Gift options

Switching it on

1. On the Settings tab, find Gift options and tick Offer gift options in the basket.
2. Tick Ask for a gift message to add the message box. The prompt above it is yours to word - the default is Message for the recipient - and a message can run to 300 characters.
3. Tick Offer paid gift wrapping to sell wrapping: give it a label (default Gift wrapping), a price, and a short description (default Wrapped by hand before it's posted).

Wrapping stays off until it has a real price. A price of zero is not a free wrap - it is a box you ticked and never priced, and a "+£0.00" toggle that adds nothing would be a broken promise, so it simply is not shown.

What the customer sees

A full-width Gift options? button sits at the top of the basket's question row, above Discount code? and Info for us?. Tapping it slides a panel across the basket - not a popup - holding the message box and, if you offer it, the wrapping toggle with its price.

• The button says what was chosen. Once something is set it turns green and reads Gift message, Gift wrapping or Gift + wrapping, so the choice is visible without reopening the panel.
• Choices are remembered on that device until the order is paid, then retired with the basket - a "Happy birthday" message never rides the customer's next, unrelated order.
• Wrapping updates the total at once, with its own line in the basket's reckoning, priced by your server rather than the page.
• It works properly from a keyboard. The panel behaves as a true dialog: focus moves in, Tab stays inside, Escape steps back to the basket, and screen readers hear the panel rather than the basket behind it.

How wrapping is charged

One flat fee for the whole order, however many items are in it, billed as its own line on the payment page, the emails and the receipt - so what the basket showed is exactly what Stripe charges.

• Never discounted. No sale, quantity tier, order-value rule or code touches it. It is a service, priced after the goods and their discounts.
• Never counts toward free delivery. A £3.50 wrap cannot tip a spend-£50-for-free-postage threshold that the goods alone did not reach.
• No stock. Wrapping is not a product and holds nothing on a shelf.

Who is told what

The gift marker, the message and the wrapping choice are written onto the order itself, so every surface can read them back - worded for its reader.

The gift message is not the order note

They are two different messages to two different readers, and the basket keeps them visibly apart. Info for us? is a note to the shop - a delivery instruction, a date it is needed by. The gift message is for the person receiving the parcel, written to go on a card inside. One order can carry both, and each reaches the surfaces above under its own heading, so neither you nor the buyer ever has to guess who a message was for.

Next

Order and product notes covers the shop-facing message and per-product questions; Checkout on your own site is where both messages are read back at the point of payment.