Great gift ideas: digital content and e-gift cards

Design of the Kindle Gift Card / Photo: Amazon.com

With a growing number of ereader, smartphone and tablet owners, gifting digital content becomes more reasonable than ever before.

Ebooks, apps, downloadable music, instant videos, all the digital content which can be gifted separately or via e-cards is not only a rescue gift idea (no delay for shipping) – not any longer.

Millions of people, among them maybe your relatives, would be more than grateful if they’ll receive a new book or a new album they could enjoy on their mobile devices.

And the most important benefit of the digital content is that it can be enjoyed immediately.

Yes, the missing part: the magic moment of unboxing the gift. Well, those who own a Kindle or an iPad had their unboxing moment already. What they expect is the magic moment of downloading the gift.

A digital gifting sector is growing and it’s good to keep an eye on what’s new.

Many online retailers offer not only gift cards, to purchase digital content among others, but they also give an opportunity to gift particular digital items from their catalogs.

A simple directory of gift sections of major online retailers comes below:

For Kindle devices and apps – Amazon
For iPad, iPhone and iPod Touch –  iTunes
For Nook devices and apps - Barnes & Noble
For Kobo devices and apps – KoboBooks

In order to gift an item, you have to be a registered user of a specific store, but you don’t have to be tech-savvy to purchase a gift. All what you need to know is usually the email address of a recipient of a gift.

Gift Cards

Year after year gift cards become better and better. They get better designs and more and more options to personalize the look, the message and delivery. A gift section of Amazon is a great example of how advanced gifting can be.

You can choose how you want your gift to be delivered.

1. Send Digitally
You can send a personalized email with 35 designs to choose from. Additionally, there is also a very nice option to upload your photo, to make the gift more personal. Another way is sending a gift via Facebook.

2. Print yourself
If you have a printer at home, you can print out the purchased gift. You can pick up an option to fold (almost 40 designs to choose from), cut (only 3 – but they are very simple and nice, I’m gonna use them for my daughter’s birthday) and as coloring books (great for kids).

3. Send by post
You can also use a more traditional way and send a gift by post. There is a free one-day delivery to US customers and you can choose from a greeting card, gift box or multi-pack.

You can select from many predefined values of cards or type your own amount. When you choose to send a card digitally, you can select the date of delivery (of an email message or Facebook post).

Digital Content

Just like you buy print books or DVDs with movies or CDs with music, you can buy them in digital form, downloadable in a couple of clicks.

It’s good to be aware of the difference between a gift card and gifting a specific item.

With a gift card it’s the recipient to buy items (and pay by redeeming a card). If you go for buying a specific item, an ebook or a music album, it’s you to pay and set up delivery date. The only thing the recipient has to do is to click on a link and download the item.

One thing has to be clear. You have to buy a product as a gift. There is usually an optional link under Add to Cart button saying “Buy this item as a gift”.

Gifting digital items doesn’t work the analog way, when we were ordering the goods to our address, wrapped them and gifted the next day. Your digital goods are attached to your account and can’t be freely exchanged with other users – unless you give them access to the account.

Once you have it in mind, the process is very easy. Click on Buy as a gift and a new window will open where you will give details of the delivery. Read more details in this post.

I’ve checked Amazon, iTunes, Kobo and Barnes&Noble and all of them offer gifting of particular items. So, if you know what your closest relative would live to read or listen to, just find it and gift it.

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It’s high time to get used to digital gifting. And I think the one to have more problems with it is the one who gives. A $50 of value, 400 by 400 pixel jpeg image in an email on screen of a tablet doesn’t deserve to be a gift? I bet the owner of this tablet won’t agree.

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