The certificate season
Ask a ceramics or cooking studio when they sell the most, and the answer is December — but not seats. Certificates. A pottery evening is one of the easiest presents to give to someone who has everything.
Most studios sell them by message: someone writes, the owner replies with a card number, the buyer transfers, the owner designs something in Canva, sends a picture, and writes the code in a notebook. Multiply that by sixty in two weeks and it is a second job.
Put the certificate on your booking page
With your own payment gateway connected, a gift certificate can be bought from your booking page by anyone, no account needed: four set amounts or one the buyer types, their name and email, who it is for and a few words. They pay on your gateway’s page; the money goes to you, not to a platform.
Once the payment lands, the buyer gets the voucher by email: one A5 page with your studio’s name, the amount, the code, who it is for and the buyer’s words, a barcode the desk can scan, the expiry if the card has one, and a QR code that opens your booking page. The buyer hands it over; nothing is sent to the recipient behind the buyer’s back.
A certificate bought at midnight on the 23rd should arrive at midnight on the 23rd. That is the whole case for selling them online.
Tell people they can buy one
- A link to the certificate page in your bio from the middle of November.
- A campaign to past guests in early December, by segment, with a stop link.
- A note at checkout for the guests who come in December: the person behind them might want one too.
When they come back in March
Certificates bought in December are spent from February to April. The recipient books a session on your page, and the certificate is redeemed at checkout: the code is scanned or typed, the balance goes down by what was spent, and what remains stays on the card for next time. Anyone with the code can check the balance on your page.
A certificate is redeemed at checkout on a booked session — a private evening, a one-to-one class, or a place in an open class, which is checked out at the till like any visit. Sell certificates for what they can buy, and say so where you sell them.
Keep the season visible
Every certificate is listed with its buyer, amount, balance and status, and the payments sit in the month’s takings. In January you will know how much of March is already paid for — which is a better reason to plan the spring timetable than any guess.