Setting up affiliate program in your online store

Affiliate program is a marketing feature that rewards store users for bringing in new customers. Online merchants often choose to set up affiliate program in their stores to increase sales. The program has obvious benefits: it increases visitors flow to their stores, turns visitors into customers, promotes products, advertises links placed on a website, etc. 

A merchant usually sets up a scheme in his/her store, according to which customers can be considered for a reward. Reasons for a reward consideration can range between merely clicking a product link to placing an order with a fixed total by a referred customer.

Affiliate program in Shop-Script PREMIUM stores is set up according to the following model: a store administrator established a reward commission in a form of percentage from the total price of an order. An order has to be placed by a referred customer. If the order is processed successfully, the referrer has earned his/her reward. It is then calculated from the order’s total and is paid to him/her by the store owner.

Enabling affiliate program
In order to set up affiliate program in a Shop-Script store, store administrator just needs to enable it in his/her store’s administrative area, set the amount of commission, and enable/disable email notifications:

Now that the program is enabled, a referrer can choose one of the two following ways to bring customers to the store: providing them with his/her store login or placing a link on a website.

Bringing in customers by providing user login
When registering, a new customer indicates the login of his/her referrer right on the registration page. For example, John has joined the affiliate program and gave Ann his login (john). When Ann was registering for the store, she indicated “john” as her referrer:

Bringing in customers by placing a link on a website
John might also choose to place a link to the store on his website. In this case he does not have to give his login to Ann in order to refer her to the store. She will be redirected there by simply clicking a link on John’s website. The link’s address includes details on John’s account in the store. When Ann lands on the store’s website, these details will be used by the store administrator to fetch out information on her referrer.

Receiving a reward
Now that the store administrator knows that Ann was referred to his store by John, he/she will bring up John’s account and credit him a commission after Ann’s order is successfully processed. If email notification is turned on, he will also receive an email, notifying him about a reward. It is now up to the store administrator and John to agree on how John will receive his reward (account credit, money transfer, free store credit, etc.).