What is an Affiliate program and how does it work?

Launched by Amazon in 1996, affiliation has managed to earn true popularity only in recent years. Affiliate programs are a form of the performance-based marketing through which a company, also known as a merchant, agrees to pay its affiliates (or webmasters) for the visitors or clients that they bring in through their efforts. Based on the object of the contract, the affiliate will advertise certain products and pay a flat fee or a previously negotiated percent per every sale or visit which was brokered through the referral.

Why Opt for an Affiliate Program – The Benefits Associated

An affiliate program is structured on the idea of a mutually beneficial relationship through which both the advertiser and the publisher can draw consistent benefits. However, the affiliate market is a fiercely competitive performance-based, result-orientated market which will require good marketing skills to bring about consistent income and professional success. Overachieving affiliates tend to be well connected, thus marketing passionate people, a fact which usually brings bloggers and online marketing specialists to the front of the pack.

Leaving that aside, providing you have some marketing skills of your own, here are a few of the benefits brought about by affiliate programs and why they are totally worth giving it a try:

• You are your boss meaning that you set your own goals to chase after.
• You have a flexible schedule which you design however you deem fit.
• It is one of the fastest, free ways to make money online (not to be confused with the easiest).
• The affiliate program is a transparent agreement which functions on clear, well-defined terms. Affiliate programs usually function on simple contracts which leave little to no room for confusion and misinterpretation.
• The better connected you are, the easier it is to create real impact and get paid.
• You get paid based on your results, This means every time someone uses your referral to visit and buys a product which you are advertising, you are paid a commission amount. While SEO and digital marketing require constant ticking and are often paid per project, an affiliate program will pay you the commission you agree upon every time a sale is facilitated through your referral.
• Affiliate marketing is cemented on ROI and sales, a fact which makes it a very powerful online marketing tool. If you can sell, these numbers will turn into hard cash.
• Most of the affiliate programs which the companies are running can be joined free or with a certain charge and without a tedious set-up process.

Which affiliate program to choose?

Choosing the right affiliate program is not easy, considering that one can easily find a variety of affiliate networks in every field of the market. However, some of the fields are saturated, hyper-competitive areas which make them unattractive for most marketers out there.

If you are a seasoned affiliate marketer or want to become one and you are looking to join a rewarding affiliate network, try the Extendware Affiliate Program. The affiliate program is free to join and is based on the Magento Extensions and various development/configuration/customization services associated with them. Once you log in, Extendware’s backend has readymade links and banners you would need to promote and states so that you can track your progress all of which already include your personal code so that when people click on them you automatically get the set commission. In addition to the exceptional quality of the products and the great price Extendware is selling them for, you will get bi-weekly newsletters, exceptional support and extra prizes at the top tier level, this affiliate program is quite generous with its top-performing marketers.

The commission section is organised in 4 Tiers which range as follows:

• Tier 1 ($0–1,499 in sales) earns 10% of every purchase to the affiliate
• Tier 2 ($1,500-2999 in sales) earns 15% of every purchase to the affiliate
• Tier 3 ($3000-4,999 in sales) earns 20% of every purchase to the affiliate
• Tier 4 (above $5000 in sales) earns 25% of every purchase to the affiliate

The affiliate program also includes clear steps and detailed suggestions that educate you on how to best advertise the products. Doing affiliate work is quite fast and rewarding even for a novice who has just entered. When done right, it has every potential to pile up a significant income. So what are you waiting for? The time to affiliate and collide with success is right here!

Cost of Goods Sold (COGS) is the amount of money spent on raw materials to create product, or the amount of money used to purchase a product from a wholesaler. COGS is important because it helps stores calculate Gross Margin by product.

Revenue – Cost of Goods Sold = Gross Margin

Gross Margin (also called Gross Profit) is an important driver of store strategy and should be well understood for each product. Because Gross Margin represents cash available after paying a supplier, it’s good to use as a primary consideration when managing marketing expenses. Products that have high Gross Margins, such as electronics, are better suited for pricier marketing campaigns, while low Gross Margin items may be a better fit for scalable marketing such as email campaigns.

