Not Last Referrer - PLEASE EXPLAIN!!!!!

[Confuscius]

<ranton>
'Not last referrer' as the reason for a decline is really starting to p*ss me off! The reason that it p*sses me off is that it is used as a reason but it is not a full EXPLANATION of why the sale was declined.

I think that it means different things to different merchants too!

I really do have trouble visualising how the cookie set by me becomes overwritten for payment but not overwritten in reality on the purchaser's computer.

How can this be?
</ranton>

Please note my correct usage of tags on this occasion!

Seriously, if I was not the last referrer then who was? I am not asking to be told the specific person that got the sale but was this lost to a PPC'er, a voucher coder or some other EXPLANATION?

It would be so helpful if Merchants could be made to go one step further in their reasons to turn them into explanations as this would then let me make a proper decision on what to do with regards to any particular merchant.

An example - say I keep losing sales to a particular merchant to the 'not last referrer' reason BUT I was the original introducer so if I am providing leads to a merchant only for them to be lost to say vociferous voucher coding or another unknown explanation. Surely, I would be better off finding a different Merchant to drive the traffic to.

As we have never, to my knowledge, had 'not last referrer' adequately explained then I will have little option but to instigate a simple rule that says 'if the Merchant declines due to not last referrer' then 'I should remove the merchant' to increase the chances of me keeping what seems to be properly earned commissions. Unless anyone has a better idea? Please chip in! (Note: I do not have problems with Golf merchants!)

Paul

[IntroSites]

Paul, this really p's me off too, and im sure its down to the Voucher Clown sites "click to reveal"

[Confuscius]

Hi Intro

Thanks for letting me know that I am not alone in being slighty peeved!

As regards the 'click to reveal'ers the my understanding is that when someone clicks to reveal then they would set a new cookie and simply overwrite the original cookie and the sale would simply get credited to their account and I would never see the sale and therefore would never see the 'not last referrer' - I am sure that we all lose traffic to this scumbag practice. There is an interesting thread on A4u on this topic and it looks like things are going to change on 1 January 2009 and it is nice to see that the Network collective have started to grow some testeeclays.

I think that the best approach to this may be to wait for some generic EXPLANATIONS of how the 'not last referrer' situation can occur before seeking individual explanations of what circumstances lead to 'not last referrer' in the case of INDIVIDUAL MERCHANTS who use this as a reason for declining transactions.

I will construct a list of all Merchants who have used this reason on my account so far this year and perhaps others could do the same such that we can get some further individual explanations at a later date.

For now, I believe a 'general' list of circumstances that lead to 'not last referrer' would aid the understanding of all affiliates who frequent this forum.

Paul

PS the A4U thread - http://www.affiliates4u.com/forums/a...ode-sites.html - for information.

[amcho]

One way to solve this problem is to use the 'Merchant Performance' report: sort it by impressions or clicks and then in the shopwindow Merchant Manager block those merchants that are bad performers for whatever reason.

If you do this remember to keep a note of when and why you blocked a particular merchant.

PS should that not be [rant] [/rant]?

[Amoochi]

Originally Posted by IntroSites

Paul, this really p's me off too, and im sure its down to the Voucher Clown sites "click to reveal"

I agree completely, it makes my bloody boil the thought that voucher code vultures steal from all of us making it harder and harder for us to get our sales.

Personally, I think every single sale, whether given or rejected needs to be a damn sight more transparent than it currently is. Right now the entire system favours the merchant far too much and it is way too easy for merchants to come up with any one of their catalogue of excuses to decline a sale and we are left none the wiser most the time, other than a single generic line of text, which we only get to see by ohvering over a tiny red dot.

Confusious - I liked your question over on A4U, unfortunately though, It's clear they wouldn't do anything before Christmas, because we all know that the most important thing for the networks is sales and if it wasn't for the normal affiliates making a fuss and being so openly unhappy about what these voucher sites are doing, the networks would probably never do anything at all about these voucher sites, cause at the end of the day, they do give them lots of sales, even if most of them are stolen from others. As we've said before, the bigwigs don't work on compassion or morality, they work on profits.

Amcho - It may sound daft, but surely blocking merchants costs us sales, even if they are relatively few, simply because any merchant included in the Shop Window increases the amount of products and words we have on our pages and thus increasing our chances of picking up visitors and click-thru's and sales, block them and we are punishing ourselves. Except maybe companies like Empire Stores, that were a complete con and cost me a hell of a lot of commission due to declines with crappy excuses like "bad credit" or "credit declined" or "order cancelled" or of course the obvious "not last referrer" or any other number of excuses they could dig up to try and get out of paying, even though it is clear companies like that send out catalogues with massive freephone hotline numbers posted all over them.

[Andy]

<sticking my Oar in>
I have never had a "Not last referrer" so can't comment on direct experience but.............

How can a transaction be declined for "Not last referrer"?
If you are "Not last referrer" then surely this is only a click and not a transaction. The transaction should only ever be logged for the last referrer, everything else is just a click.

</sticking my Oar in>

on a slightly related note: I noticed, with great amusement, the email from kitbag regarding cross network tracking. It seems that cookies could be set for the 3 networks they run through, and commissions would track for all 3 from a single transaction within the cookie period. I wonder which network's cookie will get precidence now.

[IntroSites]

Say a visitor clicks our link and does some shopping, but on the checkout page they see the option "enter voucher code" so open a new window search for a code which they find with a "click to reveal". this plants a new cookie from code site.

would the sale still track via our site as the basket session started on our cookie? but then be not last referrer

Im sure the stats would clearly show code sites tracking sales like this, click to transaction would be literally seconds.

[Confuscius]

PS should that not be [rant] [/rant]?

I learned from my last tagging exercise that spaces are not allowed in tags ( ANDY please note ) and that it was important that the '/' turned the tag off so I believe that it is OK for me to turn on my rant on as long I can rant on whilst rant on is on and then when my rant is over then I no longer need to rant on so then I can turn my rant on off!

[dare]
Anyways, methinks the confusion is apparent and the lack of response from anyone other than an affiliate rather graphic to say the least. Anyone from Affidigishopdow care to stick their head above the parapets?
[/dare]

Paul

[amcho]

Amoochi - dunnow - if you have say ten merchants on a page, each merchant gets say ten clicks (ignoring page position) - if you eliminate the merchant that does not perform - you then get 11 clicks to performing merchants. Problem is if the merchant who does not perform is the only merchant on the page, we need a bit of code that says:

if (UnperformingMerchant and SortOrderIrrelevant) {
       move product to bottom of page;
}

[stuart_t]

Hi,

Just wanted to try to answer a few questions/address concerns regarding this issue in general. If a customer clicks on one of your links, thus dropping the cookie, then before making their purchase, clicks on another affiliate's link (be it voucher code or anything else) then as the last referrer, that affiliate will be credited with the sale.

This would not result in the commission needing to be declined as "not last referrer" as it would simply track to the final referring affiliate.

If a commission is declined as 'not last referrer' it means that the sale has a more recent referrer via another source, most commonly another network. We are always working with our merchants to ensure that anything like this is minimised through the use of local cookies. These solutions do of course need to be implemented on all sides (ie all networks) to ensure it works correctly. The cookie is not actually overwritten in these cases, hence it tracks to you as well as another source. It is the presence of both network cookies that means the sale tracks to both, and therefore one needs to be declined.

Kind regards,

Stuart

Affiliate Window
stuart.toll@affiliatewindow.com