Thread: what additional software features do you want

Great Post Jess.........

Here's some feedback.

I think a 'last validated' column would be well received.

This would highlight superb merchants that validate frequently and also those that do not.

I think merchants need to be open and honest here, its a partnership after all. They should state how long it should take under normal circumstances to validate commissions - this could be added perhaps in another column or on a seperate information page.

If for instance a merchant has a 14 day returns policy, then it would be best practice to make this information freely available. Otherwise affiliates will just get demoralised, waiting for commissions to be validated for Months on end, and move on to another program of equal value.

What do others think?

Good thinking Matthew.

Also I think some sort of reversals figure, a percentage of all sales that are reversed would be a must.

You could if you are really clever, and I'm sure you are, try and devise some sort of points system.

Take all important criteria, such as speed of validation, cookie length, reversal rate, on time payment and more that I can't think of at the moment, and try and portray it in a score out of say 10 or all merchants who achieve a certain score get a little smiley graphic (or another of your choice, of course) next to their name.

Then we can see at a glance who is great and who is not so great, the not so great might be encouraged to improve so they too can wear a badge of honour.

Nick,

I like the idea. However, what about sales / registrations that are not really sales / registrations... examples:

1. Customers providing false creditcard details?
2. Customers paying by cheque, but not sending a cheque off to the merchant?
3. Visitors providing false address details?

These are also sales / registrations that will be declined. In the end of the day, these are pay per result programs and you can hardly call the above sales / registrations results.

Is a merchant bad if this happens a lot? Is it the merchants fault? Or the customers?

However, we will take your points in consiration and it may be we use some of them in some sort of award system.

Your comments are very valuable to us and we will certainly try to implement them where possible.


Kind regards,

Wouter Mols
AffiliateWindow.com

I see your point.

How do you account for this at present?

I think that what you mean is that if you inlude a reversals figure this figure may be inflated by incorrect payment methods/buyer fraud or stuff like that?

When we see a reversals figure on say CJ, we expect to see a certain percentage of reversals this is only to be expected because of the points you raise, but these cannot explain companies who have 100% or even 70% reversal rates.

Now I'm not saying that your merchants do reverse all their sales (although I will refer you to the post about CH Mobiles) but surely it is better to have all this information out in the open for us all to see and then debate if necessary, rather than not disclose and then we all jump to the (wrong) conclusions?

Another idea while I am here, we all love Polls. Why not let your affiliates vote each month for their best/favourite advertiser(s). The winning advertiser then becomes merchant of the month, gets a special page dedicated to them.

Thus increase exposure of your merchant to your affiliates, your affiliates will clamber to sign up to everyones elses favourite.

I know it is not a software idea but it was an idea nonetheless.

The only other thing is some indication of how well the merchant is performing, how much they are paying their advertisers, not an average figure but some sort of indication of your potential earnings from each advertiser.

One last point I think information is key to the success of an advertiser and affiliate, the more we know about the advertiser and their earnings potential the better.

Individual link id's so we can see in the reports which links are bringing in the clicks for each advertiser.

Oh and more graphical elements and other stuff from your merchants I have tried emailing some of merchants about this and they don't reply.

You mentioned about Fake Registrations and Credit Card Fake Numbers. It would be good because some people might be working really hard to promote their site and one sad person could be there just putting fake numbers/ registrations in and getting more. If people are doing that how can AW tell.

Wow thanks to all that have posted and keep them coming in. We have a huge list and it is getting longer by the day. All comments have been and will be printed out and where possible implimented. You may not see immediate changes ( like tomorrow) but they will be slowly integrated into our software based on functionality and popularity.

We are also interested in features that you may like to see gone, some thing that you never use?

Kind regards

Jess

Hi,

We have implemented several anti fraud features into our software. This works extremely well and we detect fraud in an early stage. So if ever you see your links pointing to the 'New Scotland Yard', 'KGB' or 'CIA' website, you've been sussed mate. <img src=http://www.ezboard.com/intl/aenglish/images/emoticons/embarassed.gif ALT=""> )

You can understand that we will not reveal any details on the implemented features as it would help potential fraudsters.


Kind regards,

Wouter Mols
AffiliateWindow.com