Interface

[John]

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When are AF going to sort out their interface? I've been spending a lot of time over the last few weeks adding loads of merchants to a new site - This has taken approx 3 minutes per merchant on all other networks, but is taking over 10 minutes per merchant on AF purely due to their unfriendly interface.

It's taking about 6 clicks on average just to pick up links and banners for each merchant.

Problems I've come across are:

1. Can't access links/banners for merchants I've already joined through the merchant directory. This means I have to first check through the "Program Overview" screen just to see if I've already joined, and if not, then hunt for the merchant in the directory to join.

2. Why is there a need for a "folders" page when picking up banners? All the merchants I've added so far have only 1 folder... "default" Another unnecessary click!

3. When cutting and pasting URLs from the AF site, the quotation marks are always picked up too and have to be manually removed, i.e instead of http://banners.affiliatefuture.com/632/11095.gif, it's picking up 'http://banners.affiliatefuture.com/632/11095.gif'

4. Having the custom tracking IDs in the middle of the affy URL means having to manually amend the link rather than just pasting and typing &SID=, &clickref=, &epi=, &lid= as every other network does it.

5. When picking up creative, why are they all shrunk to fit, with nothing to tell you the actual size? It's very difficult to tell the difference at a glance between the shrunken images of 120x60 and 120x90... 100x100 and 125x125... some 468x60's look like 234x60's... The only one that's obvious is 120x600!

These all add up to a very frustrating experience when trying to add a lot of merchants... I'm seriously contemplating not bothering to add any more AF merchants to the site.

Then again, it's probably just been a long day and I just need to have a few hours off before tackling the AF interface again!

[fishboy]

I don't think you're being to harsh.... i agree

It does make for lots of mindless clicking.

You can add Statistical Reporting to your list. I won't go into detail because it's all bad in my oppinion but the most annoying thing has to be the way it crashes consistantly.

I'd like to see more indepth reports as i'm a real number cruncher. Even displaying the EPC on our own accounts wouldn't take two seconds to set up. I love the way CJ shows you the network EPC too. If AF are making some changes why not be as clear and as transparent as possible. If merchants don't want thier EPC to be show then that's probably a good indication that they need to put in a bit more effort

[afinlr]

I agree - particularly on the quotation marks, the tracking part of the url and the indication of the size of the graphics - all just slightly too annoying and easily fixed I'm sure.

[Rich]

You can add to the list the downloading of datafeeds.

They have recently made it so you can download a file rather than having to have it FTP'd to your server, but you need to be logged in to download the file so it makes it a lot harder to automate updates.

[pistol101]

Please keep the feedback coming, we have a nice long list of changes to make and we will be rolling more and more out.

[Keith]

Its the overall length of the url that bugs me

rather than

http://scripts.affiliatefuture.com/AFClick.asp?affiliateID=XX&merchantID=487&programm eID=1789&mediaID=0&tracking=&url=

i'd prefer

http://scripts.affiliatefuture.com/XX/487/1789/0/

or something similar