Affiliate -> Merchant -> Affiliate tracking

[travelucd]

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Hi all,

We are working on a project where

1) HTML form is on the affiliates website (maybe served there via a JavaScript thingy, just like Adsense)

2) User submits form to merchant's site (our site), we record data

3) We redirect user back to affiliate's site (to a URL provided by the affiliate in the first step)

Lets just say the form is for an email newsletter sign up (although its not a newsletter, actually). The bonus to the affiliate is that they get a fee - and keep the user to send down another offsite route. The user never thinks they left the affiliate site.

We have been having some very useful discussions on a leading UK based affiliate network about doing this - and I think we have the problem solved - the issue is

1) Dropping a cookie to the users' computer
2) Rescuing the cookie from the user's computer

and where these 2 things occur - if the user only lands on the merchant's site late in the day.

Without giving away what we think we are going to do can anyone see how to solve this?

Any UK affiliate networks got a great solution to this?

thanks


alex

[Rich]

Without giving away what we think we are going to do can anyone see how to solve this?

Well I've got a solution, but why should I give it away if you're not going show how far you've got so far?

Anyway, the solution is very easy to implement, and I'm fairly sure one network does it already, so maybe they will post it if the are confident your not just going to use the idea with another network.

[travelucd]

OK, fair enough

1) FORM on affiliate site,
2) Submits (via POST due to form having a textarea that may go over IE's 2000 char limit for GET) to merchant site
3) Data is entered -> DB on merchant site
4) User is redirected to Affiliate Network. Cookie is placed on user computer
5) User is redirected to "waiting page" - message says something is happening and some kind of animation is shown. Acutally also the affiliate network cookie is getting sent to affiliate network.
6) Eventually user is redirected to a real page - back on the affiliate's site.

What I don't like about this is that an affiliate could get clever and just link to step 4 - as the step 4 and step 5 are placed next to each other - without an intermediate step controlled by the merchant. I guess you can see what happens next!

So, this is how we could do it - and there is an alternative but it falls down due to having to use POST at step 2 (rather than GET)

?

cheers

alex

[Rich]

Ok Alex (hope you don't think I was being off)

If you are paying for each form submission, I'd have though a cookieless solution would be a lot easier to do. If the user is going via the affiliates site anyway, and doesn't think they are leaving the site, they wouldn't know about your site to be able to go there at a later date and have the cookie make any difference. that way you only have to go to the network site once.

1) FORM on affiliate site,
2) Submits (via POST due to form having a textarea that may go over IE's 2000 char limit for GET) to merchant site
3) Data is entered -> DB on merchant site
4) User is redirected to Affiliate Network. this is tracked as if it was a per click program.
5) User is redirected to a real page - back on the affiliate's site.

As the affiliate could still jump in at step 4, you could set a dynamic unique tracking id on the link and use that to validate sales.

If you need to have the cookie then the flow you posted could be improved. At step 4 include a dynamic parameter in the url that will be redirected to, which can then be verified at step 5 before showing the call back image. You could also set a cookie on your domain before you send the user to the network and check that when they come back.

Also I'm fairly sure at least one network will run a redirect script instead of a call back image, so you don't have to pause at a page while the image is shown.

so:-
1) FORM on affiliate site,
2) Submits (via POST due to form having a textarea that may go over IE's 2000 char limit for GET) to merchant site
3) Data is entered -> DB on merchant site and you get a unique ID for that record.
4) User is redirected to Affiliate Network. Cookie is placed on user computer. Link to affiliate network would be like network.com/redirect.php?merchat=123&affiliate=3333&tracking-id={uniqid from db}&redirect=yourdomain.com/confirm.php?id={uniqid from db}&postcode={users postcode} (or some similar none personal data that can be matched to the id
5) User is redirected to "waiting page" - uniqid and postcode are matched in the database and if things are ok the tracking image is shown.
--or--
5) uniqid and postcode are matched in the database and if things are ok the user is redirected via the affiliate network, giving it chance to read the cookie.

6) Eventually user is redirected to a real page - back on the affiliate's site.

By ensuring that the tracking id is unique, and can be used to point back to valid record, you will be able to detect any affiliates trying to jump in part way thru the process. (assuming the network lets you see the tracking id, there is probably an order number parameter at step 5 that you would also want to set to that value)