Are you looking for a way to take advantage of the holiday shopping frenzy? Offering holiday deals is a great start, but if you want to maximize your end-of-the-year sales, you’d be wise to try out multiple holiday marketing strategies like offering holiday gift cards.
That’s where holiday gift cards come in. Allowing new and existing customers to purchase in advance can help boost your holiday profits. What’s more, you can pair WooCommerce with an easy-to-use extension to create these festive vouchers yourself.
In this post, we’ll discuss the importance of preparing early for the holiday shopping season. Then, we’ll show you how to create digital holiday gift cards in WooCommerce, providing examples and advice along the way. Let’s get to it!
Why It’s A Good Idea To Prepare For The Holiday Season Early
From Black Friday to after-Christmas discounts, consumers have come to expect major deals over the holiday season. In fact, according to the National Retail Federation, 2025 holiday sales grew 4.1%. A big share of that happens online, too: Adobe reports shoppers spent a record $257.8 billion online in November and December 2025.
With so many juicy online deals tempting shoppers, you’ll want to go above and beyond to make sure your e-commerce store stands out among the rest. Ideally, you should prepare your online shop well ahead of time. To put it simply, if you don’t smooth out the kinks in your holiday offerings early, you could miss out on tons of early-bird shoppers.
One great way to diversify your seasonal deals well in advance is by offering digital holiday gift cards on top of your usual traditional gift cards:
Gift cards are also exactly what people want to unwrap. According to the NRF’s 2025 holiday survey, gift cards were the top gift consumers wanted to receive, requested by 50% of shoppers. If you’re not offering gift cards, you’re likely missing out on a good chunk of holiday sales.
Consumers love the convenience of gift cards. The best thing about them is that they are a guaranteed sale, whereas a discount may never be taken advantage of.
Gift cards can be especially useful around the holidays when your customers have a long list of presents to buy. If they’re out of time and ideas, gift cards can be a lifesaver. From picky teenagers to friends at the other end of the country, almost everyone loves to be able to pick their gifts.
How To Create Holiday Gift Cards In WordPress
One of the best things about working with WordPress is that it allows you to use straightforward tools like WooCommerce. As you may already know, you can choose from tons of WooCommerce extensions to give your store added functionality.
If you’re looking for an option that can help you create and manage a variety of different promotions, you might consider our Advanced Coupons Premium and Advanced Gift Cards plugins:
Advanced Gift Cards can enable your online store to sell gift cards to your customers for their friends, family, and loved ones.
On top of that, when you get Advanced Coupons Premium you’ll get access to all sorts of features that can help you manage and optimize your promotions all year round. These include options for BOGO deals, shipping coupons, and more.
Plus, if you want to maximize your profit potential, you can opt for an Advanced Coupons bundle that includes our Advanced Loyalty Program plugin. This is ideal for converting gift card customers into repeat buyers by offering reward points every time they order from your store.
Once you’ve installed and activated your plugin (ensuring you have the Gift Cards option), all you’ll need to do is create a new gift card product.
In the Product data dropdown, choose Advanced Gift Card. There’s also a Variable Advanced Gift Card type if you’d like to sell a few set values as variations:
Next, set the Gift Card Value. Or, to let shoppers decide, tick Let the customer choose the amount. You can then set a Minimum amount, an optional Maximum amount, a Step increment, a Default amount, and up to five quick-pick preset buttons:
For holiday gifting, also tick Giftable and Allow customers to set a custom delivery date. Shoppers can then send the card straight to a friend with a short message and pick the day it arrives, like Christmas morning. You can also choose the Gift Card Expiry, from a few years to no expiry at all:
Finally, pick a design. Advanced Gift Cards comes with built-in Default, Birthday, and Thank You designs, and you can upload your own custom image for any gift card product.
💡 PRO TIP: You can now replace the built-in gift card designs with your own artwork from the Advanced Gift Cards settings. Swap in a festive version for the holidays, and every gift card using that design picks it up.
Since you’ll be designing a holiday gift card, we recommend including a seasonal design that reflects the occasion to make it more exciting for the recipient of the gift card.
4 Best Holiday Gift Card Examples
Now that you’ve seen how easy it is to create a holiday gift card, we’re going to look at some real-world inspiration. Let’s take a look at some of the best holiday gift card examples out there:
1. Sephora
Since Sephora is one of the most iconic make-up and beauty companies of our time, it’s no surprise that it’s running top-notch holiday marketing and coupon campaigns. In addition to its classic and holiday gift card offerings, Sephora even allows customers to personalize digital presents:
Offering such a diverse collection of gift cards is a great way to appeal to the largest number of customers. To do this, you may want to create an entirely new product category (and subcategories) dedicated specifically to gift cards:
This will allow users to more easily navigate and discover the exact holiday gift card they are looking for.
