Reveal all discounts and visit site - ethical?
Much has been said about discount voucher code site myvouchercodes.co.uk. Look here and here to see what I mean. Anyway I won’t go into all of that stuff right now, I want to see if things improve first. However I do want to ask a question about ethics…
On the above mentioned site they list a whole load of online retailers, and each has their own page within the site. After a brief description of the site you get this graphic:
Now, regardless of whether the site has any available discount codes or not, the user HAS to press this button to find out. And when you do click on this button a new window opens displaying the retailers site and of course a cookie is dropped on the users PC. In a lot of cases, there are no discount available, but you don’t know this until you press the button and of course drop a cookie.
So is this a forced click? Is it ethical? Basically the way that the whole site is set up is that if a user wants to see what discount codes are available (if any) then the user HAS to click on a button and therefore a cookie is dropped. What do you think? Ethical or just clever marketing?
What I’m listening to right now: Young MC - “Stone Cold Rhymin’”
Thursday, November 22nd, 2007 at 12:41 pm and is filed under Affiliate Marketing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
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[...] all stems from this discount codes thead at affiliates4u.com and then Kieron talking about it on his blog where I originally posted these comments, my idea [...]
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[...] post is a follow up to the one I wrote last November about discount code sites that “forced” users to click on a link to see [...]
Welcome to my blog. My name is Kieron Donoghue and I run UK Offer Media Ltd. I thought it would be fun to post a daily (well hopefully daily) blog, writing about my experiences in Internet Marketing and more specifically Affiliate Marketing. I'll include some personal stuff too, probably about my other passions, music and cars. Please feel free to post your comments and thoughts too.
I can understand why this system is used, and it’s better than the iframe cookie dropping system, but I dunno if I’m 100% happy by it. For me an affiliate link should be a link that is clicked by a user to go to the merchant website - and it shouldn’t be tampered with, changed or amended just to drop the cookie.
Most certainly consumers shouldn’t be misled into setting a cookie to obtain a code that doesn’t exist!
But, it’s not for affiliates to decide is it? This is a time for networks to start establishing best practice and standards AND reminding affiliates of what that should be AND enforcing it for the good of all affiliates.
Will they take up the challenge?
Jason
It’s irrelevant as brand name bidders will step in a steal the cookie anyway
I’ve felt uneasy about that tactic too. I wouldn’t say its a forced click as the user has to consciously click and they wouldn’t if there were definitely not interested in the merchant.
It’s up to the networks to take action. But seeing as they’re in the know and often have their own interests above that of the merchant or affiliates, its doubtful that enough pressure can be brought to bare to stop this sort of activity.
It’s just clever if you ask me. The user has still initiated interest in teh store otherwise they wouldn’t have clicked.
As Zinc says, the user has indicated interest in the merchant by looking at the page and clicking the link - it’s not a forced click. But personally I question if it’s a 100% genuine method of marketing. Go down this road and you’ll end seeing banners like this: “New Ipod Nano 4GB For Only £25 - See If We’re Joking”
Clever marketing? Well maybe so for an affiliate site that perhaps isn’t interested in building long term relationships with it’s visitors. If it was some big online retailer doing something similar they’d be absolutely slated.
The merchants listed on that site can easily stop it happening of course. Will they?
JC
Visitors certainly don’t care and the networks don’t seem to care who sets the last cookie (although pressure is mounting on them to police this) so I’m not sure there is an ethical question to answer.
However, as a code site publisher myself, we do things differently. All available codes and offers are displayed along with the teaser to “Show codes & visit site…”.
If there are no codes or offers available this link is NOT displayed and instead we encourage visitors to check for cashback or try similar merchants. I’m happy this IS an ethical stance.
Personally I’m not happy about this kind of practice. Picture this scenario: I attract a visitor to my site, he reads my carefully constructed presell and decides he likes the sound of this merchant and off he goes to buy something picking up my cookie en route. At the checkout page he notices there’s a box to fill in a discount code so he Googles for “merchant X discount code”. He goes to myvouchercodes.co.uk, clicks the link to reveal discounts and discovers that there aren’t any. He goes back and completes the sale only now it’s myvouchercodes that gets the commission not me.
So the customer gains nothing and I lose commission for my hard work in directing the customer to the merchant.
Even worse for the merchant is where the customer has gone to their site directly from Google and yet myvouchercodes is still able to claim an affiliate commission just by deceiving the customer into thinking they have discount codes.
This is something personally I wouldn’t do. It feels sneaky to me and so in turn I suppose that means I believe it is unethical.
I work hard to sell retailers to my visitors so as Leaving The Day Job says I’d be really annoyed to think others are getting commission instead of me through this method.
