Only 40 or so days left of what is widely predicted to be the biggest online spending spree ever so if you are an online retailer make sure you get your fair share of the bootee.

Make it easy for your customers to buy from you…

I realise as an affiliate its not my place to teach merchants how to do their jobs however as a shopper who buys a fair bit over the internet I’d like to make a few suggestions.

1. Ensure that your shopping cart process is not too complicated. Christmas is probably the wrong time for usability testing but grab a random person and ask them to buy something.
2. Make sure ALL your payment methods work, you can guarantee the one method on the blink is the one everyone is trying to use
3. Do you really need your customers to register. Christmas is a time of impulse buying and many customers will never ever return, insist on them registering and you may just drive them away, no need to switch off registration completely, just offer a quick checkout route.
4. Make the most of your 404 and search traffic. If a user arrives at a page on your site which doesn’t exist or looks for a product you don’t sell, give them a few suggestions rather than a blank page to stare at.
5. Remember to up sell to your customers. Make suggestions which compliment the original purchase, McDonalds do it (you want large fries with that) and online Amazon are the masters of the up sell with every page having “Frequently Bought Together” and “Customers Who Bought This Item Also Bought”

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Merchant 404 Pages

I promised in my last post that I would give you a few ideas about what things to do if you are a merchant (or represent a merchant) and want to be featured on my websites. I’m not guaranteeing all these methods will work but they may move you up my priority list.

Communicate with me

Talk to me, but don’t be pushy, don’t ask how I’m going to promote you, let me know what you have that I may be able to use, tell me about promotions, special offers, sales, new lines, best sellers, what makes you better than everyone else selling the same thing.

Help me

The best way you can help me is by providing copy about the products you sell, ideally unique copy, this is a great way of getting featured as fresh content takes time and every little helps.

Bruce Clayton at Existem-Am recently asked what he could do to help me feature one of his clients so I asked for information about all the brands they sell, 80 – 100 words each I told him would be ideal, Bruce immediately accepted the challenge and said that would be his train project, a couple of weeks later he sent me a nice word document with the bio’s for all 26 brands his client currently features, so far I have added pictures and links tweaked and published three of them and over the next 2-3 months the rest will also be published meaning his client will have 26 articles on my fashion website which gets a steady stream of traffic day in day out.

Give me an incentive

I’m not really one for entering competitions but as I mentioned a couple of weeks back Sunshine held a number of missions each with its own prize but with the ultimate reward being a place on the Affiliate Future Barbados trip. I am happy to say that even though I left things late getting started I was rewarded handsomely for the missions that I took part in winning not only a years subscription to the Hotel Chocolat tasting club but also a place on the trip too. Thank you Sunshine and Affiliate Future

Send me freebies

Possibly my favourite way of being asked to promote a merchant, and the beauty is you don’t need an affiliate program, you send me a sample of what you sell and I will write about either it or your website depending on what you want doing. Over the last year or so among other things I’ve received numerous t shirts, a flashy mobile phone, pants, shoes, a cd, books, my wife and daughters have also benefited as I have been sent pashmina’s, dresses, a beautiful tailored shirt, plus a hat and gloves.

Special mention must go here to Chris Bishop affiliate manager for House Of Fraser who above and beyond the call of duty sent me some hayfever stuff when he found out I was suffering, cheers for that kind gesture Chris, more Hof articles are in the pipeline.

For further ideas regarding getting promoted by affiliates read this article Take a Ticket & Get In Line – You Can’t All Be No.1! by Jason, yes I know I am always mentioning his stuff thats because he talks a lot of sense.