Travelodge - New Site Launch and Zero Values

[KevinEdwards]

Tweet

Hi there,

Travelodge launched a new site this morning and whilst our tracking has been unaffected we seem to be recording sales with a zero value.

The new site launched at 6am this morning so any sales after this time will be recorded as £0.00.

Travelodge has been contacted and we're looking into it. We'll provide the necessary commission data as soon as possible.

Thanks,

[gunneradt]

Thats not the only problem - all the deeplinks to hotels are broken!!!!!!!!

[Rachel Humphreys]

Hi There

Apologies for this. I am currently testing some new deeplinks and once I am happy that they all work/track I will issue these to affiliates.

Sorry for any inconvenience - we do not anticipate any prolonged issues and are hoping to have everything resolved by the end of the day.

Thanks for you patience

Rachel

[gunneradt]

Pls dont tell me that I will have to re-do the deeplinks that I currently use for each hotel - surely the old ones can redirect. We weren't given any noitice that this would happen.

[Barry]

Personally I don't use deeplinks and am not affected - but it would be very shortsighted of their web design company to design a new site with a different url structure and have not put a plan in place to redirect the old pages to the new ones - surly thats going to hit them in their natural SERPs.

Its also obviously giving extra work to affiliate, network and anyone involved in promoting them too.

Cheers for the heads up though - wondered why I had had no leads today!!

ta

[gunneradt]

thats exactly what theyve done

hotels are now in a folder called search_and_book

surely the old deeplinks just need to redirect to this new folder for each hotel

regards

[Barry]

Most their pages in google are giving a 404 error - I wonder if they have even been advised on this or the suits are even aware of it up top?

Ta

[gunneradt]

Can we please get existing deeplinks to work before 5pm today? What I dont want is to change all the links over the weekend and then find they change it again. This needs to be sorted today really

regards

[gunneradt]

Pls advise the best course of action before close of play today

regards

[purple]

I think Travelodge will be busy trying to get their site working correctly, I do not have javascript on my work pc ( i know my company books many hotels through them ) and it crashed my PC.
I am sure other corporate networks might have issues too.

Hopefully when they sort the website they will ensure tracking issues etc are sorted for us hard working affiliates.

Just realised i got 100s of deeplinks too !!!

[gunneradt]

Far be it from me to ridicule others but Im a corporate web manager and I can't believe the mess they have made over this. Will Travelodge's web manager pls stand up and take a bow.

Running javascript so heavily on a site that makes millions from businesses is absolutely ridiculous. I normally even stay pretty clear of flash and any plugin that I think might cause trouble. But to then negate the validity of a million deeplinks through your affiliate scheme is the next level in stupidity.

They may well put this right but just a tiny bit of planning and thought could have avoided this.

When I said advice I meant can AW advise the best course of action re deeplinks - re-do them or wait for them to work?

regards

[Rachel Humphreys]

Hi Everyone

To confirm, Travelodge have changed the structure of the URLs and you will need to replace them, however as an interim solution they have 301 redirects in place.

As ever, everything goes wrong at once (!) and due to a minor technical 'glitch' earlier on, the deeplinks were not redirecting . Howevever I am pleased to tell you that the redirects are working again.

I am currently in the process of getting the new deeplinks hosted internally and will email them out to you and post them on here shortly.

Thanks

Rachel

[Barry]

Their old site is still on Travelodge - Great value accommodation across the UK and Ireland

I think their new site looks pretty good - and works all the way through without javascript enabled here.

It just teething problems at the mo, sure if we sit tight we will be ok.

Sure many customer wont get lost using the old deeplinks - there is a search function onsite.

Ta

[gunneradt]

Thanks Rachel

Im not clear what you're saying

do we need to replace deeplinks or not? Are they tracking ?

They are now redirecting fine - mine are in the format

h**p://www.awin1.com/awclick.php?mid=1586&id=XXXXX&p=http://www.travelodge.co.uk/find_a_hotel/hotel/hotel_id/28/GatwickAirport

is this OK to leave as is?

regards

[Rachel Humphreys]

To clarify:

- yes you will need to change your deeplinks to http://www.affiliatewindow.com/docum...avelodgeDL.csv

- Redirects are in place to ensure you do not lose out on any traffic in the time it takes to change over to the new links.

Thanks

Rachel