I wanted to make you aware of a report recently available to you in your ShareASale account. It is called the “Return Days Analysis” and it is designed to give you a good idea as to how shoppers are buying through your affiliate links. We created “buckets” in the report for sales that were completed on the 1) Same day as the click 2) between 1 and 2 days, 3) 3 to 5 days, 4) 5-15 days, 5) and sales that took place greater than 15 days after initial click.
The report, which can be found in the “Graphical Reports” section of your account, looks a little like this.
While doing a little research on this report as well, I came upon an interesting scenario that I wanted to discuss as well. Here is a report that shows a merchant program that typically has around 70% of all sales completing on the same day as the click.
Using the report, you can compare your program’s overall numbers, to that of the numbers of a specific affiliate to give you a better idea as to how that traffic behaves…So – lets take a look at one particular affiliate.
What is interesting to note here, is the orange slice of the pie on the graph to the right. That slice represents sales that take place more than 15 days after the initial click. The merchant was typically averaging about 12-15% of sales coming from that far down the road. However, this particular affiliate is showing at 25%. It is also interesting to note in this case that the average sale amount for those transactions was nearly double the program average. Does this mean that this particular affiliate is performing better than the average? or worse? Arguments could be made for both cases.
It is impossible to make 100% accurate conclusions about this data without knowing more about the affiliate and the merchant program, and how the affiliate is generating the traffic. However, as a merchant, this data can help you understand better which affiliates are driving what kinds of traffic to you, and how you might be able to work better with a particular affiliate.
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