Reconciling With Affiliate Networks

This tutorial will discuss the complications of working with multiple affiliate networks. These days there are lots of different networks like Above All Offers, Clickbooth, etc. and each of these networks has their own internal tracking system that they will use to record clicks to your site and conversions. This will then be used to calculate how much you owe them. It's never a good idea to let a third party tell you how much you owe them unless you have a good audit trail in place. Ideally you would put into place a tracking system on your side that would match up to their tracking system so that both sides have robust numbers that they can trust. To implement this we are going to leverage two features of UltraCart: the affiliate system and the affiliate network pixel feature.

Affiliate System

The UltraCart affiliate system is an incredibly robust affiliate tracking system that can provide rock solid conversion tracking. Because it's internal to UltraCart we don't have to rely on a particular script firing on a receipt page in order to give credit to an affiliate. This gives UltraCart an advantage in tracking over 3rd party network trackers. So for each affiliate network we want to set them up as an affiliate within UltraCart. You can do this under:

Main Menu → Affiliate Management → Affiliates

After you create an affiliate for each of the networks we can move on to the Affiliate Network Pixel setup. The network itself does not have to log into this affiliate account if you don't want them to, but it's OK if they do.

Affiliate Network Pixel

The Affiliate Network Pixel (ANP) is a feature of the checkout that is configured on a per screen branding theme basis. The purpose of the feature is to track when the network sends traffic to one of your landing pages and then fire ONLY that networks pixel on the receipt. By only firing one pixel on your receipt you can guarantee two things:

The network can't claim credit for a sale unless they actually delivered the traffic.
If two networks interacted with the customer in some fashion, two pixels are not fired causing both networks to claim a commission.

To start configuring the ANP

For Storefront checkouts

Navigate to:

Main Menu → Storefront → (Choose SF host) → (Storefront menu) Conversion Tracking → Affiliate Networks (Tab)

To configure an Affiliate network pixel, click the "new" button:

Upon clicking the "new " button the following a pop up window appears, presenting the affiliate network pixel editor:

Field	Description	Required	Recommended Value
Network Name	The name of the network	Y
Parameter Name	The name of the parameter on the landing page URL that the ANP system should look for	Y	n
Parameter Value	The value of the parameter that must be present for affiliate to be associated with this network	Y	a number like 100, 200, 300, etc.
Conversion Type	The type of conversion pixel to inject.	Y	Custom
Conversion Pixel (Custom)	The snippet of conversion pixel HTML/JavaScript to render on the receipt. You can use any of the receipt tokens within this pixel like [order] or [subtotal]	Y	Snippet provided by the network
Fire Percentage	The percentage of the time to fire their pixel. Some merchants and networks agree to reduce this by 1-3% points to handle refunds that can't easily be backed out	Y	100%
If the pixel is not fired, how should the Internal UltraCart Affiliate System behave?	Choose one of these radio button choices: Process Internal UltraCart Affiliate System Skip Internal UltraCart Affiliate System Assign to Internal UltraCart Affiliate
Record Pixel Fire in Custom Field	The custom field (1-7) to record that a pixel was fired. It will populate with a Y/N flag	Y	1
Record Pixel Name in Custom Field	The custom field (1-7) to record the name of this pixel.	Y	2
Cookie Lifetime	The amount of time that the ANP cookie should stay on the customer's browser	Y	90
Stomp Previous Network's Cookie	If this box is checked then the last one to touch the customer will receive credit. If it's left unchecked then the first to touch the customer will receive credit	Y	checked
Assign to Internal UltraCart Affiliate	The internal UltraCart affiliate to record the sale against.	Y	The affiliate configured in the prior section of this tutorial

Server to Server Conversion Type

This is a more reliable communication method rather then having the browser handle this communication. However this is not required. If you set the conversion type to Server-to-Server you can then specify a URL that UltraCart will ping to notify the third party.

Field

Description

Conversion Type

Server-to-Server

Conversion Pixel

You'll configure the tracking URL here. You can use the tokens [orderid], [subtotal] or [anp_param_<name>] in the example. For example on FlexOffers you would use:

sid=[anp_param_refid]
on=[OrderId]
sa=[subtotal]

All the parameters on the landing page URL as collected and made available to send back in the pixel using the anp_param_<name> token.

After completing the filling out of the form and submitting it, you'll see the newly configured affiliate network pixel like this:

Proceed to the "Testing it Out" section below.