Best practice for merchants

Here are a few optimisation options that can help you improve your performance and generate more revenue:

Share your promotions, offers, deals and discounts as early as possible

Across our platform, merchants offering Free Shipping, Sales, Coupons or Hot Products generally drive more sales and achieve higher Average Order Value (AOV). If your brand’s offer is seasonal, (for example, a Black Friday promotion), keep in mind that publishers will begin writing holiday content at least three months before the event, and so the earlier you can share your promotion, the greater the likelihood of inclusion. Merchant offers shared with publishers are 100% confidential and embargoed until the promotion start date, this is made explicitly clear to all publishers who receive offers from Skimlinks.

Share your top-selling products with publishers

We consistently see the highest AOV across our platform for top-selling products. If you have a hot product, an exclusive collaboration, a bestseller or a new product launch that everyone’s talking about, highlight the product’s story and sales success to publishers so that they can share it with their readers.

Let publishers know about major product launches

You put a lot of effort into launching a new product. To ensure the greatest chance of success, share a press release, a marketing calendar and SKU details three months ahead of the product launch with publishers to increase the likelihood that they will feature it in their editorial content.

Optimize your website for mobile

The majority of website traffic worldwide is mobile, not desktop. Over the past 12 months, 59% of all publisher impressions recorded by Skimlinks have been from smartphone and tablet devices. Publishers will check that a merchant’s mobile path to purchase is seamless before including them in an article. Optimize your site for mobile to ensure a frictionless user journey, greater publisher exposure and higher conversion rates.

Work with us to set a competitive base commission rate

According to performance data from the Skimlinks platform, merchants who increase their base commission rate tend to achieve the greatest AOV and overall revenue. When given a choice, publishers will tend to send traffic to whichever merchant offers them the greatest EPC (Earnings per Click). A merchant in our network increased their rate from 5% to 24%. Following the increase, their total order value rose by 26% YOY. In dollar amounts that’s an increase from $618,916 to $782,854 and a 7% increase in profit generated.