Agree with Leaving the day job - when consumers see the promo code box, imo, they shoot off to google, and try and find a code. It does feel a bit underhand what is going on, and personally I do not agree with it. Joe above seems to have a better solution, if there are genuinely no codes, then don’t try and drop a cookie by leading people to believe there might be…
Looks like many other sites do it too
http://www.discount-voucher.co.uk
http://www.gcodes.co.uk
Can anyone spot anymore?
My solution to help some of this, from an affiliates perspective, is for merchants to remove the promotion/code/offer box in the basket when an affiliate asks for it not to be there via their links.
This way if a customer gets to the basket they aren’t going to go off looking for a code.
We can get merchants to remove their phone number when going via affiliate links, why not via specific affiliate links, then it is up to the affiliate to opt out. It might solve a lot of the last referrer problems.
Also if a merchant has a lot of affiliates asking for this, they might question why and be forced to learn more about this subject.
Unethical if you are sending people under the pretence of getting a discount when there are no discounts to be had.
Unethical if you are using codes that have been exclusively provided to other affiliates, and they’re labelled in such a way that its obviously an exclusive discount.
I think the person who came up with this is a smart cookie, it is not a forced click the user must have some interest in the shop to start with or he wouldn’t click the link, thing’s like cookie stuffing in frames i can understand….
Seen as my website has been mentioned by Simon I feel I have to mention that my website navigation clearly states that you will be visiting the merchants site by clicking the banner and so do most other affiliate sites now. This subject was discussed some time ago and most affiliates have fallen into line with it and clearly label any links that will take the user to the merchants site.
In all honesty I thinks its fair enough to get some commission as I have put all the legwork in too obtained these codes and have taken the time to put them on the website.
Also only websites that I have had or do have codes are on my site rather than just uploading my whole database of 2000+ merchants.
I don’t get whats so “smart” about doing this… any idiot with a site like that would have thought that one up…
The question is whether, having thought of it whether you would do it…
Personally I wouldn’t… because as a user I don’t bother with greedy grasping time wasters…
If the majority of sites are doing this, then I would have thought there is an opportunity for a clean, trustworthy site to win some users….
I have to agree with Mary, that’s a great idea. Mind you I also like the idea of the “New Ipod Nano 4GB For Only £25 - See If We’re Joking” banner.
Hmmm….
I don’t employ these methods at my original code site and I am loving my conversion rates and repeat visitor numbers.
Now, I could make more money by using iframes, pulldown menus or putting little stickers with each link. I know that.
I’ll only ever do that if either what we’re seeing today is considered as acceptable or my hand is forced to keep up with the Joneses to remain competitive.
It’s all solevd very easily anyway. Two buttons. One as above for sites where he knows there are codes. A second button that simply says “Don’t know if codes currently exist. Click here to check the site”. With a short paragraph stating that stores update code on a regular basis and it’s always worth checking, it would probably still have a similar click through rate.
User is driven to the site, and then he belongs to retailer and his creativity and skill to keep him on his site “window is opened!” you got your chance. 1×1 px iframe is not the case and that is main problem… doing that is stealing from retailer their own traffic or/and branding.
If you ask me, I would not do it because it is too sleazy for my taste but it is just a bit above bottom line because main purpose is fulfilled USER IS DRIVEN TO THE SITE.
Lee - what do you mean by “brand name bidders” will steal the cookie pls?
I personally have a problem is it. I watched my friend, just now, searching for “high school musical” dvd. She clicked on a ppc hmv advert (that could of been an affiliate running it, or hmv). Got to the checkout. Saw the “enter voucher here” and went straight to google, searched “voucher” clicked on myvouchercodes and clicked on the hmv link, which showed no discount, but put myvouchercodes cookie on her computer.
I found that quite interesting, since I read about this only the other day! and she did what many people must be doing.. only i made her clear her cookies before she purchased.
Someone else has put in the hardwork / money to get the sale, then someone steals it with little expense and a gauranteed sale.
It’s completely unethical as there are often no voucher codes when you click, and it also leads to a poor user experience; in the long term, this will hinder the growth of sites who work in this way.
As a consumer, I’d rather use a website which did force you to make a click to see if they have a voucher code for a merchant or not.
Visit nadeemsmillionpoundgiveawayperhaps.com to see if I’m giving away £1,000,000 this month or not.
In my opinion, it’s not ethical. A banner is ethical. A text clink that says ‘Click here for xyz.com’ is ethical. ‘Click here for codes and to visit the site’ is a mix of two things - something that isn’t possible without dropping a cookie through a new window or an iframe.
I can’t see a problem with ‘Click here to use this discount’ or ‘Click here to activate your discount’ if the discount is displayed before the user clicks.
As it stands, the example you have given is unethical.