A marketer's friendly control panel can save a user valuable time. It also increases the user's enthusiasm..To choose the best affiliate software for your business you must consider the following. Do the users find their desired forms and reports easily?Although all affiliate software works according to the same model, you may find some control panels much too complicated. This happens when the interfaces are written from the programmer's perspective and not from the user's. Some programmers are known for turning a simple process into complex rocket science. Sometimes they organize too much, they place something that needs to be shown up front three clicks away, and often their programs require consulting the user's manual. You know how non-tech users hate to open a user's manual. Here's an example of the problem. As a marketer you will be most interested in seeing the day's sales and commissions, or perhaps you want to view a list of new support tickets or a list of affiliate registrations. As a marketer you will want to be able to access the information at the logged homepage because these are the first things you check every hour. A programmer tends to keep information in their respective modules. It may not cross their minds that getting to the information the marketer wants is three clicks away. This creates major frustration for the marketer. An affiliate system is a vast system and of course it is never possible to keep everything on the first page or just one click away. However, the developers need to think about how they program from a marketers perspective. Do forms and reports take too long to load?In general any form or report will take a longer time to load if it attempts to load a full page at every click, (i.e., form edit. form submit, search reports, or detail views). However, optimum use of an AJAX control panel can make the page loading process three or four times faster. This ensures that your affiliate manager and your affiliates will have a great user experience. Next thing to check is how it works with a high volume of data. Normally, all systems work fine with a little data. However, when you have a huge number of links, banners, marketing groups, affiliates, etc., some systems become excessively slow. Sometimes it can take several minutes to open a report or form. Sometimes, even worse, the browser becomes non-responsive. Let's say your system is set up with 1,000 text links. Your affiliate needs to pick one or two links from them but unfortunately, your affiliate software does not allow filtering. Your affiliates are now compelled to open all the links in a single page, and it takes five minutes to load the page. Most will lose patience and a few of them may submit a support ticket for help. In these scenarios you can quickly lose affiliates. Do the day-to-day tasks take too much of your time?This is a very important question. No matter how good and logical the system is, if it uses up necessary time for daily routine jobs, it loses all of its value. Normally all affiliate software vendors claim that they have advanced features. In most cases the claims are valid. However all those advanced features do not need your every day attention. If a system is built from a marketer's perspective, it will save more time. The following features ensure less time investment for day-to-day affiliate management tasks. - Easy access to the frequently used forms / reports
- Easy method for handling affiliate support requests
- Use of AJAX form for editing any info
- Use of AJAX control panel for viewing many reports on a single page
- Reports with search form to filter search results
- Automated mailing for system events (affiliate registration, cancellation, etc.)
- Automated or single click billing for qualified affiliates
- Automated monthly transaction reports to affiliates
- Fast method to send notification message to all or some affiliates
- System always remembers last search criteria and sets it as the default in next search
- System always provides intelligent default data while entering any form
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