Before A Program Goes Live

[Qui Gon Jinn]

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I was wondering how much effort actually goes into evaluating a programs conversion rate & functionality before it goes live as an affiliate program.

Or is simply a case or yep looks like a good brand lets chuck it up and make our portfolio look good or yummy more monthly management fees.

[Mogga]

I'd like to think that a lot of effort went into it.

Banners created in a variety of formats, plain text links available, checked for no phone numbers or urls.
Site landing pages checked for silly errors like huge phone numbers, funny popups
Test purchases made to ensure tracking works
Clarification of whether commission is available for every item on the site, whether different commission levels on different items need to be spelt out,
Keyword bidding conditions should be agreed prior to program going live,
Whether a data feed is being produced
Whether offsite links are tracked for affiliate commission
etc etc


May I suggest we create a full list of items we'd like included?

[Barry]

I have experience of a merchant that went live for a 'leads' based program recently, that now turns out to have a problem from the outset. They are a large enough network to allocate the resources to check these kind of things first too, its just a shame that the later of Qui Gon Jinn's comments seem to be true in this instance.

It just seems so poor for a network to realease a program that has not been tested. This particular network in my opinion in the slowest in recognising that a merchants tracking is out as well.