Goodbuy.at v2 Hello.at v4

Well it finally has happened! Buy.at have switched off their affiliate management area v2 and moved everyone over to their new system (v4?). No longer is there a choice between v2 and Beta v3, instead after logging in you’re guided to the new CMS system - which I’m guessing is now v4.

I wasn’t against v3, I just preferred v2 as it was much easier to pick up links and banners. There’s of course familiarity issues, but I also found the upgraded version did make moving around Buy.at a little bit more cumbersome. Some issues still remain in v4. For example I can click on “My Programmes” and select a merchant, but at neither pages is there a link offering me access to creative.

To get creative I have to choose “Content & Creative” - that does make sense - but I like to be able to click around from section to section without always using the set navigation.

One useful tip for getting banners is choose “Graphic Links” option. Don’t go near “Creative Overview” - I’m not sure if it’s just me, but at times the loading is terrible. It took almost two minutes for 14 3mobile banners to appear. Similar issues put me off v3 too!

Another element I’d like to see changed is the pagination. Instead of Pages 1, 2, 3 etc I’d much prefer A, B, C etc so that I know exactly where the merchant I’m looking for is hiding. You can choose to see “All” on a page (e.g. “My Programmes”) but then “All” means “Warts n All” as it lists programmes you’ve been rejected from or not applied too.

These are all minor issues which aren’t going to hinder usability (although I’d like Buy.at to look at their loading issue) and having spent some time looking around whilst writing this blog there’s some nice bits and bobs in the system.

One thing that’s good to see is a place to list your websites. Having wanted to add Buy.at’s insurance merchants to an insurance website, only to be rejected by most of them, this facility should remove these issues in the future.

ContextEngine is also new. ContextEngine “detects which merchant programmes you are approved for, identifies their brand names in your copy, and then turns them into affiliate links”.

This could be quite useful in terms of blogging - especially when away from the office. For example, let’s say I’m at A4UExpo later this month and hear that Thorntons have a special offer. By quickly typing up a post via mobile and firing it off to appear on our Offers Blog the link should appear around “Thorntons” without me having to worry about including it in the copy.

To see if this works the code has been put in place on this blog - meaning the links for the chocolate company which weren’t included get put in place - that’s quite a neat innovation.

So it’s goodbye to v2 and hello v4, now all Buy.at need to do is sort out their homepage ;o)