All Affiliate Pro ® Full Review

Merchant Panel

Let’s go through all the features and options available in the merchant panel. Merchant panel is the interface merchants will be using to manage affiliate program.

Upon first login, a default screen shows us the statistics graphs related to number of clicks, sales and affiliates. You can customize these views to show different types of charts as well as custom date range.

There is a navigation menu located in the left side bar.

• Affiliates menu

It contains links to several sections related to managing affiliates. The first one is labeled as “current”. Here we can view current list of affiliates who have joined your affiliate program. Note that pending or suspended affiliates will not be shown. It is possible to further customize the metrics shown by clicking on “edit display options”. By default the username, sales, current earnings and clicks are shown.

Next we have another menu labeled as “pending” which shows all pending affiliates. Merchant can use this list to review pending affiliate applications and to approve or decline applicants. Then we have suspended affiliates listing. Statistics are still being tracked for these affiliates but they will not be included in commission payouts or be eligible for any payments. Referring URLs sub menu displays a list of domains sending traffic to your website along with the username of the relevant affiliate. Dead affiliates feature shows a list of affiliates who are no longer sending you any traffic. Merchants can use this information to remove those affiliates from their program or at least suspend them. Bad conversion submenu offers some interesting insights. Merchants can use this feature to identify affiliates who are sending a lot of traffic to your site but who have bad clicks to sales ratio. This can indicate a problem of technical nature or an inappropriate site which is used to send traffic. Merchants can offer advice to those affiliates in order to help them improve their ratio.

Next, there is an option for emailing affiliates. Emails can be sent out to all affiliates or specific ones. Signup link displays a signup form affiliate will be using to join your program. That page can be fully customized in terms of look and design to match your site.

Finally, there is an import option available which allows a merchant to import affiliates by uploading a specially prepared CSV file.

• Orders menu

This menu is dedicated to tracking orders. Merchant can see a list of all orders in a specific payment period. Details include where the sale originated from in terms of referring domain and affiliate as well as order and commission values. Merchant can edit, refund or remove each order. Add order option allows merchants to add manual orders and attribute them to specific affiliates.

This can be useful to those merchants who are running offline campaigns and who would like to track those sales as well. There is also an option for importing orders using a specially prepared CSV file.

Next, there is an error logging feature which keep tracks of any potential errors encountered by the tracking script. If there are only few there is nothing to worry about but if you notice an unusual amount, you should email the AllAffiliatePro support team.

Find order option provides merchants with search functionality. They can search by order id or order date.

Finally there is a sub menu labeled “customers” which is used for adding new customers to the system.

• Configuration menu

This is an important menu. Merchant will find different configuration options here and spend a lot of time tweaking everything initially. In the configuration tab, merchant will find settings for tweaking program details, site configuration, email messages, currencies, partner tracking, advance settings, affiliate site and LCG configuration. Program details settings include basic details such as company name, email, signup style, currency, commission, minimum payout for affiliates and payment methods.

Merchant can setup different program types here as well so commission eligibility doesn’t need to be set per sale rather it can also be calculated per click, per lead or skip paying commission whatsoever (in case you just want to track affiliate performance). Sites configuration menu includes options related to site setup. You can enable multiple sites here and set custom commissions levels for each, defining exactly how much is paid toward affiliate commissions per click or sale action.

Next to each setting there is a question mark icon which gives further details on each item which is very useful as some of the settings might get confusing. There is a wealth of options here to go in as much details as typical merchants will need to round up their affiliate program and cover all the variables related to sales and commissions.

Next, we have email messages menu. Merchant can control when email notification are sent from the server by tweaking the settings in this menu. Also, it is possible to edit the email templates. Currencies menu defines the default currency and it is possible to add the custom exchange rates for other currencies.

Then, we have a partner tracking features which can be turned on or off. Advanced settings section is the place for more technical merchants to tweak server configuration, integrate PayPal API and other advanced tasks. Affiliate site menu includes options for tweaking the layout and features of the affiliate site. This is the interface where affiliates will login to check their performance and sales. The last option found in the configuration section is LCG settings. This one allows merchant to tweak settings related to the linkcode generator, mostly related to the trackable links affiliates use to market products.

Last 3 options found in the configuration sidebar menu are template wizard for creating templates visible to affiliates when logging into their affiliate panel and template editor for editing existing affiliate templates. There are also options for templates backup and restore actions.

• Utilities menu

This menu holds several miscellaneous options including previous payday reports, database backup and restore tool, directory feed tool, help documentation, protect data folders utility for changing read/write permissions in the server configuration, edit user functionality and login details setup.

• Link code generator

Merchants should use this menu to generate all the product links and promotional materials including image banners, text links, HTML banners, flash banners, deep page links, banner groups, upload files etc.

Affiliate Panel

Affiliates who are looking to join your affiliate program need to first sign up for it. Then they will get access to an affiliate panel which has similar functionality as merchant panel, just with fewer options. Affiliates get stats which help them tweak their marketing efforts to generate more sales. Each affiliate will be using special trackable links when promoting products online, this way they make sure all the sales are correctly tracked and accredited to their account. They can make use of banners, images and other promotional materials merchants supply them with to boost their success.