B&Q

[Andy]

Mad?
you better believe it pal!
Anyone else get this?

Dear Affiliate Partner,



B&Q is currently under going a review of their affiliate activities. We are looking to ensure B&Q partners with Affiliates driving high volume traffic and sales to diy.com.



As part of this process we are looking to remove affiliates who are not delivering the desired threshold on these metrics from the program.



After reviewing the clicks and sales delivered from your website in the last 3 months, you have not met our minimum threshold. Thus, it is with regret that we will be suspending you from the B&Q program. This will take effect 7 days from receipt of this email.



Please ensure that all B&Q advertising material including banners, text copy, XML information and logos are removed from your website.



If you are looking to increase your marketing activities for diy.com over the coming months and feel the clicks and sales measured are not reflective of your potential performance – please get in contact with one of the B&Q affiliate marketing team to discuss your potential options.



Please don’t hesitate to contact a member of our Affiliate team regarding any queries or questions. However if wish to do so please ensure you quote your Affiliate ID.

It's their own damn fault for being lazy with their feeds
Ive sent this reply:

I think you should reconsider this entire policy Rajpal.

We have not been affiliated with B&Q for more than a couple of months, so how can a review of the last 3 months be anywhere near reflective of our potential future performance?

Our affiliation with B&Q is mainly promoted through the shopwindow feed. We have made great leaps in SEO over the last couple of months with ShopWindow, taking any merchant down will seriously affect everything.

B&Q's feed quality is very close to being the poorest on ShopWindow. No thumbnail or product images AT ALL, and product descriptions are no more than a few words long. If they want more performance, they should be looking at themselves and the effort they put in to their promotions.

If B&Q want more sales through us, then they need to work just as hard as we do.
At the end of the day I am not the expert on B&Q's products, they are. We have never been provided with any information that could help us promote them to the fullest extent. This is the major flaw with all retailers, they expect us to know who they are and everything they do. Slapping a banner on a website isn't going to get anyone anywhere. Content is king so if we don't have the content what the hell can we do?

I will be copying this email onto the ShopWindow forums just incase any other affiliates have been naffed off due to their (and possibly your) ignorance of affiliate marketing.

[busby1]

I am afraid that AW is as much to blame, they have developed a great piece of software, and then fail to use it to it best potential.

look at this.. http://www.priceselect.co.uk/category.php?c=285&q=insurance

how amaturish does this look (and AW have been promising to post the cure for empty categories on here all week), combine that with images of all sizes and of course as you mention no images at all in some cases, descriptions that in some cases make no sense at all, and in other don't even describe the product.

AW refuse to help with any problems saying that you should post on here as they are trying to build a community, then questions sit on here for days if not weeks with no reply... even if it was AW that answered the questions on here, it would be the answers that helped build the community, who wants to ask a question they can see will get ignored.

The merchants can only supply poor feeds if AW allow them to, when you apply to join merchants you have to wait until your site is up and running else you get refused. so you get your site up and running apply to all the merchants, then have to sit around for weeks on end waiting to be approved, you contact AW to sort this out and get told tough, there is nothing they can do (there should be a time limit on how long a merchant can leave an affiliate pending)

AW if all you want to do is pass the work load on to others and sit back and watch the money come in, you need to get some basic problems sorted first, and they wont sort them selves... put some work in now sit back and get rich later...

[Confuscius]

I have not received this one, yet! If I had then I guess my reaction would have been very similar to that of Andy.

My own perspective is very simple, as an affiliate a Merchant can choose whether they want me as an affiliate and given B&Q's approach this can be completely arbitrary and with little real reason - their loss basically. As an affiliate I can choose whom to partner with and to be quite honest some of the feeds add nothing to the value of Shop Window, in fact some are probably a liability.

The real issue is that without a real commitment and a real resource to bring about improvement then things will not get much better. SOMEONE SOMEWHERE need to take ownership of this problem. Full stop!

Everyone seems to skirt around the issue - affiliates should choose INDIVIDUAL feeds that they think are crap and write a full critique of that feed with suggestions for improvements. AW should take those issue and suggestions to the individual merchant and try to get whatever improvements they can done. The Merchant should realise that the better the feed then the better the chances of a sale. Merchants should be asked to sign up to a commitment to improve BEFORE affiliate are critical of their feed. Just waiting to see the first Merchant actually ask for a critique - could be a long wait?

