While in-store promotion deals with ways to increase sales to people already visiting your store, online advertising involves things you can do to advertise your store on the Internet to bring more customers to your store as well as selling outside advertising on your website to bring in additional revenue.

4.1 Links Manager

One of the most effective ways to advertise your store online is to "link" your website to other sites or stores that sell related merchandise. For instance, if you sell pet collars, you could link to sites for pet stores, groomers, boarding kennels, veterinarians, rescue and adoption organizations, even blogs and listservs about pets.

By linking to other websites, your own site will move higher in search engine rankings. Note that this only works if you link to related sites -- linking to as many random sites as possible will not help your search engine rankings, and it could cause confusion and frustration among your customers.

By providing good links to other websites that will be of interest to your customers, you can also turn your store into a "destination" website that customers will return to for information. And bringing customers back to your store is the first step to creating repeat sales.

The Links Manager in CRE Loaded lets you create specific categories for the links you will accept, and it lets you automate the process of finding partner sites to link to, saving you (and your partner sites) time and effort.

Links categories will appear on your website in an Infobox:



When a customer clicks on one of the categories, they will be shown a list of all sites in that category that you are linked to:



Note that there is a small graphic, the name and description of the site, the URL, and even a tally of how many other people have clicked on the link. There is also a button that other website owners can click on to submit links to you.

To configure your Links, go to Admin => Configuration => Links:



Click Count keeps track of how many times a customer clicks on a link to a partner site. Set this to "True" to display this information.

Spider Friendly Links will help your page show up in search engines when people search for keywords in the links. However, this may also allow spammers to harvest email addresses from your site. We recommend that you set this value to "False."

Link Image Width and Height are the maximum size of link images or ads; any images that are larger than this size will be scaled down so that they do not overwhelm your site. Leave a value blank to allow the images to display at their native size.

The Display values determine the order in which the various components of links are displayed on your site; components will display from left to right in ascending order. On the menu shown above, Link Image will display first (on the left), followed from left to right by Link Title, Link Description, Link URL, and Link Click Count.

Enter values for the Minimum Length you will accept for each component. You can use this to ensure that anyone submitting a link adds useful, valid information (as in the Description or Contact Name).

Link Check Phrase is very important. This is the exact text that CRE Loaded will search for on a linked site when you check links to make sure that the site has created a reciprocal link to your site -- you don't want to send all of your customers away to other sites if those sites aren't sending anyone to your store! You should enter your store name or website here.

Now go to Admin => Design Controls => Infobox Configure and activate the "Links" Infobox and determine where on your site you want it to display. For more on working with Infoboxes, see Customizing Your Store - Section 4.5 Selecting and Displaying Infoboxes.

Now that links are configured, you begin creating links with the Links Manager module by setting up categories of links you want. You must create at least one category, so if you don't want to separate links by category, you can just create a single category called "Links."

Go to Admin => Links Manager => Link Categories and click on "New Category:"

Fill in the Category Name and Description in at least one language. If you want to link to foreign sites, you should fill in as much as you can to encourage sites in other languages to link to you; if you only want to link to domestic sites, a single language will suffice.

Enter the name of the Image you want to use for the category, or browse for the image. Enter the Sort Order in which you want the category to display in the links Infobox -- the higher the number, the farther down the list it will be.

Click Enable to make the category visible on your site.

Now click "Save." You can create as many categories as you want in this way.

Now that you have your categories ready, the next step is to add the individual links.

Go to Admin => Links Manager => Links:



This menu displays all of your links. Note that you can manage all of your links here -- filter them by status and category and sort them (in ascending or descending order) by name, URL, popularity (number of times the link has been clicked), and status.

When other website owners submit links to you, their status will be "Pending" until you approve them. To find links awaiting approval, sort by status. If you find any links that are "Pending," highlight the link and click "Check Link." If the link is valid (that is, if the website exists and has created a link to your store), change the status to "Approved."

If you want to add a link site yourself, click "New Link."



Enter the necessary information. It should all be self-explanatory except for "Reciprocal Page" -- this is the page on the other website that has the link to your site, and on which CRE Loaded will search for the link to your store whenever you click "Check Link." When you have entered all of the information, click "Insert." Click the "Email" button in the main Links menu to send the owner of the website an email informing him that you have created a link to his site and asking that he link to your store as well.

It is a very good idea to check all of your links occasionally to make sure they are still active, still linking to your site, and that they are still the same sites you originally linked to -- a site may have changed ownership and become something unrelated to your business or inappropriate for your customers.

If you ever need to contact all of your link partners -- for instance, if your site is changing its URL, or to inform them of an upcoming marketing event that they may want to participate in -- Admin => Links Manager => Links Contact lets you send an email to all of your Link partners at once or to specific partners.

4.2 Affiliate Advertising

Affiliate advertising can greatly expand the reach of your online store. Affiliates are other websites that run banner ads for your store; when one of their customers clicks on your banner ad and makes a purchase from your store, the affiliate website receives a commission.

CRE Loaded has a fully featured Affiliate Management module that will help you create banner ads, set commissions, manage affiliates, track click-through and sales from each affiliate, and schedule commission payments.