In some cases, increasing marketing spend on low-margin items may actually make sense. By combining sales volume with Gross Margin data, you may learn that a low-Gross Margin item is generating a healthy amount of cash thanks to a large number of orders. For instance, selling one bracelet may generate six dollars of Gross Margin, but selling 500 bracelets may generate $3,000 of Gross Margin. While it may seem intuitive that you would spend more cash to market high sales-volume products, knowing the exact Gross Margin for an item will help you understand how much of a product’s Gross Margin can comfortably be allocated to marketing. It will also help you track the return on your advertising spend by product. Keep in mind, marketing is just one of many operating expenses. You’ll want to consider other expenses as well when you budget for advertising spend.

Tips for Using Gross Margin to Dictate Strategy

• Place items that have a healthy Gross Margin and that convert well in the prime real-estate positions of your store.
• Bundle low-margin items with high-margin items to justify the time and effort spent on merchandising and shipping costs. Or where appropriate, only sell your low-margin products in packs of three or five.
• Raise advertising spend for items that generate high amounts of Gross Profit, but be sure to analyze the effects of increased spend on sales volume to understand the return on this spend.
• Negotiate with your vendors to reduce Cost of Goods Sold. Consider switching out expensive materials for options that don’t compromise quality.

Ready to get started? Here are the steps for enabling Cost attributes to appear on each product:

Step 1: Log in to your account and go to Catalog > Attributes > Manage Attributes.

Step 2: Under Attribute Label search for ‘Cost’ and click on the row.

Step 3: Scroll down to Apply To and change the setting to be ‘All Product Types.’

Step 4: Save your work and go to Catalog > Manage Products.

Step 5: Click on a product and go into the Prices tab. Enter the Cost for each product and save your work.

All done! I hope that helps with your Cost Attributes and Gross Margin calculations. Anything that can give you a better idea of exactly how you’re making money is a step in the right direction. Until next time!

Sheryl Davis is a digital marketer at Glew, an E-Commerce analytics software provider, where she focuses on helping online stores understand and act on their data. Each week she publishes practical strategies for ways to rock E-Commerce.

Abandoned Cart Extension Overview

Extendware’s Magento Abandoned Cart Email extension allows you to capture additional sales by emailing customers who have abandoned their shopping cart without making a purchase. You can send an unlimited number of follow-up emails to the potential customer and even attach an automatically generated coupon to the follow-up email in order to incentivize a new purchase. This extension pays for itself within just a few orders. 

]]> https://blog.extendware.com/optimizing-the-shopping-cart-12-steps-for-magento-users/ Mon, 30 May 2016 19:10:10 +0000 https://blog.extendware.com/?p=1164 Read more]]> T he shopping cart is the most important component of your e-commerce business. In order for your business to survive, your customers need to be able to make their way to the “Complete Order” button easily and quickly. Magento enables users to create user-friendly shopping carts, allowing you to maximize ROI. Here are the best practices for creating a streamlined checkout process with Magento:

1. Provide checkout buttons at the bottom and top of your site.

Today’s Internet users are more distracted than ever, and one checkout button just isn’t enough. Place checkout buttons at both the top and bottom of your website. That way, customers can begin the checkout process no matter where they happen to be on the page.

Checkout buttons should be in contrasting colors that catch users’ attention. As with most elements related to shopping carts, usability outweighs aesthetics.

2. Allow customers to continue shopping

Some customers want to continue shopping after adding an item to the shopping cart, and you need to make it easy for them to do so. Shopping cart pages should include a visible “Continue Shopping” button.

3. Provide a related products display

By showing customers products related to the items already in the shopping cart, you can increase the average purchase order. There are extensions available for Magento that automatically display products that are frequently purchased together.

4. Minimize the number of steps that customers must take to complete checkout

There’s a reason why Amazon has established a one-click buy feature. It’s an established fact in e-commerce that more steps to complete a purchase means fewer orders. While most e-commerce businesses cannot implement a one-click purchase feature like Amazon does, streamline the process so that buyers go through only one or two screens before finalizing their purchase.

5. Implement proper authentication procedures

However, don’t skirt on authentication procedures. Trust is critical to any e-commerce business, and customers appreciate seeing that basic security measures are in place. A two-factor authentication system is industry standard.

6. Don’t ask for the same information repeatedly

Entering in the same information more than once is tedious, so don’t make customers do it. This means, for example, that you should provide a checkbox for customers who have the same shipping and billing addresses (as most of them do).

Also consider which information is truly vital to collect. While it may be useful to know demographic information about your buyers for marketing purposes, requiring users to enter in too much information is a turn-off. In addition to being tedious, many e-commerce buyers worry about privacy issues and become suspicious when they are asked too much personal information.

