Hotpicks
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What are Hotpicks
Hotpicks is a great tool that enables merchants to display their 10 best selling products. Hotpicks are predominantly used for the ShopWindow toolset and is linked to the ShopWindow index page. This requires a piece of script which can be found in the ShopWindow API document provided.
The maximum requirement is 10 products at a time. These best selling products are available to affiliates to access and in turn displayed on affiliates websites. This allows for merchants to generate more coverage of their program through the affiliate channel.
Benefits to your Programme through Hot Picks
•We have approximately 700 affiliates using the ShopWindow toolset
•The ShopWindow team are actively recruiting larger publishers to display ShopWindow within their sites, including the Hot Picks element
•Hot Picks are an individual element of the toolset that can be integrated independently into an affiliate website
•Easy, manageable way for affiliates to keep up to date product information on their websites, without the need for product datafeeds
•Affiliates can integrate the Hot Picks element to fit in with the category of their website. This means that if there is an affiliate on your programme promoting your product categories, they can integrate the Hot Picks for those categories only (allowing for only relevant Hot Picks to be displayed)
e.g. your hot pick is an mp3 player, and an affiliate who has a website dedicated to mp3 players can select to output the mp3 player hot picks within his site.
What if I do not want to use Hot Picks?
Disadvantages of not having Hot Picks fully integrated
•Merchants within your sector who do identify Hot Picks will receive greater exposure for these products, which may cause affiliates to focus less on promoting your programme (particularly on the landing / index pages of their websites).
•Merchants that do not identify Hot Picks will not benefit from the Toolsets functionality and its use by affiliates (currently over 700 affiliates have integrated the toolset and are driving traffic to their shops)
•Many affiliates have sites that are pending going live due to the current limitations of Hot Picks. Ensuring that Hot Picks are enabled will allow these affiliates to set their campaigns to live status and begin / continue to promote your merchant programme.
Where will hot picks appear within an affiliate site?
Hot picks can be integrated as a modular element of the Client Software package. This means that hot picks can be integrated independently on any page within a website (does not have to be just comparison websites, but also can be used as an image to promote your products).
How often should I change my Hot Picks?
This depends on the changes of your best sellers. It is vital to keep your details up to date, so affiliates are able to work with the latest images and information at all times.
Will I be notified when they expire?
The provider area will automatically place a reminder on to the merchant administrator area 8 days before the Hot Picks expire.
When will they expire?
Your Hot Picks expires after 60 days, where you can either refresh or change for complete new products
What if I want to use the same Hot Picks again?
This is possible, click on the refresh button next to your chosen product rather than delete when you are making changes.
Where can I access this?
Hotpicks can be accessed within your merchant control panel. At the LHS of the page, under the heading ‘Promotional Tools’, click on the link ‘shopwindow’ which will redirect you to the datafeed section.
Here you’ll see the Hotpicks option.
Hotpicks work in conjunction with a merchant datafeed that has been successfully uploaded to a merchant account. When searching your choice of best selling products for display, you must ensure that the product data is fully populated within the feed otherwise the product search won’t pull any results.
The product search involved is very specific as you either enter in the exact name of the product or the category that it falls into. Once you’ve chosen your choice of 10, you can now view the current product list which displays the product id, product name, price, expiry date and also an option to delete the product from the selection. Directly underneath the list s a preview of the images associated to the products that have been selected.
How do I remove a Hotpick?
In order to remove a hotpick product all you’d need to do is to click on the ‘Delete’ button at the end of the current selection panel.
Please bear in mind that hotpick removal is not actioned instantly.
My hotpick is blank and doesn’t enable me to remove it – what should I do?
The hotpick is blank due the product record being removed from the datafeed. Once you’ve clicked on the delete button our system will action a script to run at 4am which will remove the blank hotpick from the current selection leaving you with the remaining hotpicks.
Where can I send an inquiry if I have an issue with setting up my hotpicks?
You can do this by writing in a support ticket. Please refer to the LHS of your control panel and underneath the heading ‘Support’ click on the link ‘Create New Ticket’.
Here you can compose a message detailing your query. Once submitted this ticket will be picked up and investigated by our Technical Services Dept. For more information on composing support tickets please refer to this link: Support Ticket.