How do affiliates keep track of the shopping cart?

Question

So we have a partner that sells products on their site. We want to keep track of the number of items a user purchases coming from our site.

For example, We refer a user to buy a certain product from our partner site. The user clicks on the link and goes to the product page. Instead of buying one, he decides to buy 5 of those items from our partner site.

How do we keep track of the number of items the user purchases? A pixel tracker can only capture so much right?

score 1 · Answer 1 · answered Aug 15 '12 at 06:40

1

From my own understanding, pixel tracking typically doesn't track the exact cart contents; rather, it records the total transaction amount and the "kickback" is calculated based on that amount.

answered Aug 15 '12 at 06:40

Ja͢ck

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So the e-commerce site has to pass in the total transaction amount to our pixel tracker? – UCDaCode Aug 15 '12 at 15:56
@UCDaStackoverflow right, that's the typical way; that way they don't have to bother too much about the details; if someone sends a customer your way and he spends 150$ you should give them a cut based on that, simple :) – Ja͢ck Aug 21 '12 at 02:27

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Aug 15 '12 at 07:20

If you are custom-writing a tracking-solution, AND your affiliate agrees to set it up honestly, AND it's set up properly, there's no shortage of the stuff that can be collected by it.

Whether you build the tracking link in JavaScript, or whether you just hand them an <img> or <script> tag, with urls that have blank spaces (the JS solution is more-likely to be implemented headache-free, if the interface is simple):

eg

// Pixel-tracker for MyStoreAffiliate
(function () {
    var script = document.createElement("script"),
        sale = {
            items : "<server template to insert item-names>",
            total_sale_value : "<server template - insert profit/commission/whatever>",
            unique_sale_id : "<server transaction id>"
        };

    script.onload = (function (sale) { Tracking_lib.track_sale(sale); }(sale));
    script.src = "//domain.com/tracker.js";
    document.getElementsByTagName("script")[0].parentElement.appendChild(script);
}());

Inside of your tracking library, all you're really going to do is set up your tracking URL, and call it somehow (AJAX/img.src/script.src).

So as you can see, you can track anything that your partner is willing to show to you. That, of course, is the trick.

My day job is to set up tracking for GA in custom situations. And to do the same with Adobe's analytics software. GA and SiteCatalyst both give us useful reasons to fill in all of the details. Affiliate pixels, not so much. Unless we had some sort of personal agreement, or were getting discounts/benefits/etc, affiliate tracking only gets filled out with the bare necessities.

Good luck with that.

So the partner site has to pass in the total number of products and amount purchased to the tracking link we give them? I'm assuming the e-commerce site would need to put our tracking link on their "thank you/purchase confirmation" — UCDaCode, Aug 15 '12 at 15:45
That's correct. If you've ever added AdWords conversion code, or GA code or anything else of the sort, it's typically a set of JS with fill-in-the-blanks spots. The reason it's got those spots is because you might have 1 thank-you page, but that receipt page could be used to buy any item in the store, or any number of any items. It then builds the URL it sends out. With a lot of affiliates, it's just a simple ` — Norguard, Aug 15 '12 at 21:41

How do affiliates keep track of the shopping cart?

2 Answers2