How customers join your program

Customers join by opening a link. There is no code to type, no plastic card to hand over, and nothing for them to install. You give them a web address, they tap it, and they are in.

Your two join links

Every business has a public join link, and every program has its own:

• /j/your-business-slug — the business link
• /j/your-business-slug/coffee-rewards — a link to one specific program

You find both on the program page, under Programs.

Use the business link on a sign or in your bio, because it keeps working when your programs change. If you run exactly one active public program, it takes people straight there. If you run several, it lists them and lets the customer choose.

Use a program link when you are pointing at one thing on purpose: a poster for the new stamp card, or a message to the people you want on a particular program and not the others.

What the customer sees

The join page shows your branding, what customers earn, what your rewards cost, and a join button. It is an ordinary web page, so it works on any phone without an install.

What happens next depends on whether they already have a VivaPoints account.

Signed out. They sign up or log in first, land back on the same join page, and finish joining from there. It is a few taps more than the signed-in path, and it is where you lose people if someone is waiting behind them.

Signed in. They join immediately and go straight to their new card at /me, balance at zero, your rewards listed underneath. This is most people after the first time — a customer who joined the bakery down the road last month is already signed in and joins you in one tap.

What joining actually creates

A join is a membership in one program, not a general sign-up to your business. If you run two programs and a customer joins the coffee card, they are not on the lunch club until they join that one too.

That is usually what you want, but it is the thing owners are most often surprised by. If you would rather have everyone in one place, run one program and put everything inside it.

Where to put the link

Anywhere a web address goes:

• A printed sign at the till. The hardest-working placement by a distance. Short link, big type, one line saying what they get.
• The link in your bio on Instagram, Facebook or TikTok.
• A receipt footer, if your till can print a line of text.
• A message you send. WhatsApp, a text from your own phone, whatever you already use to talk to regulars.

Ask at the right moment

The moment matters more than the wording. The best one is while the card machine is thinking. There are three or four dead seconds there, the customer already has a phone in their hand, and neither of you has anything else to do.

The worst one is when four people are queueing behind them. A rushed ask gets a polite no, and people rarely say yes to the same thing twice.

Put numbers on it. A café serving 200 customers a day, asking only during the card-machine pause, gets maybe 60 real asks. At one in three saying yes, that is 20 new members a day and about 100 in a five-day week. You do not need everyone. You need the regulars, and the regulars are the ones who say yes.

Next

Once someone has joined they appear on your Customers page, and that is where you give them points: issuing points at the counter.