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If I was going to host an e-commerce website where I aggregate the products from multiple other websites, I understand one potential approach would be to append some kind of 'affiliate tracking code' query-string parameter to the hyperlink that takes the customer through to the underlying merchant website.

I'm not sure if the 'affiliate tracking code' would get submitted in the final payment gateway request on the merchant website... I'm guessing there's probably more than 1 way to track conversions from affiliate links... Assuming affiliate tracking codes are indeed included in the final payment gateway requests (which I'm not convinced they would be), there's probably no standards about how this works and is more than likely dependent on the underlying platform/implementation.

Where I'm going with all this is I'm trying to work out how affiliate tracking might work for a browser plugin that helps with the conversion.

Interested to hear about some approaches that I could look into?

FWIW I understand I might be able to manipulate the DOM of the e-commerce website as per this SO. This might help, but I'm still not quite sure how the underlying merchant would be able to track this...

TIA.

Ryan.Bartsch
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This really depends on what affiliate software the merchant is using. In theory, you can pass plenty of metadata to the payment system, but in practice, you only pass what you need to make the attribution. i.e. a "ir_click_id" or "transaction_id".

As for your browser extension, there are several ways to go about it, and it's generally something that you need to work out with the affiliate program itself, as it relates directly to conversion attribution (not only tracking). For example, imagine the merchant itself gets a visitor to its website from a google ads campaign, and during the checkout process, your browser extension fires a notification to the user:

"hey, john! Want an extra discount? Plug in this coupon code XXX".

  1. It's your coupon and it's valid - so the user will get the discount
  2. The coupon is normally a hardcoded attribution system that doesn't require any webtracking.
  3. the merchant would have to agree to pay you the commission or a part of the commission, even though they brought the visitor to their site through a paid campaign.

Hope that helps.