4.2.1 Configuration

To set up affiliate advertising, go to Admin => Configuration => Affiliate Program:



Email Address is the email address at which affiliates will contact you. It could be just your regular email address, or a specific address just for advertising or affiliates.

Affiliate Pay Per Sale Payment % Rate is simply the percentage commission you will pay affiliates for sales made through your banner ads on their sites.

Payment Threshold is the minimum amount owed to an affiliate before you send them payment. This keeps you from sending out payments for minuscule amounts.

Cookie Lifetime: Customers clicking on a banner ad and shopping on your site are tracked with "cookies." You want cookies to expire eventually -- a customer may have found your site initially by clicking on a banner ad, but if they don't buy anything until a week or a month later, you don't want to have to pay a commission to the affiliate, since by then the sale is really unrelated to the banner ad. Cookie Lifetime is simply the amount of time in seconds before a cookie expires.

Billing Time is the number of days between payments to affiliates; this is basically a Net Billing system.

Order Min Status determines which orders qualify for affiliate commissions: an order status of "3" means the order has been delivered.

Pay Affiliates with Check: If you want to pay affiliate commissions by check, set this value to "True."

Pay Affiliates with PayPal: If you want to pay affiliate commissions via PayPal, set this value to "True."

Pay Affiliates by Bank: If you want to pay affiliate commissions by automatic bank transfer (ACH), set this value to "True."

Individual Affiliate Percentage: If you want to be able to offer different commission rates to different affiliates, set this value to "True."

Use Affiliate-tier: If you want to use different tiers of affiliates (i.e., sub-affiliates), set this value to "True."

Number of Tier Levels: If you allow affiliate tiers, enter the number of levels you want to allow.

Percentage Rate for the Tier Levels: If you allow affiliate tiers, enter the percentage commission rates for each tier.

Affiliate News: Enter the maximum number of news articles to display on the Affiliate News page. (See Section 2.7: Affiliate Newsletters.)

4.2.2 Customize Affiliate Messages

CRE Loaded contains several messages for your affiliates: an informational message about affiliate banner ads, a sign-up email message sent to new affiliates when they sign up, and a welcome email sent to new affiliates when their account has been created and verified. You can customize the default text of each of these messages.

Go to Admin => Tools => Language Editor and click on "english/".

To customize the information message, click on "affiliate info." Enter your new text in the field marked TEXT_INFORMATION and click "Save."

To customize the sign-up message, click on "affiliate signup ok." Enter your new text in the field marked TEXT_INFORMATION and click "Save."

To customize the welcome message, edit the file http:www.mystore.com/catalog/includes/languages/language/affiliate_signup.php. In the field marked MAIL_AFFILIATE_HEADER, change only the text reading Thank you for joining the Affiliate Program. Be sure to leave the apostrophes on either side of the text. In the field marked MAIL_AFFILIATE_FOOTER, change only the text reading Have fun earning referral fees! and Your Affiliate Team. Be sure to leave the apostrophes on either side of the text. Click "Save" when you are done.

4.2.3 Creating Banners

You (or your graphic design consultant) will have to create the actual images for the banner ads. Standard sizes are 468 pixels wide by 60 pixels high for banner ads or 125 x 125 pixels (or smaller) for "button" ads that will run in side columns.

Once you have created the banner ad images, go to Admin => Affiliate Program => Affiliate Banners and click "New Banner."



Enter the necessary information and click "Insert" when you are done.

4.2.4 Enable Affiliates

Now that everything is set up, go to Admin => Design Controls => Infobox Configure and activate the "Affiliate Info" Infobox and determine where on your site you want it to display. For more on working with Infoboxes, see Customizing Your Store - Section 4.5 Selecting and Displaying Infoboxes.

4.2.5 Generating Reports

CRE Loaded automatically tracks all of your affiliate information and will display many different reports to help you manage your affiliate program. All reports are available in the Admin => Affiliate Program menu.

Select Summary to see a general summary of your affiliate program including number of affiliates, total sales, average sale, conversion rate (number of click-throughs that resulted in a sale), commissions, and more.

Affiliates displays a list of all of your affiliates, including their website and commission rate.

Payment lets you track commission payments to each affiliate. You can view all payments, those that have been paid, or those that are pending.

Sales tracks individual sales by affiliates. Sales reports contain the date; an order ID number; the total sale, commission rate, and commission payment; and status notation (whether or not the order is complete).

Clicks keeps track of every individual click on one of your affiliate ads. This can be very useful for determining the success of your different ads.

4.2.6 Invoicing and Paying Affiliates

To see how much you owe to each affiliate, go to Admin => Affiliate Program => Affiliate Payment and click the "Generate Payments" button at the top of the screen. This will set the status of all new affiliate orders to "Pending."

To make a payment to an affiliate, highlight the pending payment and click "Edit."



This screen shows you the affiliate's name and mailing address, the amount you owe them, and their payment options.

After you make a payment, change the "Payment Status" to "Paid" and click "Update."

