Visit Site & Get Discount Code – Switch Over Completed
10 Comments April 8, 2008 / Posted in Affiliate MarketingKieron has written an excellent article on discount codes and whether it’s right to use “click to reveal discounts” type links. Discussion on Affiliates4U is also ongoing on the subject, but it does seem that there is a bit of consensus on discount code linking methodology.
Now we’re not known for discount codes, but annoyed by the iframe issues of the past and simply because it was easy to do, we went about creating a discount code section on Loquax. Up until today (and as blogged by Kieron) everything was visible to the user…. not any more!
The discounts section does get traffic, and has done ok, but not as good as expected. When you see “Gadget Merchant discount code” several times in your logs, but no sales that might suggest that having the code visible is in fact not the greatest idea!
Recoding has been fairly easy – but what have we done to make sure everything is above board?
1. Visit Site & Get Code. The link tells the user exactly what’s going to happen. When clicked one page will open with our voucher information at the top and the merchant’s site at the bottom (example).
Changes Made After Ray’s Comment: if no code is required (as for Garden Bird above) a user will be directed to the merchant site as opposed to going via the framed code page.
2. Give Them The Details. In the top frame a user is given information about the discount and the code they need to use. An expiry date is also given.
3. Minimal Branding & Close Frame Option. On the other side of the frame we’ve given the user the chance to close the frame (this leads them to the merchant site as as indicated onmouseover) and a small link back to Loquax. Minimal branding is important so that it doesn’t distract from the merchant.
4. No Robots! We don’t want the framed voucher page to end up in google, as that then becomes essentially a forced click if found via search. The TITLE tags deliberately have no merchant details in them, META NAME=”ROBOTS” CONTENT=”NOINDEX, NOFOLLOW” and META HTTP-EQUIV=”pragma” CONTENT=”no-cache” are in the code. For additional protection our robots.txt file has Disallow statements in for the frame page, and the two frame components.
5. Switch Off When Closed! As soon as a merchant’s code has expired, our framed page will tell any visitor to that page that it’s closed (example). On our discounts section we automatically remove expired merchant links from the directory, but a user ending up at that page, perhaps via search, is clearly told the offer has expired without having to click for information.
In addition, we’ve also set up code that allows us to show products if a merchant wants to promote certain brands. For example Kitchen Science currently offer 5% off Bosch, Neff, Siemens, Caple and Baumatic products – we’ve tailored their page to show Caple products.
Provided product feeds are available then it’s possible to do this for other merchants, and we’d love to see more product or category specific promotions as opposed to a generic code.
Hopefully these steps will result in more sales for us (and raise our profile in a new direction), but also demonstrate to merchants and networks that it’s possible for affiliates to work in this area well within the rules.
Excellent system, doubt you could do any more to be honest, well done!
In your own example for Garden Bird you say “Visit Site & Get Code” and “No code required”. Is this deliberate or just from generic coding?
It’s just generic coding – I can put in place something that where no code is required that the link goes direct through to the merchant without the framed section – and the user is just told “Visit Site” – will be done later today.
Links has now been changed, so that if no code is required a user just goes to the merchant site and the text has been changed to reflect this.
Took your time sir:) Thought you would have sussed that ages ago.
Doug
Superb stuff.
Nice to see some momentum behind the ethical code use wagon!
I saw no consensus at all in the thread at a4u, just a discussion between discount code site owners and a representative from ONE of the affiliate networks. A sad day indeed as loquax goes to the dark side of affiliate marketing!
My view why it doesn’t convert is that people mainly think of getting a discount code when they are 80% through the buying process and are asked if they have got a code.
They then look for one and take it off a site and plug it into the transaction process.
If it is present on the site then they’ll cut and paste. If not they’ll open up and the cookie is dropped.
I’d be interested to see what the average click to buy time is for discount code sites as against content sites ….
p.s. my site uses the numpty method in the short term – for a reason.
“I saw no consensus at all in the thread at a4u” – read the posts from Webgains, Affiliate Window and from POR – all agree that click to reveal is ok – that’s what I wanted to know.
Is it the darkside and a sad day? Don’t be so melodramatic! Our code section represents a mere fraction of the work we do, so perhaps you should do a bit more research!
All codes are valid and are only one’s from networks/merchants, there are no 1×1 pixel iframes, there are no merchants listed that don’t have codes, all codes that expired get closed off and a visitor can’t get them nor can they set a cookie.
And here’s the thing Steve – if it doesn’t work, I can switch the code back to be open in minutes – but at least it (like Kieron’s blog) brings it to the public domain for network clarification and discussion!
Jason
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