As we have been adding new functions and features to allow for total control over the style and appearance of your Easy Content Units, the interface had become too cluttered.  We have now addressed this and have rolled out this new interface to your admin areas.

Once you have selected your products for your content unit, you will click on Customise and be taken to the page as captured below:

Customise your unit page

You will immediately notice the tab topped box which has replaced the long list of tick boxes and options.  The first of these tabs is ‘Unit Admin’ where you can specify the various elements to ease in the admin of your units.  The Unit Name you already assigned can be changed here, the Tracking ID is the reference for this unit you would like to show up in the network reports.  The optional URL field is where you can put the url of the page that will display this content unit.  It will help in the future administration of the unit by making it easier to find.

Next up is the ‘order by’ for the products in the unit – by price, name, merchant or random.  Plus you can now choose whether the links to the merchant’s site open in the same window or a new window.

Pagination – if you require pagination, then click on this for options

Templates – if you have saved a template you can load it from here, or indeed save the current settings for use in future content units

The next tab is Unit Size:

Customise Unit Size

This tab has all the size related options for your unit.  You can choose the number of rows and columns your unit should have and the width of the content unit (in pixels).  The Product Layout link will open up options as to whether you’d like horizontal or vertical layout on this content unit.

The ‘Contents’ tab has all the options as to what will appear in the content unit:

What will show in your units?

By ticking the boxes, you can add/remove various aspects of the product and merchant from the content unit.  By clicking on the save/preview button, you can see the effect of any changes you make.  Once you’re happy you can move onto the final tab – Advanced Styling:

Make the unit your own with these styling options

The Title Options relates to the title area of the unit, you can use it to include a message with your unit whether it’s a discount code/free delivery offer or a title to let your users know what it’s about.  The next few options relate to the way the bits in the content look – clicking on Product Title (name of the product), Price, Description and Image all open the options you have to change the way they look.  The last few options are about the different colours you can apply to the items in the unit.

Remember you can go back to any of the tabs as you wish and click on Save/Preview button will show you how the content unit will look on your site.  When you’re happy with the content unit, you can take the code from the bottom box and paste it on to your web page.  Once the code is there, you won’t need to alter it, any further changes you make on this page will automatically update the content unit on your page.

We hope you like the new changes, as always if you could let us know by leaving a comment here or by sending in a support ticket we’d be very grateful.

We have been so busy adding features and dealing with requests that we have noticed the admin area becoming a bit cluttered and somewhat confusing. So we’ve had a little tidy, I hope you like it.

Quick Link Bar:

ECU Quick Link Bar

The quick links in the bar at the top of the page takes you to some of the more popular pages on Easy Content Units.   We use the status page to let you know about any issues we have found with merchants/feeds/ECU, please check in there to see if we already know about an issue before putting in a support ticket.

Keith’s WordPress plugin has been found to be really useful for new affiliates and for use with some versions/themes which haven’t displayed the content units properly.

Our new Managed Units section is where you’ll find a list of content units which are managed by the merchants themselves, regularly updated with best sellers, new products, discount codes and more.  If you want Easy Content Units to be even easier, then use these units.

Support, we have been highly praised for our levels of support with tickets being answered very quickly and suggestions and problems being dealt with just as speedily.  If you need anything, or have a suggestion for us, please send in a support ticket.

Create a Unit:

Create new ECU

We have made this a little more simpler, with the addition of the Random Content Units, it was a bit tricky for new comers to create the right unit, hopefully this has addressed this.  Pop a name in the box for your new unit, and select whether you want a Search (search for the right products for your unit) or Random (let the system find some products from a merchant for you), hit continue and start to build your unit.

Support Tickets:

ECU Support

If you have any open or recently closed tickets you will see them appear on the home page now, so that you can find them easier.

More Changes to Come:

We have a number of other changes to your admin area to come, keep an eye out on this section, or via Twitter.  If you have any ideas or suggestions, please let us know via a support ticket.

Over the weekend I have had 3 different affiliates who have asked for the ability to duplicate content units within their account.  Well we like to give you what you want from your tool, so here you go:

If you log into your account, and go to ‘My Units’ page, you can now tick the box.  At the bottom of the page there’s a ‘Duplicate Selected Unit’ button, click on that one and a duplicate is created in the same group as your original one.

Simply click on ‘Edit’ button, change the name and add any changes to the styling, pop the code on your site and that’s it.

We have launched a brand new feature to Easy Content Units to make it even simpler for you to create a merchant based content unit.  The Random Product Units are essentially product units for a particular merchant which shows a selection of products on offer from their inventory.

You can access the Random Product Units by clicking on ‘Create a Unit’ from the left hand menu.

Admin page for Random Content Units

Firstly name your unit, then choose a merchant from the drop down menus below which are divided up by network.

Choose how many products you’d like to show.

For those of you who would like to show some ‘keyword focussed’ random products, then you can add an exact term in the search box at the bottom of the page.

Now it’s back up to the continue box at the top which will lead you to the normal ‘Styling’ page, where you can customise the unit to your hearts content.  Don’t forget to save your styling as a template, so you don’t need to re-customise each ECU!

We think this is a great addition to the ECU offering, which allows affiliates to showcase a selection of merchant’s products on their pages, without hunting out products yourself.  Of course there’ll be no products going missing from your ECU as your units are filled when called – direct from our system.

As affiliates have been adding content units a couple of issues have arisen:

1. Where did I publish the unit?
2. How can I find it within my account?

Well with our latest developments we have addressed these two problems.

Add URL

Well I published the units many months ago, and can’t for the life of me remember where I have put it…

We were looking at putting in an automatic script to detect this information for you, but felt that it would intrude on your privacy, so instead we’ve added a box to the styling page, alongside the tracking reference so that you can paste in the url to the page where you published the unit.  By it’s nature you’ll have to do this for each content unit, but it’s a good way to keep track of your units.

Unit Tagging

I’ve created over 100 content units, the ‘My Units’ page is really long, I can’t see a particular unit…

Well we’ve made 2 improvements to this page.  Firstly there’s now a search box, so you can search for a particular unit.  The second function we have added is the ability to tag the unit.  You could ‘tag’ the unit with information like the site/type of unit/size of unit or indeed anything.  This way all the ‘tagged’ units will be grouped together and can be easily identified.  For those of you who have already made 100′s of units, we have built in a ‘tick to tag’ system, just tick the units and fill in the box at the bottom to ‘tag’ all those units.

We hope these new features will be of use to you, if you have any other suggestions, leave a comment, or send in a support ticket.

We have been a bit busy with the new search functions and haven’t had time to add some of Paid on Results newest merchants to Easy Content Units.  As I have been going through them, I have noticed a fair few were also missing.  This has been rectified with the inclusion of the following merchants:

Amaroni Homeware

Audio Technica

Bathroom Wall

Chocolate Now

Curvety

Garden Trading

Girly Heaven

Pearl & Butler

Perfumes-UK

Tenga

Advanced MP3 Players

Babyworld

Bean Bag Bazaar

C’est Noir

Ducti

Euroffice

Forget The Rest

Funmum.com

Garden Bliss

Genie Gadgets

Girlznight

Glow Girl

HQhair

La Senza

Natural Instinct

Miss Bollywood

PamperCake

Picnic Shop

Prezzy Box

Send Chocs

Sex Shop 365

Start-London

Stauer

The Designer Box

The Funky Hair Group

Yukka

Over the past few days we have added a number of new search functions which should help you find the products you are looking for.  If we first take a look at the search box and options:

ecu search box

The search term (or product name) goes in the box.  You can choose whether to perform an ‘Exact’ or ‘Broad’ type of search.  By ticking the ‘Brand’ box, you will only search through the Brand field of supported merchants.

You can now choose to search a particular merchant on a particular network, just by using the drop down menu.  Merchants are listed alphabetically, and the network is shown beside them.

Most people will be happy to get the most relevant search results first, however as it’s been asked for, you can have the results sorted by Price, Product Name, Merchant and Network as follows:

search result sorting

Let us know via a support ticket if you have any further ideas for improving this area of Easy Content Units.