7. Give customers a variety of shipping options

When you are able to offer customers more choices for shipping, you increase your business’ credibility. Again, look to Amazon as a model. For most purchases, users can choose from at least three different shipping options, from more expensive selections that allow quick receipt of purchase to more budget-friendly choices.

8. Better yet, offer free shipping for large orders

Studies of e-commerce buyer behavior have repeatedly demonstrated that many customers balk when they discover high shipping fees. In order to remain competitive, more and more businesses are offering free shipping in order to offset the effects of shipping price shock.

Setting a minimum order price for free shipping is particularly effective because it incentivizes customers to buy more items.

9. Show customers their savings

If you’re providing customers with savings via special deals or a rewards program, show them exactly how much they’re saving. Knowing this information will make them feel confident in the purchase and more likely to buy from you again.

10. Allow customers to register for reward programs

The moment of checkout is your best opportunity to gain a long-term customer. Make sure that buyers have the option to register for your site while checking out—and make the process easy.
While many customers are wary of signing up for fear of being spammed, offering future deals and savings provides a strong incentive for registration.

11. Let customers provide feedback at time of sale

Everyone appreciates being heard. Providing an optional comments box at time of purchase starts off the customer-seller relationship off on the right foot by letting buyers know that you care about their input.

12. Use a shopping cart recovery system

Among e-commerce experts, it’s no secret that abandoned carts cut into profits. In 2015, the estimated cart abandonment rate was an astonishing 68%. Implementing a shopping cart recovery system helps businesses to gain back some of this lost business. Sending friendly reminder e-mails to customers who didn’t complete the checkout process gains additional sales. If you can provide a discount to sweeten the deal, shopping cart reminders become all the more effective.

Optimizing the shopping cart is critical for the success of any e-commerce business. All of these tweaks can be made with Magento. Investing in expert-designed Magento extensions makes it easy to create a great checkout experience, thereby maximizing your ROI.

We hope you find these tips useful to enhance the checkout process of your Magento Store, until next time!

Shopping Cart Price Rules Extension Overview

Extendware’s Magento Shopping Cart Price Rules, you can create new promotions that are not possible in default Magento stores. With 24 different price rule actions, you will be able to create much more powerful promotions to attract customers to your store and products. For example, you can create rules like, “Buy a shirt and get a discount on a tie” or “Buy 2 of a product and receive the 3rd for free”. Why wait? Take action now and create much more powerful promotions to make your online business successful!

Uh oh…Your mailbox is full.

Your Magento Storage has reached it full capacity. Your mailbox is full. “This person can not receive any more messages.”

All of these phrases are familiar and are just about the last thing you want to start your workday with (well, not worse than the dreaded “Magento White Screen“). They mean you need to clean and organize and DELETE!

Fraudulent, test or fake orders can take up major space and the Delete Orders extension can help make the clean up quick and easy.

Delete? I Don’t Want To Delete Anything!

Delete can be a scary word for people, especially with multiple admins. Extendware’s Delete Orders extension will allow you to give access only to those permitted to delete orders as well as toggle the deletion capabilities on and off so you wont have to worry about losing valuable transaction information on accident.

Another great benefit to the Delete Orders extension is that you can delete single orders or in bulk and all of the credit memo and shipment info will also be deleted and not left to clutter database. This simple extension will save you a ton of time weeding through old orders and give you more time for the new ones!

Important Features of Delete Orders Extension

• Easily Delete Any Order
  Simply click the “Delete” button on the order page and any order can be deleted.

• Bulk Delete Orders
  Select any number of orders in your order grid and then select “Delete Permanently” from the grid actions to delete orders in bulk.

• Disable Deleting for Certain Administrative Users
  Deleting orders is a powerful feature that not every admin should have access too. You have the ability to ensure only specific admin users can delete an order.

• Delete Your Test Orders and Fraudulent Orders
  Test orders, fake orders, fraudulent orders, etc, should not take up room in your database. Now you can easily delete these orders.

• Easily Enable / Disable to Ensure no Accidental Deletes
  Turn the deletion capabilities on and off, so it is only enabled when you want to delete. This will prevent any accidental order deletions.