You can generate and print a paper invoice by clicking "Invoice" here or on the main Admin => Affiliate Program => Affiliate Payment screen. This will create an invoice that includes an itemized list of commission payments along with the total payment you are sending.

4.2.7 Affiliate Newsletters

You can create news items and newsletters to send to all of your affiliates to keep them informed of important developments or just to maintain a "community."

News items will be seen by your affiliates when they log onto your website. A newsletter will be emailed to your affiliates.

To create a news item, go to Admin => Affiliate Program => Affiliate News and click "New News Item." When writing a news item and its headline, be sure to write in the box for the correct language. Read the item over carefully; you may want to compose it in a word processor. Click "Insert" when you are finished.

To create a newsletter, go to Admin => Affiliate Program => Affiliate News and click "New Newsletter." Create your newsletter just as you would a regular customer newsletter. See In-Store Promotion: 5. Newsletter Manager for more information on using the Newsletter Manager.

4.3 Banner Manager

The Banner Manager lets you run ads for other companies on your website. It is not really a way for you to advertise (although you can use the Banner Manager to run ads that call attention to your store -- either for regular products or during a special sale, etc.) -- it is a way for you to generate extra revenue by selling ad space to someone else.

Running ads on your site is not the same as being an affiliate. As an affiliate, you would receive a commission on any sales resulting from a customer clicking the ad on your site. When you just run ads on your site, you will get paid (a very small amount) every time a customer clicks on the ad, whether they buy something from the advertiser or not, but you will not receive any commission if they do buy.

By default, CRE Loaded lets you run an ad in an Infobox (labeled "Advertise") or in the footer of your store. Your installer or a custom programmer can set up other types of ads for you.

Each time a customer views a page on your website, CRE Loaded will randomly choose an ad to display in each location.

An Infobox ad:



A footer ad:



Whether an advertiser contacts you or you contact them, you will need to get the ad graphic and target website from the advertiser before you can begin. Once you have that, go to Admin => Marketing => Banner Manager:



This screen lists all of your current banners ads and shows how many times they have been displayed and how many times a customer has clicked on each. If you click on the small "chart" icon in the "Action" column, you can view a variety of statistics for each ad.

To set up a new ad, click "New Banner."



Banner Title is the name you want to give the ad.

Banner URL is the website customers will be directed to when they click on the ad. The advertiser will provide this information to you.

Banner Group: For an ad that will run in a side Infobox, select "box-ad" from the drop-down menu. For an ad that will run in your store's footer, select "googlefoot." If you have created other types of ads, they will show up in this drop-down menu.

Image: Enter the filename of the image to be used for the ad.

Image Target (Save To): If you are uploading an ad image to your store's server, enter the directory in which to save the ad. If you are not uploading an image to your server, leave this field blank.

HTML Text: If an advertiser wants to use text for their ad instead of an image, insert the text here. You must use HTML tags to link a text ad to the target URL -- a text ad will not automatically link to a URL listed in "Banner URL."

Note that you should not use both an image and HTML text -- if you include both, CRE Loaded will use only the HTML text and will ignore the image.

Scheduled At: If you do not want to start running the ad immediately, enter the date on which you do want it to begin.

Expires On: You can elect to run an ad either until a certain date or for a certain number of impressions. Fill in only one of these fields. If you wish to run the ad indefinitely, leave both fields blank.

Click "Insert" when you are finished.

4.4 Google AdSense

Google AdSense is a service from Google that allows you to run small text ads in an Infobox on your site and collect revenue each time someone clicks on that ad. The ads will be relevant to your site -- that is, they will targeted to your market segment so that they are more likely to be of interest to your Customers. While you can elect to filter out ads from specific competitors or advertisers, you have no other control over the ads -- although Google reviews all ads to ensure that they are not inappropriate. For more information, go to https://www.google.com/adsense/.

Because AdSense is a service of Google, you must register with Google for an AdSense account.

When your application is approved, Google will send you an email with all of the necessary information to setup AdSense in your CRE Loaded store. Go to Admin => Marketing => Banner Manager, select the banner named "Google AD Box" in the "googlebox" Group, and click "Edit." If this ad type does not yet exist in your store, click "New Banner" instead -- you will be taken to the same screen:



If you are creating the ad, enter "Google AD Box" for Banner Title and "googlebox" for Banner Group. Because AdSense ads are text only, the only other field you need to fill in is HTML Text. If you are creating the ad, enter the following:

   
   
      src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">
   


src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js">

src="http://pagead2.googlesyndication.com/pagead/show_ads.js"Enter your ad client account number in place of the asterisks between the quotation marks after google_ad_client and your ad channel number in place of the asterisks between the quotation marks after google_ad_channel. Make sure to leave the quotation marks.

If Google AD Box already exists on your site, the HTML Text field will already contain the text above; simply enter your client account and ad channel numbers where appropriate.

Click "Update" when you are finished.

Now go to Admin => Design Controls => Infobox Configure, select "Google Ad," and click the green dot in the "Activate Box?" column to turn on the Google Ads Infobox. For more information on working with Infoboxes, see Customizing Your Store, Section 4.5: Selecting and Displaying Infoboxes.