Affiliate link not always working

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by

Erica Thumma

Hi,

I’m getting complaints from affiliates that their links aren’t working. I’ve had this issue on and off since we launched the fundraising site in January and I’m not sure what to do about it. I’m using affiliate short code on the home, shopping, cart, and checkout pages so that when someone uses the link it shows the name of the affiliate (fundraiser) that the purchase will credit. If they don’t use a link or the link has expired, I have different language that is shown to let them know that they need to use a link or check the dates of the fundraiser. Unfortunately, many visitors are getting the expired link message when the link is still active. Often, refreshing their browser helps, but not always.

Today, I had an affiliate/fundraiser tell me that when they used their link and visited the home page, it showed their organization name as it should, but when they got to the shop page, it showed the name of a different fundraiser. The two groups have nothing to do with each other so that was really odd. When my client used the link, it came up as an expired link. When I used the link, it worked correctly so I couldn’t recreate the issue.

I’m using the Divi theme for the site (which I understand uses shortcodes) and I’m wondering if it’s causing the problem. Moving to another theme requires an entire rebuild. So before I do that, I was wondering if you have any insight into the issue. My other thought is that cookies are causing the issue…but I don’t know where to start looking for a fix, if that is indeed the problem.

Any thoughts would be greatly appreciated.

The website is https://fundraising.happyvalleysoupcompany.com. And here’s an active link: https://fundraising.happyvalleysoupcompany.com/?fund=39.

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Comments

5 responses to “Affiliate link not always working”

  1. George Avatar
    George

    You’re welcome Erica, my pleasure.

    Cheers,
    George

  2. George Avatar
    George

    Hi Erica,

    Your description seems like a caching issue and from the fact that you have SG Optimizer, I would recommend you to first exclude the pages containing the shortcode from being cached. Afterwards and if the issue persists check if SiteGround is caching URL parameters in any way and make sure exclude the affiliate URL parameter from caching or ask SiteGround support to exclude it for you.

    I wouldn’t recommend you to disable caching in general as it is beneficial for your site’s performance, but simply adjust the caching settings in order to avoid it from interfering with Affiliates plugin functionality.

    Kind regards,
    George

    1. Erica Thumma Avatar
      Erica Thumma

      Thanks, George! This is really helpful!

  3. Erica Thumma Avatar
    Erica Thumma

    After I sent you this message on Friday, I noticed that when I went to the shop page, regardless of the affiliate link I was using, it was showing a completely different affiliate name. Then when I clicked on a product, the affiliate name would be correct at the top of the screen. I ended up rebuilding the entire page. Twice. And it seems to be ok now.

    I also noticed that in your documentation it mentioned there were many issues with various optimizers. The site is hosted with SiteGround and I had the SG Optimizer installed. I removed the plugin. Do you know if there’s a way to use SG Optimizer on the site, or is it best to not have it on the site at all?

    To be clear, you said “What I haven’t noticed on your site is the info for the referring affiliate, neither on the shop page nor in the cart page.” Do you mean that you were not seeing the name of the affiliate at the top of the screen in the black bar? But you were seeing it on the home page? If so, that’s an issue, even if it’s recording it correctly.

    Thanks,
    -Erica

  4. George Avatar
    George

    Hi Erica,

    Thanks for sharing the URL to your site and the details to your issue. I have used the affiliate link provided and the cookies seems to be in place for the affiliate, so for as long as the cookie is present in the browser the referral will be successful and recorded to the respective partner.
    What I haven’t noticed on your site is the info for the referring affiliate, neither on the shop page nor in the cart page, but checking my browser Application tab in the developer tools always shows the correct cookie stored.

    https://ibb.co/pwK5dWv
    These tools can be located if you right-click anywhere on the page, click on Inspect and switch to Application tab. In this tab you can see the stored cookie for this website and is an easy way to check the cookie value. ( the instructions apply for Chrome but there are equivalent tools for other popular browsers as well ).

    Possible reasons why your affiliates won’t get their referral recorded is whether the cookie is stored or not, or if the cookie has expired. In your case I’m assuming that the cookies expired whether because the cookie has reached the expiration date or because the user terminated the session( closed the browser tab/window ).

    Please have a look at our Troubleshooting section we keep in the plugin documentation if any of the suggestions apply to your case and also your wp-content/debug.log file, once you enable WP debugging, for possible issues on your site you’re not aware at the moment.

    FYI, if you use the shortcodes [affiliates_is_referred], [referrer_id] and [affiliates_is_not_referred] the containing pages should not be cached.

    Kind regards,
    George

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