Introduce a friend option available in ViArt Shop 3.5.13 gives utterly opportunities for your end users to send links to friends and reward them later as well as receive rewards.

To set up an “Introduce a friend” feature, please go to Administration > Products > Products Settings > Merchants & Affiliates Settings tab and tick off a 'Tell a Friend Parameter' check box as shown on the image below:

where

Friend Cookie Expires field allows to define the number of days the link with discount will be valid for use.

When activating this option a special code of a customer who sends the message to his friend is automatically added to a ‘Tell a Friend’ message. The code looks like the following:

http://www.yoursite.com/some_product.html?friend=myname

Alternatively, a customer is able to manually send an invitation to his friend by using his personal code. A customer’s personal code should be placed after the main page link (in the browser address bar). The link is as follows:

http://www.yoursite.com/?friend=myname

A customer’s personal code is his login name or his nickname (if used for registration).

Setting up discounts for invited friends

Discounts for customers or their friends are to be set via Administration > Products > Coupons. Press to add a new ‘order’ or a ‘product’ coupon and select ‘Friends Visits’ tab. There are two settings here:

• Apply discount for users whose friends purchased shop items.
• Apply discount for invited friends.

If you select a first option 'apply discount for users whose friends purchased shop items' a customer's discount will depend on the amount of products purchased on the site (within a certain period of time) by his friends.

Please, see an image below for possible correct settings:

If you select a second option 'apply discount for invited friends' the invited friends will be able to get discounts depending on the amount of products purchased by customers who invited them. The more products are purchased by customers within a certain period the bigger discount their friends get. See an image below:

Note: For a second option it is possible to select certain users to whom provide discounts with. Just untick 'Apply to all friends visit' checkbox and press the 'Select' button to select a user(s).

Let's test a feature for a certain user. Please go to your site, sign in as a user, select any product and proceed to checkout. The image below displays a product before applying a discount:

Further you enter a product discount coupon code (which you previously generated for a certain user with 10% discount). Press the 'Apply' button and 10% discount will be applied to the purchased product. Please, see an image below for approval: