Clickstream Commission Rules

A common question I am asked relating to agency managed Merchant accounts is the question of how to award and/or reward one type of Affiliate versus another.  

This issue primarily arises, when a Merchant realizes that a number of the account’s transactions have numerous clicks in the clickstream.

In a transaction, the clickstream shows all of the clicks that have occurred leading up to a transaction.  There are certainly circumstances where 1 click leads to a final transaction, however it is also normal to see more than 1 click that results in a customer actually purchasing a product.

A Merchant will notice trends on the number of clicks that occur during a sale, as well as whether the clicks are occurring close to the final checkout.  And it is the responsibility of their agency partners to help them analyze and determine what next steps should be taken.

In the above example, there are a total of 4 clicks (shown in purple) before the last click (shown in green.)  

As an example, if there is more than 1 affiliate or if the click took place very close to the transaction, it might make sense to divide the commission between affiliates.

This led to the realization that there are circumstances where a commission should be shared, modified, or even nullified between referring Affiliates in the conversion’s clickstream.

Once you have looked at your clickstream data, you can then create rules that allow you to reward and/or remove a commission for a click.

The rules can be general rules based on the time between the click and the sale, however we generally suggest that you use attribution via the Tags tool to identify Affiliates in the clickstream.

Example:
If an Affiliate’s click occurred less than 10 minutes before the sale conversion, set the commission percentage to 0. If there is a prior click outside 10 minutes, assign full commission to the previous click.

ShareASale can create any number of rules based on your desired parameters.  Below you will find an example of the clickstream rules and how they look in an active Merchant account.

The introduction of clickstream commissions not only has led to even better relationship building in Merchant accounts.  It has resulted in agencies and their Merchant partners who may have previously declined a certain Affiliate based on their promotional methods to allow that Affiliate into the program.

I have seen programs have success by implementing the clickstream commission rules, as it allows the program to fully empower affiliates.  So, clickstream commission rules can really be a powerful ally to helping increase the sales for your clients.

To get started with implementing clickstream rules on your accounts, you need only to submit a ticket from within the Merchant account and our amazing technical team will help you get setup or you can utilize the predefined rules located in the merchant interface.