Affiliate programs have become a major driver of revenue in an e-commerce market, which, according to Statista, is expected to grow by 13.8 percent in 2016.
Many companies spend time and resources to expand their market and actively promote it across borders. However, often the importance of a broad global context for your affiliates is overlooked.
By localizing the user experience, ensuring an optimal interaction with your content and products, and by offering alternative international payment solutions, you will broaden the spectrum of what traffic your affiliate can send to your site and make it easier for customers to make a purchase when the traffic accesses your website.
Could you say that you have a truly global, cross-border affiliate strategy that takes into consideration issues such as regulations, search strategies, currency exchange rates, local culture and preferences?
Here are some of the ways you can increase your conversion rates from your affiliate traffic:
Check the Origin
The whole purpose of your affiliate program is to receive traffic that is different from what you generate yourself. That being said, extra traffic is of no use if you cannot convert it into sales.
Analyzing and understanding the traffic you receive from your affiliates is one of the key points for your conversion ratio. Track the traffic received from each affiliate and analyze it. This information is easy to find within your web statistics. This will help you determine if you’re prepared for this traffic — indeed, do you want that traffic at all? Are the countries included in your marketing plan? Are you routing the right content and reflecting local preferences to the source of that traffic? If you ship physical items, are you able to fulfill and ship those items efficiently?
It’s important to understand the needs for which the origin of the traffic has originated! You also need to understand that a high-growth market may not necessarily mean the traffic will convert at that same rate. Other things to take into consideration include demand for your product or service, brand recognition, Internet and mobile device penetration and the quality of potential affiliate partners in the country.
Make It Local
As they say, “When in Rome ….” Consumers respond better if you appear to speak their language. This includes, but is not limited to, translating your content to the applicable language, using the phraseology of a native speaker and displaying the local currency during the payment process.
A few strategically placed sentences and modifications may be enough to bridge the language or cultural barrier. For example, it has been found that banner ads work better in Japan than text links. So do your research on local customs and quirks of markets you’d like traffic from. These little tweaks could increase the time this traffic spends on your site and result in higher conversion ratios.
Geo IP technology makes it easy to cater to different geographic locations on country or city level. Affiliates like this, since it makes it easier for them to promote and is more profitable.
Offer Options
Once they get to the payment page, don’t lose them! Continue what you started and implement further localization by adding local payment options. While in North America the most commonly used payment method is credit cards, this method isn’t so frequently used in the rest of the world.
Up to 30 percent of international traffic does not convert well with credit cards and the sale is lost in the process because credit cards are not the primary or the preferred method of payment in that market.
Include payment options such as SEPA, mobile, local direct debit, pre-paid cards, and bank and credit transfers to strengthen the possibility of increasing your international revenue. Collecting or aggregating payment service providers companies such as 2000Charge.com can help you accept purchases made with alternative payment methods that are local to the end user.
By providing the end user the comfort of paying with a local method that they are familiar with, you and your affiliates can tap into a market you otherwise could not convert with only traditional payment methods. This will not only increase your sales but also earn the trust of your new customer.
Give Support
Customers want to feel like they can get help when they need it, so don’t forget to display local language support options since you want to maintain the trust that you’ve built with the customer to continue through the payment process.
Get Help
If trying to implement a global plan now seems too daunting to do in-house, there are many amazing programs out there that specialize in getting your affiliate program going.
A mobile traffic solution company such as Affil4you.com can assist with monetization and optimize your international traffic to be more productive using the tools and business relationships they’ve built over several years. Such a resource can customize a solution for you without little to no commitment or upfront cost.
By localizing the user experience, ensuring an optimal interaction with your content and products, and by offering alternative international payment solutions, you will broaden the spectrum of what traffic your affiliate can send to your site and make it easier for customers to make a purchase when the traffic accesses your website.
Having these in place would make an affiliate more likely to promote your product because of the diversity of which is offered in the affiliate program, and the higher potential for actual conversions.
Ines Kring is COO of 2000Charge, which provides a simple, secure and flexible global payment solution that covers cross-border, multi-currency and multi-lingual purchasing environments.
