ShareASale Transaction Breakout Report and Why It Is Important

Want a quick way to analyze affiliate transactions to determine their sources? ShareASale merchants are now using the “Transaction Breakout Report”. This report is exactly what it sounds like. It breaks down affiliate transactions within a specific time frame and tells merchants if the transactions are new customers, mobile transactions, or coupon transactions. I will go into detail below on the report and how to access.

Step # 1 – Accessing the Transaction Breakout Report

Once logged in to the ShareASale merchant account, navigate to the “Reports” tab and then “Transaction Breakout” (second row).

Step # 2 –  Adjust Filters to Get Necessary Data

In the image below, the red box on the left has filter options to use. Select the date range you want to review (ShareASale defaults to the past 7 days), a specific affiliate, breakout metric (mobile transactions, new customer transactions, and coupon transactions. The mentioned filters can be ordered by gross sales, number of transactions, commission, or breakout ratio. Hit “Filter” and the results will appear to the right.

Step # 3 – Review Provided Data

As you can see in the image above, over 91% of the transaction during the week were “Non-Mobile”.

Below the graph will be a detailed breakdown publisher by publisher. This example is based on mobile transactions, but some merchants are concerned with the number of new customers being brought in, so when running the report, remember to change the “Breakdown Metric”.

This report is quite valuable. It can show merchants where time and effort should be focused as well as determine if more or less coupons/deals are needed. The report can also assist in affiliate recruitment. How is that? Merchants can determine that they want to spend more time gaining new customers, so reaching out to prospective affiliates that are similar to the ones currently performing in that category. The “Transaction Breakout Report” is not just a bunch of numbers, but a tool to help (or continue) to grow a ShareASale affiliate program.

Advanced Affiliate Transaction Metrics via ShareASale

As a ShareASale merchant you have access to an array of tools to help manage and grow your affiliate program, but they also offer a robust reporting solution for transactions that occur. In one place ShareASale visually explains each transaction (important details of them) to help you (the merchant) determine if it is a legit sale or one that needs to be reviewed and reversed. This post will go over what you do not see on the ShareASale transaction reports and how you can access that information.

Here is a sample affiliate transaction from the “Reports”—”Transaction Detail”:

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As you can see it includes many of the details of the sale including: The date it occurred, sales amount, commission paid (to both the affiliate and ShareASale), the affiliate who referred the sale, the page the banner/link was clicked from, and creative ID. This is all great information, but what if I told you there is other information (just as important) that you can access about every transaction. How, you may ask?

It is very simple. First, you must download a file of the transactions you want more information for. Once it is downloaded and opened you will be shown information that many merchants do not even know exists.

The advanced metrics shown include the banner name (not ID) so that you can see exactly what banner converted instead of looking via the banner ID, if a coupon was used and the code associated with it, and if it is a new or existing customer (this only works if you have the ability to track new v. existing).

Showing the coupon code used can be helpful in determining if affiliates are “harvesting coupons”. If you only have specific coupons for the affiliate program then you can easily void the transaction or contact the affiliate to let them know that they cannot promote the code(s) being used.

Enabling ShareASale to track new v. existing customers can also be beneficial to the program. It will help determine who is adding value and plan to help increase sales that will lead to incremental business.

It was nice to share a little hidden gem within the transaction report of ShareASale. They provide great data, but cannot include it all in the visual breakdown in the “Reports”—“Transaction Detail” section. What is shown in the advanced data can be just as, if not more, beneficial than the actual sales amount and affiliate referrer.

How to View Affiliate Banner Performance in ShareASale

As a merchant you are always looking for ways to improve the performance of your affiliate program and monitoring reports and trends are essential.  What reports should you be reviewing to ensure optimal performance? The transaction report, weekly report, affiliate timespan report, and banner performance report are among the most popular reports (in ShareASale). Today, I will be providing a step-by-step guide to review the banner performance report in ShareASale. This report tells you (the merchant) what banners/links/deals are most popular among your affiliates. So without any further ado I will begin.

Step # 1 – Click the “Banner Performance” icon under the “REPORTS” tab

The banner performance report is under the “Reports” tab along with the other reports important for managing your program. Once you click the “Banner Performance” icon you will be taken to the next screen where you can filter your data in many ways.

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Step # 2 – Select your data segments

This step is where you select what data to include in the report. You want to select a date range to analyze first. ShareASale only allows you to review a 30-day period at once. You also have the option to segment it by creative types (banners, links or deals) and by commissions paid, sales generated, and number of clicks. To view the data within the ShareASale interface, click the “Refresh Report” button and you will be provided the data you requested via the filters used. Lastly, to create a downloadable text version make sure to “check” the box labeled so. To open the document in excel please read this article How to View ShareASale Pipe-Delimited File in Excel Columns

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Step # 3 – Review banner/link data

You will see the banner/link ID’s are on the far left side of the page and then you have the banner type, the amount of clicks (unique) it received, the commission earned, the total sales generated, number of sales, and voids.  You may not know exactly what link is what, so you have to preview it and determine if it was a banner, text link, coupon, etc.

