Order Processing For Multiple Affiliate Products

order processing

[soccrates]

I have a health website on alternative health for highly sensitive people. I want to offer a group of alt health products from different affiliate programs and networks grouped around different conditions ex: depression, anxiety, PTSD. I do not know how to do this. My site is HTML5, with a WP blog using Thesis.

I have looked into landing page templates and they seem to be either single product pages or e-commerce which seems to be overkill, but maybe I am wrong. I read somewhere that landing sites are preferred by google to landing pages because they offer better content and can be integrated with a blog etc. I could do this.

I also want buyers to be able to order more than one product and have the order processing work.

I would appreciate any suggestions or words of wisdom.

Thanks.

[jimbeetle]

As an affiliate you should not be anywhere in the order cycle beyond sending visitors to the sponsors' sites.

[soccrates]

So if I was offering an herbal supplement from one company plus an aromatherapy product from another company and a reader wanted to buy both, could I do that in a way that is not awkward?

[LifeinAsia]

The user would click on a link to go to the herbal supplement site and buy the product there. Then he would click on a different link to go to the aromatherapy product site and buy it from there.

I suspect that you're thinking of having some sort of shopping cart on your site where the user would put both items in the cart and checkout once. Not going to happen. Like jimbeetle said, as an affiliate, you're not directly involved in the ordering part.

The only affiliate programs that I am aware of that allow affiliates to handle any part of the order process are hotel reservations sites doing a private label implementation.

[soccrates]

Thanks for clarifying it. I am not invested in having a shopping cart as much as I wanted as good an experience as possible for the reader.

[lorax]

The best experience for your visitor would be to sell the products from your own storefront - that way they wouldn't have to do as LifeInAsia noted.

[soccrates]

I was hoping to have some sort of a storefront combined with product landing pages so that I could provide in depth information about specific products and still offer a group of products for a particular condition that people could chose from. Thank, lorax. I will research a storefront further

[haggul]

I don't think it would be easy to do this - after all each merchant is likely to have their own delivery charges etc aren't they? You are alomost into drop shipping territory with your idea.

[eljefe3]

If you could get the affiliate program to allow you to have your own cart, or if using wordpress and the wpcommerce plugin, you could keep everything on your domain, but the actual merchant would have to trust you with their merchant acct info, even though the money goes into their bank acct.

Build trust and make a bunch of sales, then talk to them about something like this. Of course you'd have to have a separate cart for each merchant, so for your scenario it would still be a pain for your customers, unless you could get the various programs to wholesale to you and they dropshipped. You then have all products in your own cart.

[soccrates]

Thank you both, haggul and eljefe3. I have been researching since yesterday and can't say I have found a perfect solution. I have one affiliate for herbal products who is excellent and has high quality based on my own experience. i may just start with the one merchant and develop that relationship and then see what I can do. I can see that it is easy to make yourself crazy (and the reader as well), which I do not want to do. I will look into the wp plugin. That might be a good solution. Thanks again.

[LifeinAsia]

The other thing to consider is that the more you put everything together on your site, the more likely it is that customers will contact YOU for customer service. You will become the middle person when someone wants to cancel their order or complain they didn't get their order within 24 hours or wants to return a product.

If the customer goes to the affiliate site to complete the purchase, it is more likely it is that the customer will see the affiliate as the fulfilling entity and direct all questions/complaints correctly.

[haggul]

That is very true. In fact as a merchant we have had to tell some affiliates not to appear too much like they are the merchant literally for this issue - and also because they present our products in a way that isn't always that flattering!

[soccrates]

Good points, LifeinAsia and haggul. I do not have the desire to be the merchant - maybe sometime in the future. Because my readers are highly sensitive people, I can tailor the product info to them and keep it simple otherwise - a product image with a link. Thanks.

[soccrates]

A little more research. I discovered that the affiliate network Performance Based - a green network is integrated with many shopping carts. Magento is one. Is is worth it to get a storefront set up with affiliate products and then add you own down the line?

Do you know how it would work with Magento?

[jimbeetle]

The shopping cart integration is at the merchant's -- the program sponsor's -- end, not the affiliate's.

I think the best bet for you might be to write a product review for each product with the appropriate affiliate links. Much less messy and more achievable than what you're trying to do.

[soccrates]

Thanks, jimbeetle. It probably is too much right now. What I really want is a store look with out necessarily getting a real store. I think I will investigate that.

[soccrates]

Just thought I would stop in and let you all know what I decided. I am creating my own ads and linking to the affiliate page. It is not my ideal goal, but you have to crawl before you can walk. Next I will probably try a hosted sales page before I get into anything more sophisticated.

I think my next big project needs to be learning HTML5 and CSS3 since I just changed my site to them and there is a lot I do not know about them.

[jimbeetle]

I am creating my own ads and linking to the affiliate page

Do you mean banners? Text ads?

Are you doing anything to pre-sell your site visitors or are you just hoping they are going the click the links?

[soccrates]

The links are related to the topics I cover on alternative health and herbal remedies.