adds, per line and in total
• Customer account - balance, pending points, loyalty journey, goals, recent movements
• Account menu - a permanent box with the balance, if you switch it on

Each of these four places can be switched off on its own. If you want a quiet start, show only the customer account and add the catalogue hints later.

Six orders of 80 euros, with the shipped defaults

The example below uses nothing but the values the plugin ships with: one point per euro spent, 100 points make one euro of discount, release after 14 days. None of it is tuned to look good - these are the defaults.

One percent is deliberately modest. It is enough to grow visibly in the customer account and little enough not to have to price it in. If you want to reward more strongly, turn up the earn rate - but only once the programme is running.

What the programme really costs

A point only costs money once it is redeemed. Actual cost is therefore always below the theoretical value of every point issued - in practice not every customer redeems everything.

Issued

points that have been credited

In circulation

valid points nobody has redeemed yet - the open liability

Redeemed

points turned into discount or a reward - the real expense

Expired

points that ran out - cost that never happened

These four figures sit on the plugin dashboard, together with the redemption rate and the euro value of the open liability. That last figure is what your accounting needs for a provision.

No customer account, no points

Points belong to a customer, not to an order - otherwise there would be nobody to own them. A guest order therefore earns nothing. That sounds like a limitation but it is the strongest argument for an account your shop has: whoever wants to collect creates one.

Registration and newsletter sign-up are rewarded with 50 and 30 points respectively out of the box. Both run through a shipped flow and can be changed in value or switched off.

The waiting period is your returns protection

Points are created with the order as pending. They only become redeemable once two conditions are met: the order has reached the configured state (default "Completed") and the minimum age has passed (default 14 days).

That way nobody can pay with the points of an order they are about to send back. If an order is cancelled while the points are still pending, they simply fall away; if they are already valid, the reversal runs as a counter-booking that stays visible in the history.

An invisible programme binds nobody

The most common mistake is not the wrong earn rate but a programme that never appears in the shop. If the balance sits in the customer account and nowhere else, a customer only learns about it once they have come back anyway.

That is why the product-page hint is switched on out of the box. It is the only place where a point balance matters before the purchase.

The settings for this use case

Four of them are enough to start with. All the others are described one by one in the manual.