Linkshare Updates Deal Dispatcher: Are Clean Interfaces Selling Points?

According to the Linkshare newsletter emailed out this morning, Linkshare has cleaned up their Deal Dispatcher interface. Based on suggestions from the recent affiliate survey, Linkshare writes that it has redesigned the Deal Dispatcher to make it easier to use for affiliates. Consumer and affiliate promotions now are categorized by type and listed alphabetically. In addition, the Deal Dispatcher will be emailed out once a month.

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The improved site is much cleaner and does partition the content into “New Merchants,” “Consumer Promotions” and “Affiliate Promotions” which was needed.

How much influence does interface have on the network you use? In large part, Google’s simplicity has been hearlded as one of its strengths against Yahoo, and the reason it became the most used search engine. Is the same true for affiliate marketing in terms of preferring simplicity and ease of use?

By the way, Brian has updated the ShareASale blog with the second installment of “Month of the Interface” which features some drill-down features in the merchant stat report. Follow along there.

2 Replies to “Linkshare Updates Deal Dispatcher: Are Clean Interfaces Selling Points?”

  1. This is my personal opinion. If the networks want to grow to truly reach the masses, this kind of stuff has to happen, but on an even grander scale. As an industry, we make things way too confusing for people who aren’t marketers.

    Sure, we all get this stuff, but most don’t, and they never will because it’s too confusing, too hard.

    Reply

  2. Hi Sam. It is exciting to see the networks making these kinds of investments. In other areas of internet marketing, customer feedback on UI resulted in change much faster. To answer your question (from a merchant perspective), I do find the LinkShare interface more tool-rich and easier to use than CJ (I have not seen Share-A-Sale, so I can’t comment). Of course, merchants make their decision on which network to use for many reasons, including but not limited to tools available. Some use multiple networks, which I find confusing. As you know, the merchant view and the affiliate view are very different (at least on LS). I always think of affiliates as experts in all interfaces (affiliate view). I would be curious to know which features affiliates like best on LS, CJ and ShareASale. Thanks, Stephanie

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