I know of at least 25 merchants that are currently not offering discount codes whilst they did last month. This included a dozen merchants that offered an exclusive code to me. I’ve emailed and got positive responses from 4 of those but I haven’t taken the time out to contact all 12.

I’ve looked at my top 20 performing merchants to see whether a lack of codes generally or lack of Exclusive codes will make an impact on my profits. The answer is a clear YES.

• 35% of the top 20 merchants have kindly provided an exclusive voucher code.
• 20% of merchants offer a discount voucher to new customers, which all affiliates can promote.
• 20% of the merchants have not offered a code recently or do not have a code facility.
• 15% of the merchants have discount codes available to all affiliates.
• 10% of the merchants currently have no code but have had one just expired.

In October 2006, I wrote “Exclusive Discount Codes Wanted” on Affiliates4u. I had 22 Exclusive codes at the time. Today, it’s that number plus another 100.

Exclusive codes are a staple diet of Shop Codes and they’re often the only merchants who you’ll see on my most visited page.

As I reported in my last post, September is going to be a strong month for Shop Codes as I’ve got a 400% increase in traffic. I’m happy for merchants to take advantage of that uplift.

This post is not a plug for more exclusive codes though. I just want to see more merchant codes made available to all affiliates. Only four days ago I had at least 60 more on my site to promote.

In Jacob Neilsen’s recent ‘banner blindness‘ usability report, he highlights that users view web pages in an F shape and that ‘plain text, faces and cleavage’ are much more successful at attracting eyeballs than banners.

I use a combination of banner, skyscraper, micro bar and text on my pages to get the message across.

I use the banner as a tool for a legitimate call to action. As I run a discount code site, I may attract visitors who have already visited the merchants site or are intending to anyway. So in my 4* steps to use a code, I include ‘click the promotional banner’ so that my affiliate link is tracked.

Some merchants and DavidZHark don’t approve of these sales but then it’s not as if I am framing the merchants site or opening another new window just so I can ensure a cookie is served.

The banner also reinforces the merchants brand and I can also show that the creatives and text used also serve to create new customers for merchants.

Looking through some recent Webgains sales statistics, I can show that I can create sales for other related merchants by using micro banners.

At the foot of my merchant pages I include a series of 88×31 pixel sized creatives for related merchants. Each of these badges is its own php file which I include with a bit of descriptive text, such as “Tightsplease 5% Off Code Exclusive.”

On 16th August a user was viewing the BeCheeky page and spotted the advert for Tightsplease on the same page. Within two minutes they then clicked on the 468×60 pixel size banner for Tightsplease and made a £17.99 purchase.

More recently a visitor of the Healthy and Essential page saw an advert for Silverwellbeing, which had no accompanying promotional text and within five minutes spent £35.

So banners can work if they’re used as part of the content and they can be used to cross sell related merchants.

* As a trained journalist I have been told to write four instead of 4 but Jacob’s report on eye tracking data says numerals are better for catching the user eye for online readers. I’m not sure it’s a style I can get used to.

Shop Codes is eighteen months old and below are the top search phrases that have attracted visitors to the site. This post was prompted as a search for “voucher codes” now returns Shop Codes in the middle of page one in Google. This is a promotion as the site has often been in eleventh place.

Shop Codes does not rely on advertising via Pay-Per-Click to generate traffic. Of the eighteen months, the site has been advertised on either Google or Yahoo for parts of nine of those months. The last PPC activity was two months ago on 5th June 2007.
Number one keyword

1. Feb-Mar 06 – discount codes
2. Apr-July 06 – tesco+voucher+codes
3. Aug-Oct 06 – discount codes
4. Nov-Dec 06 – merchant brand name X
5. Jan-Mar 07 – discount codes
6. Apr 07 – voucher codes
7. May 07- merchant brand name Z
8. June-Aug 07- voucher codes

Voucher Diary, the discount code site I soft launched on FaceBook last week has started receiving traffic after being indexed in Google.

Voucher Diary is the third (but not final) stage of my WordPress experiment.

Experiment 1 – 1234 Codes

In January I launched 1234codes as a back-up to my Shop Codes content. It was effectively the same content but on another domain. I wanted to see how Google compared both sites and in particular the pages. Google preferred 1234codes and the Shop Codes pages were often in the Supplemental index.

Experiment 2 – Shop Codes – bite size

I then upgraded WordPress but in the process lost my content so I implemented a WordPress blog within the Shop Codes site. Calling it ‘Shop Codes – bite size‘ it was the same content but with a different navigation structure and a lot less graphic intensive. Again I could compare how Google treated the same content within the same domain.

During July, Google listed both pages together in the SERPS. If you performed a search for ‘Comet’ say, the first result for my site would be the original Shop Codes page and the second indented result would be the ‘bite size’ version.

I then went away on holiday for three weeks and didn’t perform any site updates. I came back to find that Google had again changed the way it displayed my site in the results. This was at the same time they removed their Supplemental Index.

This time around the ‘bite size’ pages were getting top billing but the original Shop Codes merchants pages were hidden a little deeper.

So in both cases it was clear that Google preferred the cleaner build of the WordPress pages rather than my hand crafted own.

With ‘bite size’ I am having template issues, in that it always reverts back to the original design, so I have spent a few evenings searching for the best free designs available, looking for one that will stick.

Experiment 3 – Voucher Diary

Whilst browsing WordPress themes I found two designs that were designed to look like a diary. I’m sat on several domain names that I’ve not touched since I’ve purchased them and so I thought it would be an appropriate time to have a play with ‘Voucher Diary’.

The focus of ‘Voucher Diary’ will be to display codes that are new or about to expire. I’d not launched this sooner as I don’t have a CMS but Word Press has a plug-in or two you can use to handle expired posts.

I launched it with duplicate content to begin with, allowing me time to find a design and category structure I was comfortable with.

I then looked at the tone of the content and thought best it should be written in a diary style. So I am currently playing with having a male and female guest characters updating the content.

And that’s where I am today. I’ve still got design and content to modify until I’m satisfied with the final product but it’s good to see that it is being indexed by Google already.