Cookies

[stevelibby]

Hi People
I run a few affiliate programmes on my site, i have good positions for those results but sales are not happening? Can someone help me understand cookies a little more as maybe cookies have already been placed on the customer from another site?
can i delete those cookies when they enter my site, and then give them mine?

[treeline]

You can't delete other sites cookies.

[stevelibby]

so how does it all work? what could the explanation as to why my sales havent increased even though i am top of the rankings? i heard something about spyware programs causing an issure?

[treeline]

Well, it sounds like you have quite a few things to check before getting suspicious. So you're at the top of the listings. Are these popular listings? Are buyers really searching for that phrase? Most importantly are they clicking on your listing and coming to your site? If so your traffic logs should be way up. If not, is the site description enticing? Are you listed for the wrong keywords?

You are studying your traffic logs, right?

Then, once visitors visit your site, what are they seeing? Does it inspire them to buy whatever you've got, or is there something about the design or lack of useful information that inspires backbuttonitis as they seek a better site? Have you checked if they're clicking through to buy things? Looked at the path they follow through your site? Did you implement your affiliate codes correctly? Tried buying something yourself to see if you get credited properly? How do you know people are buying things from your site?

Before assuming that someone else is stealing all your riches, have a good hard honest look at your own house. A good way to start is to ask a couple casual acquaintances to look at your site while you observe. Don't tell them anything about the site, and don't say anything while they're poking around it. Just observe. You may find observing frustrating, but it will be educational. Then, instead of explaining to them how they don't use the site the way you intended, fix it so it works the way people expect.

[stevelibby]

Hi Treeline
Thank you for your input to the above. I have been looking all around my house lately as you put it. (one comment i shall remember) and what i have done is i have put tracking against the links in question so evertime it is visited i am able to count how many times visited currently but not the amount of times a page is clicked on however i need to look into that one.
As far as the search term is concerned, lets say the site is popular and is called domain.com, if searched i appear in the top 3 positions below domain.com. content is important so there has been substantial content placed on my site to do with domain.com to which the page is dedicated to domain.com.
now with all the above in place i do need to go the extra mile and understand how cookies work where affiliate programmes are concerned.