Group Buying Site (GBS) offers flexible and easy to use daily deal software so that businesses and publishers can leverage the power of collective buying and social media to obtain attractive discounts on products and services for their customers. Unlike the plethora of Groupon scripts out there, we’re not attempting to build software so you can merely run your own Groupon clone. While it’s clear Groupon has revolutionized the advertising industry, we at GBS believe that the social buying model has much more to offer than simple daily deals spit out by another Groupon software provider. We are striving to add new an exciting daily deal software features to create irresistible discounts and offers that are a win-win solution for the group buying website owner, merchant, and the customer. Our latest version extends the functionality and flexibility of GBS so the admin may combine new and improved features to deliver custom made daily deals for nearly any need. Highlighted below are some of the new features included in GBS v2.3.

Limit maximum number of purchases per user for each deal – Some merchants prefer to limit the number of times a customer can obtain a particular discount. By doing so they ensure that more customers are able to take advantage of the deal, especially when there’s a fixed quantity available. The same principle can be applied to daily deals to potentially register more users for your site and additional customers for the merchant.

Make vouchers available immediately – Now you can set vouchers to appear immediately on the buyer’s profile or after the deal ends on a site-wide basis. Why would you want to do this? Beside the instant gratification the buyer receives, you can combine this with the new custom serial number feature described below to offer deals for online service providers.

Credit referral tracking – With the latest release, any sales obtained through a user referral link is logged for the admin to quickly see who generated the sale.

Email subscribers automatically – This feature allows you to push published deals to your email subscribers automatically and customize the output with basic HTML.

Charitable giving – A features that allows you to maximize the potential of your deals by leveraging them with the power to also do good things. Now you can partner with charities, nonprofits, schools and local organizations to help raise funds for good causes! What’s more, you can give the charity/organization their own referral link to promote your deal on their website. When the visitor clicks on the link placed on their site, the visitor is directed to your GBS powered website and that charity/organization will automatically be selected to receive a portion of sale amount.

Custom serial numbers – Allows the admin to create more elaborate, lengthier custom voucher ids for the purpose of redeeming additional types of goods elsewhere. For example, the admin could enter 100 $25 gift card/certificate numbers from his/her own ecommerce site or a merchant’s site. When a purchase is made the buyer receives the voucher with the gift card number that can be used instantly. This feature could also be used for discount/promo codes for online services as well as redemption codes for downloadable goods, online games, and much more!

Security codes for redemption verification – Each voucher now has two numbers printed on it. One is the voucher id which is supplied to the vendor. The second number is the security code which is not supplied to the vendor. This is particularly useful if the admin chooses to pay the vendor for each voucher redeemed.

Disable timer & expiration date on a per deal basis – A terrific feature that permits you to sell ongoing deals that don’t have an expiration date. For example, let’s say you or a merchant wants to offer a deal for a coupon that gives the buyer an additional 10% off on any purchase. Other possible uses include free deals that don’t require expiration dates and online promotional codes that don’t expire.

Require buyers to accept terms before purchasing – When you activate the charity feature potential buyers will be required to opt-in to your terms of service and privacy policy before making the purchase. While they are on the checkout page they can select the charity they want a portion of their purchase amount to go to as well as submit some demographic data like age, gender, and zip code.

Paymentexpress (DPS) – GBS now comes integrated with Paymentexpress. Paymentexpress is a leading online credit and debit card processor that serves Australia, Canada, India, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Africa, United Kingdom, and the United States.

Facebook login – Social media and networking sites like Facebook are powerful resources for increasing traffic to your daily deal site. With v2.3 we’ve integrated Facebook Connect to help improve the ease at which anyone can register or login and buy a deal.

Important notes before updating to the latest version:

• You must not have a deal currently running when the update is performed
• v2.3 of the GBS theme is required
• Test your child theme function as we’ve made some changes to how the checkout works
• Charity functionality is built as a platform for a developer to customize and improve for your particular site