shopping cart software

To download the full Version 5 Manual, please go to http://manual.volusion.com

Volusion provides merchants the ability to host affiliates with their online stores using the affiliate features available within the store front, Marketing and Customer portions of the Volusion V5 system. These features are discussed in greater detail within the Affiliates chapter of the Volusion V5 Manual.

Store affiliates can provide merchants a wealth of opportunity to extend their store's marketing reach to more and more customers. In exchange, affiliates typically receive some form of commission for the sales they generate.

In order to facilitate this, merchants will need information on their affiliate's activities. Volusion V5 makes this easy by providing the Affiliate Statistics page:

Getting Started:

The Affiliate Statistics page is essentially a report that provides merchants a list of all orders generated within Volusion through affiliates or through automated referral programs (Google Adwords, etc).

Merchants can use this information to determine how much commission they should pay an affiliate as well as gauge the performance of a particular affiliate-based ad campaign.

To access the Affiliate Statistics page, do the following:

• Log into the Volusion Admin Page and click on the Reports tab.
• Click on the Affiliate Stats link in the black menu bar.
• Merchants will now see the View All table in the Affiliate Statistics page.

Part I - Reading the Affiliate Stats Page:

The Affiliate Stats page will contain some basic but useful information regarding all orders that have been placed within the Volusion store. This table view can be customized based on the year and month and can assist merchants in determining how much commission an affiliate has earned, which affiliates are the most popular and more.

The contents of the Affiliate Stats page are as follows:

Part II - Using the Affiliate Stats Page:

The Affiliate Stats page can be customized by using the record view options contained at the top of the page.

View by Month:

Near the top left of the page, merchants can select a specific month from the current year within the Month drop-down menu. Selecting a particular month from this menu and clicking Go will reload the Affiliate Stats page containing only the orders generated within the selected month.

View by Year:

Next to the Month drop-down menu, merchants can also select a specific year to view any or all orders within the Affiliate Stats page based on a particular year.

Both this and the Month drop-down can be used together to find a list of orders in this table based on an order and month.

View Monthly Totals:

Clicking on this option near the top of the Affiliate Stats page will reload the page with affiliate tracking data based on the current month. This table will be a simplified form of the Affiliate Stats page - containing only the Affiliate ID, Name, Company Name, Total Earnings, Total # of Sales and Date of Most Recent Sale for each order generated for the current month.

Merchants can use this table view to quickly generate a list of the commission amounts that affiliates have earned - as well as a list of total sales.

Additionally, merchants can return to the basic table view by clicking on the "View All Records" link.

Tips and Special Settings:

A Note Regarding Affiliates and Reports:

The Affiliate Stats report will contain a list of all orders - regardless if they were generated by an affiliate or not. Any order that was placed within a Volusion store that was not generated using an active affiliate link will display in this report with an affiliate ID of zero.

To accurately track any affiliate data, merchants must provide an active tracking URL to any affiliate or marketing program (e.g. Google Adwords) registered with their Volusion store. Please see the Volusion V5 Manual chapters on Affiliates for more information on configuring tracking URLs.

Summary:

Among the many report tools provided within Volusion V5, the Affiliate Stats page provides merchants with a quick way to access basic data on their affiliates' activity. This information can be valuable in determining the amount of success a particular affiliate or program has been for merchants, the amount of revenue and commissions associated with certain affiliates and overall, helps merchants to better plan and marketing their online business.