From Wiki

Introduction

Click Append is Affiliate Window’s term for adding a parameter and value to a click-through URL.

It can be used as a way of passing information to a merchant’s website. This information can be used in a variety of different ways.

1. To enable the AW tracking code to only display when an AW affiliate has last referred the customer. This is useful if a merchant wishes to de-dupe against different advertising channels such as other affiliate networks. This is dependent on the other networks/advertising channels putting a similar solution in place. This is sometimes known as ‘conditional tagging’ and ‘de-duping at source’.

2. To track that a sale has come through from Affiliate Window and tag it so that the merchant knows where the sale has come from (for Internal Reporting purposes). This can be used with analytical software such as Coremetrics, Google Analytics and others.

3. To initiate the removal of telephone numbers or other non-affiliate friendly objects from a web page.

4. As a simple telephone tracking solution that allows the merchant to display telephone numbers prominently on their site and display the affiliates’ ID next to any telephone numbers that are displayed. Customers can then quote the affiliate ID when ordering over the telephone.

Conditional Tagging/De-duping at source

Conditional tagging/de-duping at source requires all advertising channels that you want to de-dupe against to implement a ‘Click Append’. Click append is used to automatically add a parameter and value to the merchant’s click-through URL when sending a visitor to any page on the merchant’s website. For example: ‘source=aw’.

The parameter and value is recognised by the merchant’s site and is used to trigger the writing of a local cookie which stores the source of the visitor. The source could be Affiliate Window or any other advertising channel that the merchant wishes to de-dupe against. This local cookie needs to have the same life span as your affiliate programme cookie. The affiliate programme cookie is set by Affiliate Window on click-through to the merchant’s site.

Subsequently, if the customer is sent back to the merchant by one of the other advertising channels then the local cookie should be overwritten with one for the last referring advertising channel.

This cookie needs to be present on the visitors’ computer even if they leave and come back to the website at a later date or out of the original session. When the customer makes a purchase the confirmation page should check the cookie and read who the last referring advertising channel was. If that last referring channel has a tracking code that needs to be displayed on the confirmation page (as Affiliate Window does) then that tracking code should then be displayed.

This system will ensure that the sale is attributed to the last referring advertising channel.

Source Tracking

Tracking the source of a visitor is important to merchants who want to be able to establish the origin of their customers.

Click append can be used to add to the merchants click-through URL information that can be used by the merchant for reporting purposes. Pretty much anything can be added as a click append. For example if a merchant wanted to track the source and the affiliate ID of the affiliate which generate a click-through or sale then the click append could be ‘source=aw&affid=12345’. The merchant can then capture this information and use it as they see fit.

If a merchant uses third party analytics software such as Coremetrics or Google Analytics then any parameters that these systems require can be added as a click append so that all the affiliate traffic is tagged and reported.

For example these Coremetrics tags can be added as a click append.

cm_ven=AffiliateWindow&cm_cat=Example&cm_pla=Example&cm_ite=Example

Ensuring an affiliate friendly website

If you have telephone numbers prominently displayed on your website it increases the chance that customers will call to make a purchase. If a customer makes a purchase over the telephone then the affiliate that sent that customer will not earn a commission. It is important to remove telephone numbers for affiliate referred traffic as this will ensure your conversion rate published to affiliates three months into your programme will always appear as high as possible.

To do this you will need to recognise that a visitor has come through an affiliate link and remove any telephone numbers that appear prominently on the website. Affiliate Window can tag the traffic that affiliates send you by adding a click append. This click append is added to the end of the destination URL for example: ‘source=aw’. If this is displayed then you know that the visitor was referred by an affiliate and you know to write the website with any prominent telephone numbers removed.

If you have third party advertising on your website then a similar solution should be set up to remove these ads.

Below shows an example PHP script that grabs the click append (?source=awin) information from the URL, sets a cookie for 30 days and hence removes the telephone image if the cookie is set.

<?php 
$url = $_SERVER['REQUEST_URI']; 
 
$check_if_awin = strpos($url,'awin'); 
if ($check_if_awin !== false) { 
    $thirtydays = 60 * 60 * 24 * 30 + time();  
    $awin = 1; 
    setcookie('awin', $awin, $thirtydays); 
 
} 
 
if(isset($_COOKIE['awin'])) 
    $awin = $_COOKIE['awin']; 
 
 
// Hide or display your phone number     
if ($awin == 1)     
    echo "Phone number hidden"; 
 
else     
    echo "<img src='http://www.phonenumberimage/0800.gif'>"; 
?>

Simple Telephone Order Tracking

Click Append can be used as a simple telephone tracking solution that allows a merchant to display telephone numbers prominently on their site and display the affiliates’ ID next to any telephone numbers that are displayed. Customers can then quote the affiliate ID when ordering over the telephone. The merchant can then capture the affiliate ID and then on a regular basis report back the orders that were generated over the telephone by affiliates.

The merchant should ask Affiliate Window to set the click append to be the affiliates’ ID. The merchant can decide what the parameter should be called. For example: affid=45628 (45628 being the affiliates’ ID) The click append is then added to all click through URLs when an affiliate refers someone to the merchants’ site.

When a merchant gets a visitor with this Click Append in place the merchant should write to a cookie the affiliate ID and re-write the telephone numbers on all pages so that next to the telephone number the affiliate ID is displayed. For example the text displayed on the site could read: Telephone 0845 123 4567 to place an order and quote 45628 when ordering. The merchant needs to train their customer service staff to ask for the quoted number when customers place an order over the phone.

The merchant needs to produce a daily report of all the orders the affiliates have generated and import the file in to the Affiliate Window system using Offline Transaction Processing. The report needs to be in a particular format as documented in the Offline Transaction Processing documentation available here:

Offline Tracking Guide

The report can be uploaded manually or automatically by FTP or HTTP.

Offline Transaction Processing will need to be switched on your merchant account. Please put this request to your contact or the Technical Services team.

To set up click append for any of the above solutions contact the Technical Services team.