List of all merchants

Is there a way of listing all the merchants available in one go because as far as I can see the only way is to go through each category and see the programs

You should be able to do it by searching for "."

no joy - I am sure I used to be able to type ALL in the search box but that doesnt work.

Hmm, it looks like they've amended the search so it's now based on the merchants keywords rather than descriptive text. Tried a few generic searches, but it 'aint bringing up many merchants.

Maybe suggest a "list all" link to Marc?

its been suggested many times and we'll add it as soon as we have time. Sorry about this - the old method used to work.

There will also be a list of merchants you have not joined - as this is often more useful.

Marc as you are revamping the merchant lists it would be nice to be able to go from the list to the links and creatives.

Just another item on my wish list :rollin:

do you mean so that you can view a merchants creative without joining them?

Atm of course, this isn't possible, however it is something that we can consider.

Hi Marc - as a merchant I would like the following to be made available to affiliates who have not yet joined our programme:-

o View our links (banners, Dynamic Text, Copy etc).
This is so an affiliate can judge if the merchant is putting in any effort towards the affiliate. A merchant with one (tacky!) banner might imply that the merchant is not so into the scheme of things. A merchant with several professional looking links will at least allow the affiliate to choose if the "visual" appearance would suit his/her web site.

o View our links performance (or perhaps allow the merchant to opt-in some of the links).
This is so that an affiliate can judge Click-through ratios and Conversion ratios to determine if the merchant pays out in reality when compared to their promises.

o View our payout statistics.
Perhaps top 10 payouts, bottom 10 payouts and maybe an average.
This might help an affiliate judge if the merchant is actively working with the affiliates, or just sat there waiting for someone to do his work for him.

o Formatting in the Directory Description field.
I admit it - I'm a formatting freak! I believe people may not wish to read a single paragraph with dozens and dozens of words. So I like to break things up using formatting and headings. The Directory description seems not to support any formatting (HTML or even carriage returns).

o Merchant Ranking.
Not sure how you might do this - but something to challenge your merchants to keep active and keep working with the affiliates. This demonstrates a good sign for folk who are considering joining new merchants. Perhaps some form of voting system in addition to the statistics I mentioned above.

Cheers,
Dean
Affiliate Manager for Loanspage.co.uk

View our links (banners, Dynamic Text, Copy etc).

Its under consideration and will probably go in as soon as we have time. However, a concern would be that a merchant with poor/few banners would be overlooked for one that had more fancy ones, even though the shabby banner merchant had better conversion rates, put more into thier affiliate program and communicated with affiliates more. The counter argument ofc would be that someone who spends a lot of time on good banners is obviously interested in running thier affiliate program well.

The counter-counter argument is that someone spending time on banners doesn't have the right focus because its content, and not advertising that generates sales

Merly a concern, and i think this feature will likley make it in soon.

View our links performance (or perhaps allow the merchant to opt-in some of the links).

Earnings Per Click and Earnings Per 100 Clicks are things that we (and other) networks have been asked for for some time. New merchants would have to be excluded, and I think an opt-out system for merchants would be best, however opting out would obviously be seen by affiliates as 'something to hide'

At the moment we give very little information to affiliates regarding the performance of merchants network wide, and this is something we are looking to address. It may take the form of a top-performing merchant per category or a top 20 rated merchants or some other way of displaying this, but some form will be produced soon.

Statistics on banner clickthrough are easily skewed and dont really show any useful information, so i'd be hesitant about including this sort of information.

View our payout statistics
Not sure what is meant by 'Payout' here. I can't really see the benefit of displaying this if an earnings per-click stat is shown somewhere.

Formatting in the Directory Description field
I entirely agree. Hadent considered it before but I know the Merchant Directory is due for a reworking, so I'll make sure this is done.

Merchant Ranking.
As above, i think this would have to be based on earnings per clicks and things, but a nice rankings table showing people going up the rankings and those who are dropping off would be good. My only concern would be the difference seasonal merchants. Some will do much better at valentines day than they will at the rest of the year for instance, some will remain constant throught the year. Portraying this fairly would be difficult.

I have a list of features for both merchants and affiliates as long as my arm that we are looking to add as and when development time becomes feasable.

As a seasonal merchant I agree with the seasonal concerns-our sales per clicks rise sharply at Christmas,Valentines Day,Mothers/Fathers day etc.

How about monthly rankings?

Andy


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Formatting in the Directory Description field
I entirely agree. Hadent considered it before but I know the Merchant Directory is due for a reworking, so I'll make sure this is done.

I know we only went live today...

... but as you're reworking the Merchant Directory anyway, could something be done about a proper category for Mobile Phones?

I still have to think twice before I remember which category we are in! IMHO Technology is just not an obvious category for mobile phones, particularly as the displayed sub-categories are computer related.

A nice shiny Telecommunications main category would be just great! :-)

Chris
Mobiles.co.uk