Factors to add to your Affiliate company choice
As I am learning my direction here in WA, I have read many, many helpful articles about niche choices, and product choices, both within the WA world and from an abundance of outside sources. Ultimately I decided on a campaign within the Green Energy area, and got things rolling.
I have been relatively successful in getting clicks to my site, many responders to a free info package that is available, and a decent number that are clcking onto the Affiliate sites. However, although there are several daily clicks onto the merchants order forms, there have been no actual click-thrus to a sale.
SO - I am left puzzled by the problem, and have been doing some analysis. While doing some online reading, I discovered some interesting data.
A recent survey (May 2010) by a digital media research company, unearthed the fact that, while increasing numbers of companies are turning to social media methods for their advertising, well over 50% of them are flying by the seat of their pants, with NO ESTABLISHED GAME PLAN.
Those companies that ARE establishing game plans, include such actions as:
- dedicated staff to maintain their online activities
- registering usernames on social media sites
- researching their competitors tactics
- setting up tracking mechanisms
- establishing corporate policies for employees
But the other 50% +, are not so organized, and their programs and ads, banners etc show it.
Further studies have uncovered data, that I feel is worthwhile for those of us into Affiliate Marketing. They have determined the factors in a website that ad responders claim to be of relative importance to them, in the order of priority that they indicated:
- pricing/shipping info clearly stated 96%
- site looks credible and trustworthy 76%
- product of interest is displayed on the homepage 71%
- page must be visually appealing 67%
- availability of total cost calculator (shipping,tax,etc) 60%
- site search function 48%
- privacy statement available 45%
- onsite customer testimonials 41%
- online customer service (live chat) 33%
- links to Facebook, Twitter etc 23%
After having digested this data, I went back and reviewed the websites for the companies with which I had affiliated, and reviewed the above factors. Much to my dismay I found that both were sadly lacking in many of the above items. Maybe it is a shot in the dark, but I have now changed my program and found another company and product that seems to be much more professional, and will be promoting them instead. It will be interesting in the next few days to see if there is any improvement in my CTR.
Hopefully this can be of some help to any of you while trying to choose a company that you will be affiliated with, over and above the other factors such as commission rates etc etc.
Recent Comments
3
There really IS a lot to affiliate marketing than I thought.
Thanx 4 the info...real eye opener! Here's some gold to you :-)
Benn.
Very nice research! I will copy the information for future reference (got nothing yet!). Thank you.
That is very insightful! Thanks for sharing. Something else to think about--some random information I came across (been taking in TONS) talked about the issue where an affiliate's site is lousy. Apparently there is a way that you can direct your traffic to your own landing page first where you promote the product and have all those fine features, then you provide a direct link to the merchant's ordering page bypassing the main part of their website. That's all I remember, but if you really want to continue promoting some good products with lousy web sites, that might be an option for you. You'll have to dig up the info, though. I was mentioned somewhere in WA...