LetMeShop User Manual

• Track Advertising and Pay-Per-Click campaigns
• Manage and Track a Partner or Affiliate Program.

Advertising Tracking techniques: To track an advertising or pay-per-click campaign you must first add the appropriate records to the partner / affiliate database. Using the Edit Partners / Affiliates administration section add a new partner / affiliate record. (See Adding A New Partner). 

When you create the URL for the advertising or pay-per-click campaign you will need to add a short section to the URL. If the URL includes a query string (it already has a question mark and name-value pairs (yourdomain.com/thispage.asp?thisid=thisvalue) you will need to add ( &MPID=uniqueID ) where uniqueID is the ID you set up in as the Partner / Affiliate Unique ID.

This will enable LetMeShop to track the number of visitors to the site who register with the site and total sales for those customers by the Partner ID.

LetMeShop can track sales and customer registrations by partner code. When you build a link to your site from anywhere using a Form or a Querystring you can assign a Partner_ID. This Partner_ID is then saved in a cookie for any visitor coming to your site through that link. If that customer registers the Partner_ID is saved in the contact record.

This gives you a lot of flexibility in tracking the success of any affiliate program or advertising you do.

For example, if you place a banner ad and use a link including a partner ID. You will easily be able to tell how many visitors came to your site from the ad and actually became active customers. This is a much better way of tracking the success of an advertising campaign than just hits.

The partner/affiliate set up also allows you to enter a commission for each partner/affiliate. This commission is used in the reports to create a "Commission" based on the total sales within a date range. This commission does not include canceled orders.

The following is an example of a Querystring link using a partner ID.

<a href="http://www.yourdomain.com/_store/default.asp?MPID=exampleid"><img src="http://www.yourdomain.com/images/yourbanner.gif" border="0"></a>

The following is an example of a form link to your site using a partner ID.

<form action="http://www.yourdomain.com/_store/default.asp" method="post">
<input type="hidden" name="MPID" value="exampleid">
<input type="submit" name="submit" value="Visit yourdomain.com">

Important Note: Links can go to any page in the _store folder which means you can link to specific items or pages as long as you include the MPID=exampleID in the querystring.
Some pages (such as the products page) require passing the link as a querystring.

From the Partner / Affiliate page you can add, edit or delete a partner/affiliate ID.

• Name: The name of the account
• Commission: This is entered as a percentage. ( 50% would be entered as .50 ). This percentage is used to create commission reports for your admin section and for the partner/affiliate user report.
• Company: Not required
• Unique ID: This must be unique to each account and should contain no spaces or special characters. Maximum 20 characters.
• Password: Used to create reports by the partner/affiliate
• Email address: This is required but is used for information only
• Phone: This is required but is used for information only.
• Start Date: This indicates the date the account was activated.
• Active: This box must be checked for the partner/affiliate to use the report generator.

The report generator allows you to build sales and registration reports based on a date range.

Partner Ad and Banner Administration: LetMeShop allows you to manage a virtually unlimited number of ads and banners that can be used by your partners and affiliates. When you choose the Ad and Banner Administration link on the administration navigation bar a list of all current banners will be displayed.

When creating the "Link" for the Ad or Banner the URL must be created with the MPID code included. For instance, a link to Web Transitions home page would be...
<a href="http://www.webtransitions.com/default.asp?MPID=<SETPARTNER>"><img src=/images/logosmall.gif border=0></a>

Please Note: You must include the code <SETPARTNER> where you want the individual partner/affiliate id to be included.

When you are using a flash banner, you will need to embed the flash file within a <DIV> and add HREF code to the entire DIV. This is because the affiliate link program cannot change the MPID setting within the flash .SWF file. IE., 

<a href=http://www.webtransitions.com/default.asp?MPID=<SETPARTNER>"><DIV ID=THISDIV> (flash include code) </DIV>

• Ad Name: Use a short descriptive name for this ad
• Type: This is used to help your partner choose which type of ad to include in their site. They are:
  • Narrow Ad (less than 220 pixels wide) using Flash or Java Script
  • Narrow Ad (less than 220 pixels wide) using a .gif image
  • Narrow Ad (less than 220 pixels wide) using an animated .gif image
  • Wide Ad using Flash or Java Script
  • Wide Ad using a .gif image
  • Wide Ad using an animated .gif image
• Width in Pixels: Enter the width in pixels for this ad
• Height in Pixels: Enter the height in pixels for this ad
• URL of Image / File: If you are using and image enter the fully qualified URL of the image.
• Partner Link: Enter the HTML, Java Script or other code needed to add the link to a page. The user will copy and paste this code into their page. Make sure you test the code.

The client report generator allows the partner/affiliate to create their own reports by date range.

Your partners/affiliates can check their own sales/commissions through the following link. <http://www.yourdomain.com/partner>. They must enter their parter/affiliate id, password and a date range to get a list of sales, total sales and their commission.