OK you have asked for a merchant account, and been emailed your log ins, but now what? Don’t panic, forget the words datafeed and content units, I know they strike fear in those who are not technically minded.  Instead think ‘search – tick –  job done’ as this is how easy it is!

Once you log into ECU you’ll have the following box staring at you:

Enter a name for your unit (you can change this later) something like ‘Bestsellers’ will do nicely.

Make sure the Search is highlighted and click on ‘continue’

Here’s the search box you’ll find on the next page:

You’ll find tips for finding the products you want on this page, so assuming all is well, type in the product name of your first item for our unit, use the drop down to select your program and click on ‘search’

Results will appear below.  Find the specific product(s) you want to feature and tick the box next to it.  At the top and bottom of the results is an ‘Add Products to Unit’ button, click on this and you’ll see the product appear in a blue box at the top of the page.  This box shows all the products you have selected (and the means to remove them).

Repeat the searches until you have all the products you need.  We’d suggest 6/7 products to be enough to show the top 5 products on the site, and have spares should 1/2 go out of stock before you have updated the unit.

Once all the products have been selected, click on ‘Customise’ button.  As the affiliates will customise the units for themselves there’s little to concern yourself with here, except we’d suggest:

• Changing the ‘Order By’ to Random
• On the ‘Unit Size’ tab changing the number of rows to 5 (so that 5 random products are shown, leaving the others ‘spare’)

That’s all we would suggest on this page, so click on ‘Save/Update Unit’ and your unit is ready.  Incidently, when you update your unit, as soon as you click on this button, any changes you have made will be instantly updated on your affiliate’s sites.

The last thing to do is to put the unit live on our Managed Unit page:

• Go to ‘My Units’ page
• Tick the box next to the unit
• Scroll to the bottom, and find the ‘Managed Units’ box
• Use Drop down to find merchant name (if it’s not there/you would like something different then type it in the box – this is the name that your units will be filed under on the Managed Units page, it’s important that it is the same for all your units from the same program)
• Next up is the managed unit name – something like Best Sellers / Latest Products / Best Offers would be great.  If you are on multiple networks, then please put which network you have selected products through in brackets.
• In the description field please put in what the affiliates can expect to find – ‘This weeks top selling items at our site, regularly updated.  Please make sure you’re a member of our program before using this unit.’ would be great, you could also put in your contact details if you wish.
• Once you click on ‘Convert to Managed Unit’ your unit will appear on the Managed Unit page, and your work is complete.

These are the basic steps to getting the unit up and running.  There are advanced features available to you, which we will discuss in a later post.

Obviously with every new system, it will take time to get used to, but following the above instructions will help.  If you have any problems, or would like us to set up your first unit, please ask via a support ticket.

The key to being successful with Easy Content Units is the ability to find the correct products to show in your units. For some merchants this might prove to be more of an art than a science, but if we’re listing the merchant on the All Merchants Page and it says there’s a quantity of products loaded onto ECU then you can be sure they are there.

How ECU Search Works:

In a nut shell the search box queries the ‘Product Name’ field, as the merchants have provided it in their datafeed. Your search must be 3 characters or more. You can use three types of keyword search as outlined below:

For most merchants and searches this should be adequate to find the products you need for your unit. You can filter negative keywords by using ‘-’ so an example could be -keyword. The ability to search for ‘Brand’ is possible if you tick the Brand Only box, great if you’re creating a site about a particular brand.

If you’re looking to add an Amazon product, then select the option.

For the merchant who have put in something ‘odd’ in this field a simple look at their site could indicate what they have used for the ‘Product Name’. For example in the Dixons/Currys feed, the model number makes up the Product Name, so searching for ‘lcdtv’ wouldn’t return any products, however a search for a model number will return the result you’re looking for.

Browse Merchant:

Of course if you’re looking for a lot of products, this might be a bit arduous, so we have added a browse function. Once you have a result for the merchant in question, if you click on the merchant logo in the results, you will be taken to a page where you can browse their catalogue. It comes complete with a drop down category selector, so in the above example, you are able to choose the ‘lcdtv’ category and the products will be displayed for adding to your unit.

Narrow your Results:

Once you have entered your search term and got a list of results, we have provided a number of filters, to narrow your results further. There’s a filter for merchant – so you can just find products at a single merchant. There’s a filter for network, so you can choose to see results from merchants from a set network and finally there’s a Brand Filter, so you can choose to view products from a single brand.

More help please!

There may be a time when you can’t seem to find a particular product, worry not, just send in a support ticket and we’ll do our best to find it for you. Sometimes it’s because it’s not in the datafeed as what you’re expecting, sometimes the datafeed is incorrect in some way or maybe it’s not even made it into the feed. All of these things we’ll check for you, and where possible we’ll give you instructions in how to get the product into a unit.

With all the units that are being created it can seem like a bit of a nightmare to keep track of them all; well fear not we have built in some handy tools which we’ll take a look at in this post.

Where oh where is my Unit?

We have provided a field on the unit admin tab for you to put in the URL to where your unit is published.  This will help you trace down where the code is on your website, in case you need to find it in the future.  Obviously the unit title often won’t tell you where it’s placed, just what it’s about, so we think this is pretty nifty.

Click… what click?

Our stats are pretty rudimentary at the moment, and to be honest, there’s not too much we can add apart from more impression/click stats.  These will be great, but you really judge the success of a unit on the revenue generated (not necessarily the number of clicks).  As we don’t have access to your accounts at the networks, this is left a little up to you, however we have made it a little easier by adding a reference which we append to most network deeplinks.

We call it ‘tracking ID’ and this can be found on the admin tab on the styling page.  This value shows up in the various networks which support this feature.  For Affiliate Window it’s known as ‘Clickref’, Tradedoubler call it ‘EPI’, CJ it’s ‘SID’  and Buyat have it as ‘LID’.  Check out the network reporting area for this term and you will be able to break down the clicks/sales by unit, based on this value.

Different sites? – Different Groups

On the ‘My Units’ page we have added a grouping feature, in which you can file your units away in groups.  Just tick the box and click on the button which will add the unit to an existing group, or type in a new name to start a new group.  Great feature for organising your units by site etc.  You will notice the groups follow through to the Stats page to make it easier to select the units to report on.

Oh heck I forgot to change the promotional message?

Worry no more, we have added a reminder feature into your unit admin tab.  If you add date sensitive information to a unit, or need to change promotional information, you can set up a reminder for the unit.  You will receive an email reminder, and an area on the front page will alert you to the need to look at the unit.

The reminder service is great when using voucher code information (or other promotional message) in the product title.  Remember any changes you make to your unit are instantly updated in the units on your site, so no need to update the code on your webpages.

If you have any other ideas for features that will make your life simpler, please let us know on a support ticket or by message below:

Having the only content unit system with added video factor, it only seems right that we get creative with a ‘Video How To’ guide for adding video content to your content units. So here’s our first go at creating a Video Tutorial:

Look out for other videos coming in this series…

Is there an area of Easy Content Units which you would like more guidance on? Something you’d like to see explained by us in a video, let us know below: