Refer a Friend

Customers invite friends with a personal link. When a friend makes a first purchase, the friend and the customer each get what you promised.

What it is, and is not

A simple program between customers. It is not an affiliate program: no application, no commission percentage, no payout in money. Rewards are fixed amounts of store credit (or, for the friend, a discount on the first purchase). For partners who earn commissions, that is AffiliPartnerCS.

Set it up

Open Refer a Friend. The program starts switched off.

Under Program and rewards:

Setting	At the start	Meaning
Friend receives		Either Store credit after qualifying purchase, or Discount on first qualifying purchase. One of the two.
Friend amount	10.00	How much.
Referring customer credit	10.00	What the customer who invited gets. Set separately.
Minimum eligible merchandise spend	25.00	What the friend's first order must reach, counted on products only (no shipping, tax or fees; no gift cards).
Days after payment before credit release	14	The waiting time before the credit is given, so that an early refund does not leave you with a paid reward.
Invitation window	30 days	How long an accepted invitation stays valid.
Lifetime referral limit per referring customer	25	How many friends one customer can bring.
Lifetime total program limit	1,000	A cap for the whole program.
Expiry of the rewards	none	Optional, separately for friend and referrer.
Additional customer terms		Your own small print, shown to both sides.

Then tick Enable customer referrals and save.

Refer a Friend: Program and rewards, as the demonstration store set it up (the top of the screen; select the picture to see all of it)

Referral processor: leave it on Store Credit — standalone customers unless you run AffiliPartnerCS and want it to handle customer referrals too.

Which offers may be combined

Three sections decide this, separately:

Qualifying purchase: combines with: what else may be in the cart for the friend's order to count (coupons, sale prices, other credit, free-gift promotions);
Spending the friend's earned credit: combines with: what the friend's credit may later be combined with;
Spending the referrer's credit: combines with: what the referrer's credit may later be combined with.

For each kind of offer: allow all, allow none, only selected ones, or all except selected ones.

Paying part of the order with store credit or a gift card does not lower the amount that counts toward the minimum: credit is payment, not a discount.

How it looks for the customer

A signed-in customer opens My Account → Refer a Friend, reads the terms and selects Create my share link.
They send the link to friends themselves. The plugin sends nothing and collects no address book.
The friend opens the link, sees what they get and the conditions, and selects Accept invitation and shop. Just opening the link does nothing.
The friend places a first order that meets your minimum. With the discount option, the discount is applied at this checkout.
After payment and your waiting days, the credit is issued: to the customer who invited, and to the friend if you chose credit for them.

Both see the state of their reward in their account: pending, earned or cancelled.

You can put the same panel on any page with the shortcode [afsd_refer_a_friend].

My Account → Refer a Friend, as a customer sees it

Note: The invitation is remembered in the friend's shopping session on that device. If they accept on their phone and buy on a laptop, they open the link again on the laptop.

Rules that protect you

A customer cannot refer themselves, and only a first purchase counts.
If the friend's order is refunded, even partly, both rewards are cancelled. A reward that was already spent is not taken back from the customer's other credit; it is flagged for you to look at.
Referral credit can only be spent by the person it was issued to.
Switching the program off stops new invitations. Rewards already promised are still handled.

Watching it

The Refer a Friend section lists every referral with its state and, where something waits, the reason (waiting days, payment not complete, review needed). Rewards that need your decision have their own actions there: retry, or cancel.

Business customers

With AffStackDev B2B, a business account can be kept out of new invitations, friend discounts and rewards, as out of other consumer promotions. Credit such a customer already has stays usable.