If you’ve logged in to your 1ShoppingCart account lately, you’ve undoubtedly heard about the [tag]Affiliate[/tag] Module Update that is being done on Tuesday, February 20th. I just wanted to be sure that all of my [tag]1ShoppingCart[/tag] users were aware of this major update. Here is the news on the update in 1ShoppingCart’s own words from their blog:

On Tuesday, February 20 a major [tag]update[/tag] will be introduced to the Affiliate Module functionality.

The transition should be pretty painless and I know you’re going to LOVE the new, more-detailed reporting (along with everything else!) I wanted to take this opportunity to post a brief summary of the major changes for everyone… Enjoy!!

Standardized & More Intuitive Reporting:
• Affiliates and Merchants now see the same reports (of course, there’s more info available to Merchants).
• Data Structure has been addressed, meaning, information will always appear in the same order from one report to the next, making it easier for you to find what you are looking for.
• Legends have been added so there is less confusion over what the various columns of information actually mean!
• Reports are now organized by Affiliate Program. If you run multiple programs, it is now more clearly identified where your commissions are being generated from. If you only use the default affiliate program, you will see little change in this regards.
• Sales commissions are now broken up into both Tier 1 & Tier 2 sales commissions, again making it more clear where your commissions are being generated from.
• More accessible [tag]Commission[/tag] Payment options directly on affiliate report pages!

Better Tracking Capabilities
• When commission rates (Impressions, Clicks, Leads, Sales) are set to $0, any referring information will now still display within your reports for tracking purposes. Your affiliates will also be able to see $0 commission items although they won’t receive any email for $0 referrals.

More Detailed Affiliate Information Within the Orders Section of Your Account:
• While previously, commissions were calculated on an Order level (one order, one commission) they are now calculated on a product/program level. This means it would be possible to have multiple affiliates within the same order.
• Declined and Offline orders now display commissions as Inactive. When the order is manually approved, the commission will activate automatically.
• More detailed Affiliate information provides you will all related affiliate details right on the order details page.

Additions to the Product Section:
• There is now a new search option at the top of your Manage Products page called Search by Program. This allows you to easily display all products attached to a specific program.
• There is a new Program Selection drop-down option on every products details page, allowing you to quickly and easily change, or add a program affiliation.

Increased Security!
• Hollow [tag]Cookies[/tag]! Referral information is no longer stored on your customer’s computer. All referring Affiliate information is now stored in a database on our secure servers, and encrypted. The only information is stored on your customer’s computer is the key to access the referring information on our system; securely preventing anyone from modifying referral information.

Source: 1ShoppingCart.com ShopTalk Blog

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