• Corresponding Invoice / Credit Memo / Shipment / etc Values Deleted
  When the order is deleted the corresponding invoice, credit memo, shipment, etc, data is also deleted so these items will not be orphaned in the database.

If you can believe it, the above list is not a complete list of features. Please try the online demo or install as a free trial  and take advantage of our risk-free 30 day refund guarantee to fully see the power and elegance of the Delete Orders extension.

Quick Delete Orders Extension Overview

But while anyone can go to Magento’s website and set up a basic store, creating a successful e-commerce business can be considerably harder.

Magento offers so many different options for customization that many new users feel overwhelmed and intimated. So many different tasks go into running a successful online store:  SEO, web design, marketing, and many more. Magento extensions help online business owners to complete necessary tasks on time and without hassle. Here are some common problems that Magento users encounter—and how extensions can help solve them:

Lagging Loading Times

All research suggests that today’s web users are more impatient than ever. If an online store takes too long to load, visitors to your site won’t buy. While you can’t always control the speed with which users browse your site, there are ways to lower your load times. An extension such as the Full Page Cache will speed up your site by caching it whenever a user visits. This extension serves as a replacement to expensive investments in hardware.

Google Analytics Overload

Traffic is essential to the success of your business, so it can be tempting to visit Google Analytics constantly. But this is an inefficient use of time. With the Google Analytics Dashboard extension, you can see your Google Analytics data right from your dashboard.

Spam, Spam, and More Spam!

There are bots looking to spam your inbox. If you have a contact page on your website, you may be vulnerable to spam. The Anti-Spam Captcha prevents this annoyance, requiring users to enter a short string of characters before their message goes through.

Conversion Confusion

E-commerce is a global phenomenon, but international customers may be turned off if they can’t easily figure out how much they will need to pay for a particular item. Customers also may be unaware that you have separate storefronts for buyers from different countries. The Store/ Currency Switcher extension will enable your Magento store to redirect to the correct storefront.

Abandoned Carts

The bane of every online retailer, abandoned carts can seriously reduce your profits. In 2015, the average rate of cart abandonment was a whopping 68%, meaning that more than two-thirds of online orders were never completed. For e-commerce business owners, few things can be more frustrating. But with the Abandoned Cart Email extension, you can send a friendly reminder e-mail to customers who abandon their carts on your store. The e-mail sequence can be completely customized. You can even include a coupon for customers to incentivize them to complete their purchase.

Running an online store is already difficult. By making strategic use of Magento extensions, you can make better use of your resources and increase the profits of your online store.

All ExtendWare extensions come with the option to return within return within 30 days and receive a full refund —making this investment risk-free.

Setup Currencies in Magento

Follow these steps to enable currencies for your store:

1. Go to System -> Configuration -> Currency Setup
2. Select any of the currencies in the Allowed Currencies field that you want to enable on your store
3. Go to System -> Manage Currencies -> Rates and click the Import button to import rates and save the rates

How to switch currencies automatically based on visitor geoip location

Now you have currencies setup, but they are not that useful to customers as they do not automatically see prices in their preferred currency based on location. To resolve this you will want to follow these steps:

1. Install Magento Currency Switching extension.
2. Go to Extendware -> Manage Extensions -> Auto Switcher -> Currency Rules.
3. Associate any of the currencies in your Allowed Currencies list with any countries that you want to auto switch to that currency.

Once completed your store will be much more internationally friendly! Have a look at all of our best magento extensions.

Quick Extension Overview

The extension is very simple to use. Attachments can be categorized and can be restricted by user group. Download count statistics can also be shown for each attachment and an attachment can be associated with multiple products.

Here is how an attachment will look on the frontend where customers can download it:

Quick Extension Overview

Common auto-switching scenarios:

• Auto-switch to your region specific stores. European visitors can go to your European store, Indian visitors to your Indian store, US visitors to your US store, etc
• Auto-switch to language-specific stores. Customers from Spanish speaking countries will view your Spanish language store, English speakers will see your English language store, etc.
• Auto-switch to the currency of your customers. US visitors will see dollars, Europeans will see Euros, etc.

Note: This extension is compatible with our Magento Full Page Cache extension. 

Quick Overview

Tier prices work in the same way. If you want to give a 5% discount when someone orders 5 or more a product, then set the tier price to be 95%. When you update the price, the tier price will automatically update to be 95% of the product price

As you can imagine, this will save you a lot of time when managing product tier / group prices!