View Full Version : Unimpressed
I was contacted today by an AW account manager regarding a complaint made to Wilkinson Plus by a customer of theirs about a product that appears on my ShopWindow "powered" site with a price tag £20 below the actual selling price offered by Wilkinson Plus.
I politely pointed out that my site uses live prices from the SW feed and that there was nothing I could do to "update" my site.
I find it hypocritical that we are being asked to meet what for most of us here are probably unobtainable performance targets and undergo site reviews and probation periods for version 3 of this platform when merchants continue to feed in inaccurate, incomplete and even corrupt data.
I can only feel sorry for the poor sods paying £5000 plus £500/month for the Enterprise edition.
London Eye tickets - London from LondonTheatreDirect.com £0.00, really costs £ 18.00. :mad:
Just too many description/pricing errors to list.
This really does need sorting.
Hi guys,
The quality of data is an issue being addressed as we speak and is an issue that has been going on for a long time.
The simple answer is that it is not easy to sort. We have over 800 merchants coming through the portal and policing every single one in an accurate way is a very challenging objective to meet.
It is not a case of being black and white, especially when it comes to the £0.00 pricing issue. I know that where you are standing from, it is that simple "get rid of all £0.00 items".
ShopWindow will only ever be as good as the data that we are receiving. This issue did come up in the steering committee and I am of the opinion that a disclaimer page has been included in v3 where you as an affiliate are advised to address this issue.
I know that that does not solve the underlying problem but we are working on it as part of Darwin.
We are in a constant battle improving the data, and I am sure that the veterans here can attest to it being better now than back at day one?
Regards
attest to it being better now than back at day one?
Definately a lot better than it was in the early days, but still some very sloppy work on the part of the merchants for allowing such shocking data through in the first place though and even worse when some merchants would appear to deliberately leave their hotline number in, so that people phone through orders, glad we don't see that one so much any more...
What doesn't make sense to me is that every single merchant using ShopWindow is using a database to populate their own sites. So why is it so hard for them to generate a ShopWindow feed with the exact same data on a regular basis?
Call me naive but I just don't see what the problem is. I'm an amateur programmer at best and even I can generate scheduled feeds from databases.
Perhaps ShopWindow developers should offer consultancy to those merchants that seem to struggle with such things? We'd all stand to benefit from some expertise and consistency being applied to the data feed.
Hi authcode,
I completely sympathise with you on this. Merchant sites have a wealth of data that they do not give us access to as a network for varying reasons.
Normally, this is because merchants have their own priorities as a business. Their affiliate channel might only account for 5% of their total revenue. If that is the case then it makes it difficult for them to justify putting a lot of man hours into the affiliate programme when those man hours can be put into furthering the 95%.
:(
That being said, there are some great merchants out there who are proactive and approachable.
Sorry George, I deleted my last post after immediately regretting posting it. It was a bit of an overreaction :o .
It's been resolved now, after I explained that I was using SW. I just didn't see the need for 2 emails to be sent to me personally asking me to update my site when it is kind of obvious that my site is SW powered and therefore there is very little I can do about it.
Hi authcode,
Glad to hear that it is sorted. To those that are not that involved with ShopWindow (i.e. account managers) it can sometimes be difficult for them to spot what is and what isn't ShopWindow, especially as a lot of you guys do some really unique things with the platform.
Cheers
I guess.
I just feel that if perhaps those that are not that involved with ShopWindow (i.e. account managers) got more involved, we might see pro-active improvements in the platform.