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Posted by Lammo in Once again the age-old voucher code debate has reared its ugly head, and is showing no signs of going away. Which led me thinking of potential solutions that would help avoid content affiliates like myself losing out when the very consumers we’re written for, persuaded to part with their hard earned cash, and in many cases “closed the sale” head off to a voucher code site and overwrite our cookies.. Now I’m not saying this is a “solve-all” solution, but I think it’s got legs – see what you think…
Q: WHEN does a consumer decide to use a voucher code?
A: When they’re told by the merchant there might be one!
I would say that most people when shopping online don’t even think of using a discount/voucher code, but what do you think happens when they add all their items to the basket, get out their credit card and hit the “checkout” button, only to see a big shiny box proclaiming “enter promotional code here”? That person who was quite happy to pay full price suddenly realises that if they can find one of these codes, they’ll get a discount, so off they hop to Google, enter “merchant name discount code”, and click on the first couple of sites – whoops, there goes my cookie!
You’d just as well have a bit on the checkout page that says “Would you like to pay full price for these items? Click yes to pay now, or no to spend 30 seconds doing a quick Google search to see if there’s a voucher that could save you £10 off these items.”
What if this “enter promotional code” box could be hidden for content affiliates?
In the same way that merchants can hide their sales phone number for traffic coming from affiliates (basically a cloned site without the telephone number), would it be possible for affiliates to choose which version of the merchants site they’d like to send traffic to: one with “enter promo code” boxes, or one without.
Voucher code affiliates could opt to display the boxes as normal, and content affiliates could choose not to, removing the temptation from the shoppers screen and helping to ensure they get the credit for the sales they deserve.
A few problems… and possible solutions
1. Not all merchants would be willing/able to implement this. True, it would need to be done on an opt-in basis for those merchants who are willing (and technically able) to do it – Even after 9 years of Affiliate Marketing, I still see merchants every day who can’t/won’t remove their telephone numbers. It would certainly help the merchants who did implement it win some friends with content affiliates!
2. What about gift vouchers? For a number of merchants, their gift vouchers are issued in code form, which is entered in the same area as the promo/discount/voucher codes. Clearly, they would still need to offer the ability to pay by gift voucher, but wouldn’t this be better as a “pay by gift voucher – enter code” area on the payment page rather than a generic “enter promo/voucher code” on the personal information page?
What do you think? Could this work? Would networks/merchants adopt it? Would affiliates use it? Would it make any difference?
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The problem is cookie-napping.
If it wasn’t possible to pinch my hard earned sale by adding a voucher code through a Click To Reveal which over-writes my cookie then it wouldn’t be a problem.
We need lockable cookies.
Cookies that count from who got them to add it to the basket.
That’d help merchants too who are often fleeced by promotional codes too when they get distributed too widely and outside of their intended marketing area.
If any site then encourages you to add something else to the basket they’d get a cookie set for the bit they’ve added.
Cookie-napping is done mainly through use of Click to reveal which in some cases forces a cookie on the customer. The customer wants the code, because they’ve seen the box to put it in, so find one and because they have to click to reveal the sale gets cookie-napped.
Removing the box would only cause sites with forums to explain how to remove a cookie in order to get the voucher discount applied!
Hey mate, interesting take on it, I would like you pointed out getting merchants to remove a phone number from a site is a big enough job, most won’t do it for Affiliate traffic full stop. However if any merchant wanted to do what your saying, Paid On Results could offer a URL that could trigger the local cookie to make this happen. But we actually have a far smarter, more advanced technical solution to this whole voucher code stuff (2 years on the 9th October it’s been in place and no one managed to copy what we can do yet), Merchants could use that and not change their websites, it’s just a tiny bit of code to add and problem solved. We even solve the whole codes being nicked and offline codes problem with our Voucher Manager, it’s super advanced beyond what anyone else has.
However Merchants are not interested in it from lack of take up and Affiliates don’t seem to care about it much either (maybe they don’t know about it), but we have it here if any smart Merchants or Agency’s actually want to solve the majority of the issues surrounding vouchers, otherwise everyone can keep going on how nothing can be done until the cows come home.
Always think of technical solutions like this, “if it can be done, Paid On Results will be the guys who can do it”.
Seems like a valid idea to me. I think the losing sales to VC sites and losing sales to a phone line is a reasonable comparison. If merchants can accept that one isn’t favourable it doesnt seem a far stretch to deem the other as a no-no too.
However I have stopped putting much effort into merchants that are voucher code heavy. I just don’t have the time or energy to keep chasing solutions to this problem.
Now if everyone else followed suit, maybe the merchants will start to notice!
It is fairly easy but the question is how many merchants (mainly large brands) are willing to remove the telephone numbers for affiliates? We for Christy Home have the phone number embeded based on the referral URL. The phone number is dynamically hidden on affiliate referrals as long as the affiliate cookie is active.
Regarding the gift certificates, we do have a dynamic numeric code but it can be redeemed as a payment option rather than using the voucher code input facility. It makes is easy for us to manage and does not confuse the customers. However some do believe that the gift codes and voucher codes are same and free.
Merchants should have a serious think about taking the promo code out of the check out page anyway. Firstly it’s just a distraction that they could do without. Once the customer starts looking for a promo code who knows what they will get cross sold onto – maybe a competitor site. Even if the customer comes back and completes the sale using a promo code the merchant has perhaps needlessly reduced his margin.
As a pure content affiliate with a choice of what, 200+ travel merchants to promote I look for merchants which don’t have discount codes in their checkout as one of the criteria on deciding whether to push them.
There are other ways to give certain user groups (new customers, loyal customers whatever) a discount – special URLs, dedicated landing pages, cloned versions of their site etc.
Unfortunately I think many people are forgetting that many customers now expect to find a discount code to help them convert. They will compare 3 merchants and include the discount code price in their decision making.
It’s a model that many merchants have accepted and in the current climate it is here to stay.
Several of the merchants we send the most sales to from http://www.discountvouchers.co.uk actually has no codes…..go figure:)
Doug
Hey, this is a really interesting read. We’re a new-ish merchant and I’m trying to learn all I can about the workings of affiliate marketing. the topic of voucher codes is one we’ve been mulling over and the solution 1 (promo box removal for non-voucher affiliates) seems like a great solution. We’ll certainly be looking into it…
alot of merchants are now not offering voucher codes!! if not at all
Maybe all affiliates should offer discount codes with product they are trying to sell in their websites.