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Step # 4 – Preview banners/links

To preview the banner/link in question click the square icon next to the banner ID. A pop-up will appear on your screen (similar to the one below) and it will tell you if it is a banner or a text link and any other details you may need to know including a preview of the banner and text link. For the purposes of this post I removed sensitive client information, but the idea and logic is the same.

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Understanding how your creatives are performing is important because it will help you determine if you need more of a particular banner and it also lets you know what type of creative your affiliates prefer so that you can offer them what they will use. Creating banners and text link without knowing if they will be used is a waste of time and resources, so be sure to review the “banner performance” report on a monthly basis.

How to View and Download ShareASale Performance Reports

In last week’s post I showed you how to access and pull affiliate performance reports on CJ Affiliate By Conversant. This week’s post will be on the same topic, but explore reports on ShareASale. After reading this you will have an understanding of the three (3) types of reports to focus on and what they contain. So without further ado, a step by step guide (with images) on how to pull affiliate program and affiliate performance reports from ShareASale.

Step 1 – Hover over the Reports Tab

Once you login to your merchant account you will see a navigation bar with 5 tabs including: Reports, Affiliates, My Creatives, Tools, and My Account. To access the affiliate reports you need to hover your mouse over Reports. You will see many options, but the three reports we will focus on are 1. Weekly Progress 2. Affiliate Timespan 3. Banner Performance.

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Step 2 – Click Weekly Progress

This report gives you a snapshot of the previous two (2) weeks performance broken down daily. You have the option to adjust the start date of the report, length of the report, number of weeks to display, and have it converted into a downloadable CSV file. However, I recommend opening the CSV files using Excel. Here is a post that shows you how to open a pipe-delimited file.

Weekly Progress # 1

The contents of the report include: clicks, gross sales, number of sales, net sales, voids, commission, number of affiliates in program, and number of active affiliates.

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Step 3 – Affiliate Timespan Report

You must hover over the Reports tab and click Affiliate Timespan. This report is similar to the weekly progress report except it provides each affiliate and the number of clicks and sales they generated for a specific time period.  You can customize the report dates, target individual affiliates and download the entire report in a handy CSV file.

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The contents of the report include: The affiliate ID and main URL, clicks generated, sales, commissions earned, EPC (Earnings Per 100 Clicks),  and average order value.

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 Step 4 – Banner Performance Report

Again, hover your mouse over the Reports tab and select Banner Performance Report. This report gives you vital statistics on the performance of your creatives (banners and text links). You can customize the reporting period to view, view only specific kinds of creatives (i.e. banners) and download it in a CSV file.

Banner Performance #1

The contents of the Banner Performance Report are:  banner id (click on it and it will show you the exact banner/text link), type, the amount of sales it generated along with dollar amount.

Banner Report # 2

As an affiliate manager that manages multiple accounts these reports touched upon are extremely important to review daily and weekly. They provide you current trends, top performing affiliates, and top performing creatives. They provide you all most of the information you will need to effectively manage your ShareASale affiliate program on a day-to-day basis.

How to Access Performance Reports on CJ Affiliate Network

Reports are an extremely essential piece to effectively managing affiliate programs, but knowing what reports to review and how to find them is equally as important. At any given time you (merchant) should know how the affiliate program is performing and what affiliates are driving results. Each affiliate network’s interface is different in how the reports are generated and accessed. I will show you a step by step guide (with images) on how to pull affiliate program and affiliate performance reports from CJ Affiliate by Conversant.

Step 1 – Click the Report Tab

Once you are logged into your CJ Affiliate merchant account, click the Report tab at the top. It is the 5th tab from the left.

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Step 2 – Select the Performance Report

This is where you select the type of report to view/download. To review overall program statistics select “Program” and to review publisher (affiliate) statistics select “Publisher”.

Step 3 – Select Desired Date Range

You have a plethora of options here. There is a custom option if you want to pull data for specific dates/weeks as well as options for the current month, the last month (and up to the previous 6 months), the last 30 days, the current week, the day before, and the current day.

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Step 4 – Create and Review the Chosen Reports

Once you have selected the report type (program or affiliate) and date range to analyze, click the “Run Report” button and the data you requested will populate below the fold.

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Step 5 – Download Your Reports

To download your reports simply hit the “download” button and it will allow you to save it as a CSV file on your computer.

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There you have it, a step-by-step guide to downloading affiliate program performance reports in CJ Affiliate. If you are a merchant, but do not have your affiliate program on CJ Affiliate don’t worry I will be doing guides for other networks in the coming weeks.