Leakage is the term most commonly used to describe the sales that might have occurred if the visitor to the site had not decided to continue looking elsewhere for more information, a better price or some other purchase “trigger” before completing a transaction.

Stopping potential sales leaking out to a third party is surely one of the most critical elements of success in Affiliate marketing. Leakage represents genuinely missed opportunities. It is hard enough to build suitable affiliations, develop the website and fight the competitors for high search engine rankings, without throwing away the sale.

Are you selling, or are they buying?
It is worth remembering the old adage that the best salespeople never actually sell anything. They merely induce the purchase by establishing a favourable environment to which the purchaser will relate and from which he or she will ultimately buy. Understanding the visitor’s intentions is as difficult as it is vital. Much depends on your keyword strategy. If your site ranks strongly for highly generic terms, you may see considerable traffic but the buying intention may not be there. The more generic the term used to find you, the less likely the visitor is to buy. Each visitor will have preconceived notions of what will meet their needs, even if they cannot articulate them. The job of the affiliate is to understand and relate to those needs by presenting information about the product or service in relevant and positive terms, also in the tone and style appropriate to the visitor’s own mindset.

Whilst it isn’t possible to directly ask the visitor how you can help them (although some affiliates are starting to engineer sites with a more interactive feel), In every market sector, there will be many commonalities of interests. Understanding these commonalities becomes the basis for effective communication. It is also a reason why the selection of a market niche in which to operate as an affiliate is so important. Your understanding of the sector and your communication of it will determine the visitor’s degree of comfort and the likelihood of a purchase.

The relevance of content and monetising links
Developing content is arguably the most important of all of the information communication skills. It has to be interesting, well written, grammatically and linguistically accurate and relevant to the mindset of the visitor. Far too many websites dwell on product features without consideration of the benefits to the purchaser. What may be obvious to the affiliate is not necessarily so to the consumer and the latter may simply not appreciate the subtle differences between competing offers without having them explained in terms that may be clearly understood. It may be a sound investment to outsource content creation to professionals to ensure that the message is clear and conveyed in a relevant way.

The balance between “pre-sell” pages and monetising pages or links is also vital. Clearly you will want to engineer your site in such a way as to drive as many visitors as possible through the “sales funnel” to click on an affiliate link and hopefully monetise. For SEO arbitrage affiliates, this may mean the placement of well-designed affiliate links at the top of most pages, accompanied by rich explanatory content underneath. It is a delicate balancing act between creating a site that is sufficiently strong to rank for SEO purposes and to instil confidence in the consumer without being SO good as to prevent them leaving via an affiliate link!

These factors are where so many affiliates struggle. The content might be worded badly or simply not include some critical piece of information. If the content is packed with monetising links for every keyword and phrase, as so often occurs, the chances of irritating or confusing the visitor and sending them to a competitor increase.

Design aspects
The “look and feel” of the site as a whole contributes hugely to the end result. For the average Internet user, the way in which a site looks and feels is integral to creating comfort and trust. “Funky” design might appeal to some user segments, but not to others. The reverse is also true, where a “neutral” design might work for some categories, yet be wrong for others. Cute graphics can also be problematic, not only because they may not appeal (or load properly in some browsers), but also because the excessive use or poor placement of graphics may create page load time problems and issues with search engine indexing and thus ranking.

As a general rule, always assume that graphics may not load and avoid relying upon them in the communication of vital messages. Design quality again is a delicate balance. For most sites, somewhere in the middle ground between Norah Batty and Elle McPherson is needed. The greater the degree of arbitrage, the less attractive the design needs to be. Conversely, the more delicately balanced and “consultative” the sale, the higher the quality needed.

Closing the sale
A vital element of any site that is to sell effectively is that it must be easy for the visitor to take action. Obvious perhaps but often ignored. Subtle designs can lead to overly subtle call-to-action monetising links or buttons. The site becomes little more than an electronic brochure, albeit attractive, and a virtual invitation for the visitor to look elsewhere before purchasing. The home page should contain all the important information about your site, links to relevant pages with offers or key products.

Clutter and irrelevancy will put off visitors instantly. Conversely, if the visitor feels comfortable with the site and the information presented, they may not only buy now to generate commission once, but may bookmark you only to come back again, recommend friends and family, all contributing to a long term business relationship and monetary value.

Critical mass and confidence
One of the most common complaints from the users of affiliate sites is that they lack a feel of ‘completeness’. With only a modest number of relevant products or merchants displayed, the consumer is left with the feeling that all of us know only too well – “nice site but maybe I need to check Pricerunner, Kelkoo, eBay . . .as well” We all know how hard it is to manage and constantly update from diverse data feeds, text links, direct merchants, networks and so forth. Using an aggregated solution such as Easy Content Units (ECU) can help in addressing these issues and demonstrating that all important completeness to the user. There are many other ways for affiliates to reduce leakage. In combination with completeness, one of the most effective is to include price comparison in the site content, again handled for you if you use solutions such as ECU. The greater the set of products, the more likely it is that comparisons will include the iconic brands within the category, therefore increasing the perception of credibility by association.

Ultimately, the reduction of traffic leakage will become an ever more important part of the affiliate game plan as competition heats for both natural and social media traffic and merchant PPC restrictions continue to bite. A well-designed strategy starting at the top with keyword focus and running through site design, link placement and affiliate data sourcing will all contribute to turning ever more of those hard won visitors into hard cash.

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