Trying to resolve these issues via a forum with what appears to be little desire from affiliates to be specific and even littler desire from Merchants to make improvements is, in my opinion doomed to failure. This is wrong, this is crap, look at all those zeros, oh there's a phone number, what about those funny characters, what dropdown boxes? I can't see them, are'nt the images crap, why are hose products still in the feed when they are out of stock, and probably another 1,000+ moans and whinges - all pointless and just a scatter gun approach to a massive issue.

AW need to bring some structure and organisation to this issue - e.g. specific threads about specific issues and when things wander then they actually act as moderators OR introduce a ticket system for issues and I will give AW the first 100 things to work on BUT I am not going to waste my time doing pointless one off observations about how crap Merchants are and how awful their feeds are. Provide a proper mechanism that will achieve something and I will gladly contribute. Merchants are responsible for what they produce and if they are not willing to invest their time and money into making improvements then why should I invest any of my time.

So my approach is simple, I will spend my time trying to make the best of the data and information provided to me. If I can make what, at the moment is perceived by many as to be not too good, work well for me then when the data does improve then I will have already done the job that really mattered.

Off to check the balance on my AW account!

Rant over.

Paul

[Glitz]

I've been bombed out too!

Have decided just to block them now and get on with it, although I appreciate the SEO implications. On another site I have replaced their creative with that of 'Wickes' who have an affiliate manager (Fiona) committed to growing the Aff./Merchant relationship and to me that is the difference!

Jake

[chartfieldconsultants]

They might want to wipe their own noses before they call us snotty :mad: In the length of time MyBathroomFinder's been running we've sent them more clicks than any other merchant and the result has been precisely one sale. We didn't get the brush-off from them but were already considering reducing how much space we gave them as it just doesn't seem worth it. This development is hardly making us fall in love with them all over again.

[Confuscius]

I got the boot today. Given that shop window is in its infancy then I cannot see that any Shop Window user will have had time to meet their criteria - your guess is as good as mine as to what they are.

I should be most grateful if DigiWindow could simply remove B&Q from the shopping feed so that it saves ALL affiliates having to block them for their crass and righteous attitude!

Any more candidates for the "Pathetic Merchant of the Year" award?

Good riddance, I say.

Paul

[Confuscius]

Received today:

"You have have been suspended from the B & Q (mid:483) affiliate programme.
Please do not respond to this automated email, if you would like to
discover the precise reasons for the suspension please contact the
affiliate manager direct from your account.

Simply select the link 'Current Merchants' under the heading 'Account
Management' then click the name of the merchant you would like to contact,
select the option 'Contact merchant' and an email form will appear.

In the meantime we strongly advise that you temporarily remove any of this
merchant's links."

So to summarise, B&Q look at your past 3 months performance then decide BUT anyone setting up Shop Window from scratch can never get 3 months performance therefore B&q do not want to be associated with Shop Window.

Seems like a bit of a kick in the teeth to DigiWin rather than affiliates. Perhaps DigiWin should have explained to B&Q the potential of Shop Window BEFORE they started their cull.

Au revoir, B&Q.

Paul

PS Why are B&Q products still in my dataset given that I have been suspended? The Buy links resolve back to the original page that the Buy link was on - I am not here to provide free space on my sites to a merchant who has suspended me - Digiwin - please fix this issue immediately as I do not want B&Q products on my sites (DO NOT TELL ME TO REMOVE THEM FROM MY MERCHANT LIST AS THIS CANNOT BE DONE AS I CAN NOW FIND NO TRACE OF B & Q ON MY ACCOUNT ANYWHERE WHATSOEVER!!!!).

[ushop-online]

Same here with B&Q but notice in this thread no reply from AW.

It does seem that some merchants don't understand this system and base everything around banner stats.

[Adrian]

Hi guys,

Apologies for the late reply on this one, to be quite honest I don't really know too much about this myself! I am however currently liaising with the account manager about this in order to get something back to you guys.

Will re-post here as soon as I can tell you more,

Cheers,

Adrian
SW Integration & Technical Support

adrian.botelho@digitalwindow.com
www.digitalwindow.com

[Glitz]

Hi Adrian,

just noticed that B&Q are showing up as featured merchants on my site although I blocked them way back after they sacked most of us!

On principal, if they don't want me, I object to people finding them on my site.

Regards....Jake