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Web Sites and Ezine Design and Hosting

 

Affiliates

Your Affiliates are site owners to whom you pay a commission in appreciation for referring business.

Overview: How Affiliates Works

WebValence Affiliates designed to work with the following process:
  • You decide what products or services to include in your Affiliates program and update the "Commission" percentage on the applicable product pages.
  • You install a link to your Affiliate sign up process on your web site. This link is revealed in the back office. It has the following form: https://secure.webvalence.com/ecommerce/affiliates/signup.lasso?merchant=YourMerchantID
  • A prospective Affiliate follows the sign up link and is presented your Terms and Conditions for Affiliates.
  • The prospect agrees to your Terms and Conditions, chooses the I agree button, and an Affiliate application form is presented.
  • Submittal of the Affiliate application form notifies you via Email of a new prospective Affiliate.
  • You review the application and "Activate" the new Affiliate via the Ecommerce Back Office.
  • Activation the Affiliate generates and sends an instructional Email indicating how to link purchasers to your Kiosk. The instructional Email contains a unique Affiliate ID number, which identifies each Affiliate.
  • Following the Emailed instructions, the Affiliate installs a link to your Kiosk in her web site or Ezine. The instructions state that the link to your Kiosk must include the Affiliate ID number, identified by the query parameter an=AffiliateIDNumber. The Affiliate ID Number is what allows the kiosk to remember how to credit the Affiliate with sales that originated on the Affiliate site.
  • The Affiliate setup is complete. In the future, a purchaser will follow the link to from the Affiliate page to your Kiosk. The purchaser and the Affiliate will be remembered as a referral via a cookie in their browser.
  • When the purchaser makes a purchase, or returns to make a purchase, their cookie identifies them as a referred customer. Their purchase is then recorded as a commissioned sale.
  • Each month, you review the commission sales in the Ecommerce back office and send checks to those Affiliates who have generated sales for you.
  • At any time, Affiliates can login to an Affiliates portal to review their commissions and update their contact information.

Contact support@webvalence.com to enable the Affiliates component of your Ecommerce in your Kiosks.

Getting Started with Affiliates

When enabling Affiliates, we will ask you for the following information:
  • Kiosk to receive the referrals from your Affiliates
  • Terms and Conditions that you Require of your Affiliates
  • Text for your Confirmation Letter
  • Text for your Approval Letter

If don't have this information, then we'll install a draft for you, and notify that Affiliates are implemented for your review. It's up to you to follow review all the steps in the procedure and tune the messages and wording to fit with your business needs.

Review Affiliates Application

Once Affiliates has been enabled, please do the following steps to ensure that Affiliates sign up is customized appropriately for your business.
  1. Login to the Ecommerce Back Office; select the Affiliates topic.
  2. Choose Affiliates Preferences and briefly skip the contents of this setup page. Note that templates for your Affiliates Sign Up process are specified here. These fields may require further customization, by you.
  3. Return to the Affiliates page and choose Affiliates Sign Up.
  4. You are presented with a page that looks like your web site and presents your Affiliate Agreement in the body text. Review this agreement to ensure that it reads as you intend. If you find corrections, return to the Affiliates Preferences page and update the agreement text.
  5. Choose the Agree radio button and Send Response to view the Affiliate Application form. Review the form elements to gain familiarity with the information that will be remembered for your Affliliates. Note that you cannot change the fields on the Affiliate Application form. If you require different fields, plan on negotiating your proposed change with WebValence.
  6. Complete the Affiliates form with test data, specifying your own Email address, so that you will receive the same information that your Affiliates will be receiving.
  7. Note the response text when you submit your Affiliates application. You can update this text as needed from the Affiliates Preferences page.

Review Affiliates Approval

Do the following to ensure that Affiliates sign up results in appropriate information being sent to your Affiliates.
  1. Login to the Ecommerce Back Office; select the Affiliates topic.
  2. In the list of Affiliates, you should now see the new prospective Affiliate that you created in your review of the Affiliates Application, above.
  3. Choose the Affiliate's ID to review the contents of their application.
  4. Choose Activate to approve the new Affiliate and trigger the welcome packet information.
  5. Check your Email. If you provided your own address as part of the prospective Affiliate Application, you will receive an Activation notice. Review the activation notice to ensure that the links work and that the information is appropriate for your company. If changes are needed, you can update this text from the Affiliates Preferences page.

Review Purchase for Appropriate Commissions

Do the following to ensure that customer purchases result in the recording of appropriate commissions for your Affiliates.
  1. From the Email activation notice, follow the link to your Kiosk.
  2. Pretending to be a 3rd party, some customer, make a purchase from your Kiosk. Note, you must complete the purchase, ie, pay for something that has been given a sales commission.
  3. Login to the Ecommerce Back Office; select the Affiliates topic.
  4. Select Review Sales for your test affiliate. Check to ensure that the sales commission is what you expected on this product.

Congratulations, you've completed your setup review!

Updating Your Site to Recruit Affiliates

We recommend that you provide a page on your site that explains your Affiliates program and provides some information about your products, prices, and commissions. This page should link to the secure sign up procedure, which is provided by the Ecommerce system. This link is of the form: https://secure.webvalence.com/ecommerce/affiliates/signup.lasso?merchant=YourMerchantID

You may also want to provide a support link that allows already signed-up Affiliates to login and update their contact information or check their commissions. This link is of following form: http://secure.webvalence.com/ecommerce/affiliates?merchant=Your_Merchant_ID.

Frequently Asked Questions

How do Affiliates refer people to a page on my web site rather than the Kiosk page?

It's easiest to refer potential customers directly to the Kiosk. It's also possible to refer them to any arbitrary web page, so long as the information about the Affiliate ID Number is not lost in the process.

To ensure that the Affiliate ID Number is preserved code the page in Lasso or PHP to make sure that the forms parameter "an" is remembered and passed to the Kiosk page. Please contact support@webvalence.com for help with this.

 

 

 
 
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