For example, you could create a category for Classic Gift Cards, like Sephora, but you could also include a holiday section for customers who are excited by the festive aesthetic. If you run a B2B business, you might even want to create a corporate gift card subcategory.
2. Amazon
If you’re looking for inspiration for your holiday gift cards, Amazon is another great place to find them. This is mostly because of the sheer size and scale of its offerings. When it comes to seasonal gift card options, Amazon has it all:
From Christmas to Diwali, this e-commerce giant offers up a highly inclusive seasonal product list. Admittedly, if you’re a small business, you may not have the resources or the need to create such an exhaustive list of holiday gift cards.
3. Nintendo
If you have any young gamers in your life, you may already know that Nintendo also offers a fantastic gift card line-up:
While Nintendo doesn’t have any specific holiday gift card designs, all of its options are extremely eye-catching and fun. They are strongly aligned with the video game company’s visual brand, presenting major characters on each gift card.
For example, you can opt for a card featuring Princess Peach, Luigi, or even Link.
Nintendo also does a good job of providing plenty of options in terms of pricing. For instance, you can gift as low as $10. Providing a wide scale of pricing options is recommended if you want to appeal to the largest amount of people. If you’re unsure which amounts to offer, gift card denomination options are worth planning before the holidays.
4. Walmart
Gift cards can be especially useful if you run a larger e-commerce store with a wide variety of everyday items. That’s because gift cards for this type of online store make extremely practical presents. This is perhaps why this works so well for Walmart’s online shop.
Instead of providing gift cards that are heavily branded with its logo, the way Nintendo does, Walmart goes all out by creating unique designs. What’s more, Walmart makes an effort to appeal to each of its target demographics.
For example, nearly 11 percent of Walmart’s consumers are Hispanic. While they don’t make up the majority, they can still find holiday gift cards that appeal to their culture at Walmart:
Customers can even buy a Dia de Los Muertos gift card. This ‘Day of the Dead’ holiday voucher features vibrant colors and an emblematic candy skull design. From Father’s Day to Halloween, Walmart provides a vast collection of cards for every occasion.
When it comes to your online store, you’d be wise to appeal to your unique audience similarly.
Additionally, as you may have noticed in the example above, Walmart allows users to choose a custom amount for its gift cards. This is also a good idea if you want to give your customers more control over their gift choices.
💡 PRO TIP: You can offer the same flexibility in your own store. With custom amount gift cards in Advanced Gift Cards, shoppers type in any amount within the range you set or tap one of your preset buttons, so you don’t need a separate product for every price point.
Frequently Asked Questions
Can I sell seasonal gift cards for Christmas or Halloween?
Yes. With Advanced Gift Cards, you can create a gift card product for each holiday and upload your own festive artwork as the gift card image. You can also replace the built-in designs with seasonal versions, so every card using that design looks ready for Christmas, Halloween, or any other occasion.
What should I write on a holiday gift card?
Keep it short and warm. A simple greeting like “Happy holidays! Treat yourself to something you love” works well, followed by the card value and how to redeem it. When shoppers send a gift card to a friend, they can also add their own short message to make it personal.
Can customers choose their own gift card amount?
Yes. Tick “Let the customer choose the amount” on an Advanced Gift Cards product, then set a minimum, an optional maximum, a step increment, and up to five preset buttons. Shoppers can type any amount within your range or tap a preset.
When should I start selling holiday gift cards?
Start before Black Friday, which falls on Friday, November 27 this year, so early shoppers can tick gift cards off their list. Because digital gift cards don’t need shipping, keep promoting them right up to Christmas Eve, and let shoppers set a delivery date of Friday, December 25 so the card arrives on Christmas morning.
Conclusion
When it comes to e-commerce, the holiday season brings lots of potential for growth and revenue.
However, offering simple discounts may not be enough if you want to make the most of the online festivities. Luckily, holiday gift cards can help you reach your end-of-the-year goals. Using Advanced Gift Cards, you can provide customers with fun vouchers that are aligned with your visual brand.
In this article, we discussed how you can easily create a holiday gift card using Advanced Gift Cards. Then, we shared the top 4 best use examples you can reference:
Do you have any questions about how to use gift cards during the holiday season? Let us know in the comments section below!
