PointLoyalty - loyalty programs online

PointLoyalty company released an integration module for shopping cart solution from KonaKart company.
Using PointLoyalty integration plugin will give following advantages to net-shop owner:
- Lots of options in creating bonus reward programs for customers. Bonus programs are managed in SaaS solution from PointLoyalty company.
- Informing customers about current reward offers, allow customers to track their purchase record, earned bonus points and past redemptions.

Flexible plugin and member console settings make possible to customize application look and feel and tune it according website design.
Tunable things are:
- Information displayed to customers – like bonus points, purchase record.
- Member Console design – colors, fonts, etc
- Customer notification options

This solution will be useful for all KonaKart-powered netshop owners and to all those interested in online integration with PointLoyalty system.

About PointLoyalty company:
PointLoyalty company offers SaaS system for online management of bonus loyalty programs. For any size and type of business there is an effective solution for consumer rewards program management.

See more details on the company website
http://www.pointloyalty.com

While testing the integration with e-commerce systems and after analyzing feedback from our customers who also do integration with PointLoyalty Manager we decided to extend our external access interfaces (REST API, web services). New features will help simplify integration works. We will publish new Java and PHP libraries in a couple of weeks and update system’s server part. New libraries will be backward compatible of course.
Sometimes we get requests to introduce same REST API for loyalty programs and offers management and to provide a way for autonomous processing without human intervention. At this point in time we don’t intend to extend the API in this direction.
Reasons:
- Programs and offes are relatively stable. Once you have defined rules it is unlikely you want to change them frequently. There is no necessity to dynamically create or change them.
- Besides, users can get confused in all different kinds of rules and programs we have in our system (simplicity vs. versatility). In our PointLoyalty Flash GUI we simplified a lot of things for loyalty program managers, but it is really hard to provide simple and powerful external API for this task.

We don’t want our users to get confused – use our rich Flash client to define your bonus offers and you will not get lost in a multitude of options our system provides.

Development news.

We finished development of a plugin for e-commerce solution http://www.konakart.com.

The following functionality is implemented:
- Passing shop client information into our bonus processing system PointLoyalty Manager (optionally, when there is a need to create loyalty offers based on member attributes).
- Automatic creation of accounts in Member Console application. Every authorized internet shop client is able to see earned bonus points.
- Administrator panel with plugin settings.
- Customization, tuning of error reports.

The plugin will be available for free-of-charge use after testing and preparing documentation.

We develop the plugin to demonstrate how easy it is to integrate any system with PointLoyalty online services and to popularize our product.

In our opinion KonaKart is one of most advanced eCommerce solutions implemented in Java on the market these days.

REST / Web services
1) SSL support for REST API.
2)  the methods of creation of loyalty program users’ accounts have been added.
Now the owners of loyalty programs may:
- provide their users with logins/passwords — offline business.
- create accounts automatically - online business.
User console (the system of notification of loyalty programs users)
1) It is given the example of user console placement on the site of an owner of the program.

2) It is added the possibility of full customization of «User console» for customer’s needs
-  Support of Company’s logotype.
- Support of application’s form  (CSS).
- Support service’ address has been changed.
(See Pointloyalty Manager “Registration page”)
3) the utility for adjustment of application’s form has been developed

4) The detailed description of integration process with “User console” has been added. The given description contains the detailed examples and recommendations on the application’ using.
http://www.pointloyalty.com/member_console.html

To resume — the possibility of full integration of widget “User console” with your sites has been added.

The future plans — to provide with plugins for integration with e-commerce support systems.

In our previous post we described how to integrate “Member Console” with your web application. There is one more option for better integration - JavaScript callbacks. Following callbacks are invoked by the Member Console:
- onLoad (no parameters)
- onLogin (no parameters)
- onLogout (no parameters)
- onError (optional parameter – error reason)
- onLoginError (optional parameter – error reason)

On any integration issue please contact - support@pointloyalty.com

How to place Member Console directly on your website? Simple javascript example is described in «Javascript Flash Player detection and embed script» article.

Here is a code sample:

<html>
<script
type="text/javascript"
src="http://blog.deconcept.com/swfobject/swfobject_source.js">
</script>

<div id="flashcontent">
This text is replaced by the Flash movie.
</div>


<script type="text/javascript">
var so =
new SWFObject(
"http://www.pointloyalty.com/module/member.swf?client-name=test&demo=true",
"mymovie", "1024", "768","8", "#336699");
so.write("flashcontent");
</script>
<html>


You can create HTML file, copy the sample code above and run it locally or on your application server. Pay attention that design issues are not covered in the sample.
To display the data for particular member you need to supply username and password of this member when invoking “Member Console” widget.

“http://www.pointloyalty.com/module/member.swf?name=username&pswd=password“

PointLoyalty Manager clients already know how to provide their customers feedback using PointLoyalty Member Console.

From now you can put your company logo on the Member Console form. See “Edit profile” form in PointLoyalty Manager application.

You can put a link to the Member Console directly on your web site. This way your company will get the system of loyalty program member’s notifications without any spending on integration. This is a very easy way to inform your customers about new loyalty programs, earned bonus points and their purchase record.

This innovation is another step to simplify the process of integration PointLoyalty with your web applications.

Please pay attention that you can allow your customers to register in the Member Console by themselves and you fully automate this process using new online integration options.

See also:
Member accounts data

Why integration with our solution is profitable?
If you are a supplier of some software (traditional or SaaS) such as sales tracking system or a e-commerce support software – integration with our product will be very useful to you.
You will get an additional functionality in your product without significant efforts from your side. Your customers will be able to charge bonus points for their clients’ actions and create advanced loyalty programs.

Here are the advantages of integration with our product:
- Additional functionality
When you look for your competitors – you can often find that there is much similarity in offered products. Integration with a customer rewards system “PointLoyalty Manger” will help you to stand out against a background and enhance functionality of your product. Integration is simple and does not require much effort from your side.

- Additional profit
You can make this integration module optional and charge additionally for enabling it. You can charge on subscription base, on amount of established reward programs, on amount of processed transactions, etc

- Cutting costs
In essence we propose you to outsource important but non-core part of your system. This way you don’t need to support this part, spend resources on its further development, bugfixing, etc.

On all integration issues http://www.pointloyalty.com/web20.html - please contact technical support of PoinLoyalty company.