How’s your Halloween pages coming together? Why waste time making Content Units when Blue Barracuda have already done it for one of their merchants.  The guys have created four different themed units for you you to choose from (why not use them all?).  You have the choice of:

for your pages.  Remember all the units can be styled by you once you have added them into your ECU account, for examples on how you can style, see the bottom of the page. Check out the products in the units below:

Michael Jackson’s Thriller:

Ghostbusters:

Masks:

Trashy Fancy Dress:

If these are not suitable and you’d like to have something more generic, then there Best Sellers unit which is updated regularly will have the kind of things you are after:

Best Sellers Unit:

More Styles:

Using the managed units, and adding some of your own styling means that you could create some of the following units, with all the products being updated by the merchant:

Skyscraper Style:

Leaderboard Style:

Box Style:

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.

Linkshare account managers have been industrious this last week creating Managed Units for a growing number of their merchants. This is exciting times as some really high brand merchants adopt Easy Content Units for their affiliates to use.The current list of merchants available include:

• Avon – Bestsellers Unit
• Blue Inc – Bestsellers Unit
• Boden – Bestsellers Unit
• Cdiscount – Bestsellers Unit and Top Selling Computers Unit
• Graham and Green - Bestsellers Unit
• House of Fraser – Bestsellers Unit
• Laura Ashley – Autumn Fashion Unit
• Lipsy – Bestsellers Unit

There’s plenty to get you going, updating your shopping directory/voucher site or indeed worth writing an Introduction to type post and featuring these units which they update regularly to have the best converting products on.  Remember that once these units are added to your ECU account, you can customise them however you want to make them fit into your web site design.

The only thing to note, is that you must be approved onto the network and program before using these units.

Sign up/Visit Linkshare

Lipsy have created this unit for their affiliates to use on their sites.  Featuring the top selling products on the Lipsy website, regularly updated by their account manager at Linkshare.  Here’s how it looks right now:

Remember though, when you add it to your account, you can change the look and appearance to fit in perfectly with your website.  The only thing in fact you cannot change are the products, but then why would you want to? They are the best sellers after all, ensuring your visitors are seeing their best converting products.

A true put up and forget piece of creative, which is ideal for directory type sites (shopping/vouchers) and great for a fashion post introducing the styles available at Lipsy.

Lipsy Affiliate Program info:
Before you use this creative make sure you are approved on the program:

Program pays 6% and is available through Linkshare

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:

We’d just like to make a shout out to Kitbag who have joined our ever growing legion of merchants who are creating Managed Units.

The first of their units feature their best selling football shirts from their website.  You can add this unit to your account by visiting the managed unit page.  Here are the products which are currently featured:

Remember the units are fully customisable when added to your account and are updated regularly by the merchants themselves leaving you to keep adding more content to your sites knowing that you won’t have to keep changing prices as that’s done automatically for you.

Kitbag have created this unit through their affiliate program on Affiliate Window, please make sure you are signed up to the program before using this creative.

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:

Such is the popularity of our random units, we have extended them further.  Now not only can you filter a merchant’s feed by brand and category, you now have the option of choosing 5 merchants to add to the random unit.  Check out our Random Units not so Random post for details of how the brand/category filtering works.  To find out how to use more than one merchant, read on.

Adding merchants for random units is very straight forward, simply use the drop down boxes to choose the merchants that you would like to feature in the units.  Each drop down can choose one merchant, and you can use up to 5 merchants in the unit.  See the picture below to see how to select the merchants:

Please leave any questions you may have below:

We thought that after 7 full months since launch it would be great to review the progress so far, so here’s a quick run down:

We have 705 Affiliates using ECU of which 63 are enjoying the benefits of being Pro members

We provide support 13 Networks who track our 1221 Merchants providing ECU with 9559368 products. Our affiliates are featuring 118312 products which they have added to 13132 units. Of these units, 10985 we active in July recording impressions. Speaking of impressions, our units have been shown 1459914 times on affiliates sites, which resulted in 145626 clicks to merchants.

This shows a network wide impression to click ratio of 9.97%. Of course this figure for individual units varies depending on placement and content, but counting all of the above 9.97% is brilliant for a piece of creative.

Here are our top performing affiliates impression to click ratios:
1. 80.99% over 11321 impressions
2. 67.6% over 16839 impressions
3. 45.19% over 2206 impressions
4.34.21% over 37929 impressions
5. 31.11% over 11432 impressions

The better performing creative is shown on content sites where the units are used to provide a product catalogue, examples of such sites can be found on our showcase page. Next up are the price comparison pages, which are showing around the 10% impression to click ratio. Discount code sites and directory type sites are enjoying a good number of clicks from the Random Units, with impression to click at around 3%. However those using the Merchant Managed Units are enjoying around 5%, this is largely due to placement, often discount code sites are using units at the bottom of the page as an example as to what could be bought using the voucher code.

All in all, I think a pretty good start, and it’s good to see growth month on month in terms of new affiliates, new units and our members impressions and thus clicks growing too, as sites are indexed and start ranking well. Here’s the low down month on month bearing in mind we started recording the data in May:

As you can see August is looking to be a really good month for our affiliates and merchants, with over 200000 clicks destined to be routed through our ECU’s.  If you have not joined as an affiliate, sign up and see how easy (yet powerful) Easy Content Units are.

Merchants you too can get an account, but to maintain your security, you’ll need to request one via our contact form, then we’ll be able to show you how easy it is to create top performing creatives for your affiliates.

Not only did The Gift Experience grab our 100th managed unit, they went on to create 4 more. These new units all feature top converting products from The Gift Experience’s vast catalogue of gifts and experiences. Below you will see the units that have been created, first a quick note to mention their affilaite program can be found on Webgains, please make sure you’re signed up before using the managed units.

Remember with Merchant Managed Units, you are in complete control of how the unit looks on your site as you are able to style it any way you choose. The merchants themselves control the products shown so that you are guaranteed to be showing your visitors their best sellers.

You can choose from the following Managed Easy Content Units for your sites:

• Best sellers – the top products being sold on The Gift Experience this week
• Top Birthday Gift Ideas – the fastest selling birthday gifts on The Gift Experience
• Top Christening Gift Ideas – the best of their vast range of Christening gifts in terms of sales
• Top Anniversary Gift Ideas – Best selling gifts suitable for the various Anniversaries worth celebrating
• Top Wedding Gifts – The best selling Wedding Gifts on the site this week

All the units above are updated weekly.   Here are the units that have been created, you can of course use them as is, or indeed change anything you want to so they fit in with your site better, from size to colour the choice is yours, simply add them to your units and voila.

Please find below all of the units that have been created for an example of how they could look:

If you would like any other units making for this or any other merchant, send in a support ticket or leave a comment below