Implementing Customer Localization in WordPress for The Affiliate Program for Amazon
The Amazon Affiliate Program is more correctly known as Amazon Associates. If you want to monetize your website or blog, then the Amazon Associates program is a good way to add affiliate money-making opportunities. With this program, you can add links to any item on Amazon’s site to your website and get commission when someone clicks the link or makes a purchase.
There are currently 11 different Amazon storefronts across the world (United States, Canada, Brazil, France, Germany, Italy, Spain, United Kingdom, China, Japan and India). Each of these storefronts has its own Amazon Associates Program.
If you are targeting an international clientele, then you will need to apply for each of the Associate Programs for each individual country.
The Issue of Customer Localization
The division of Amazon Storefronts across these countries can create a bad experience for many international users. So, how can we ensure that the user is sent to their local storefront. For example, a user in the United Kingdom is sent to amazon.co.uk as opposed to amazon.com which services the United States. The benefits to the user include local shipping and currencies.
How can EasyAzon Help?
EasyAzonPro Amazon Affiliate Links is a WordPress plugin. It makes it so much easier to add info boxes or images linked to Amazon affiliate products right into your WordPress pages or posts.
However, the real benefit of EasyAzonPro Amazon Affiliate Links version is that it allows Amazon links to be localized where possible. As part of the plugin setup, an admin page allows you to enter your Amazon Associates code for the various international storefronts. EasyAzon then automatically changes your Amazon affiliate code to match the country from which a visitor is viewing your website, thus allowing you to earn commissions on that traffic. As mentioned above, this also benefits to the visitor with respect to local shipping and currencies.
One additional feature that EasyAzon has over some similar WordPress plugins, is that it tries to match the title of the product for which the visitor is searching. This is beneficial as there is no guarantee that the product code will be the same across all storefronts.
Where does WPGeocode fit in?
WPGeocode is also another plugin for WordPress. You use WPGeocode to customize the content of your blog based on the location of your visitors.
In addition to individual products, Amazon Associates allow you to advertise by adding banners to your pages or posts. These advertise a group of products based on your selection of Amazon product categories and promotions. Once again, each Amazon Storefront has it’s own banner in the local language and currency with location specific promotions.
Once you have the code from Amazon for you selected banner for each target location, WPGeocode helps you to serve your visitor the appropriate banner based on their location.
For example, this is an excerpt from a footer widget on my website.
[wpgc_is_country_code country_code=”US”]
show the banner for the United States
[wpgc_is_country_code]
[wpgc_is_not_country_codes country_codes=”US”]
show the default banner for all other countries
[wpgc_is_not_country_codes]
In Conclusion
This is only one option which allows you to service international Amazon clientele. There are certainly other methods and I would be glad to hear form you if you have an alternative solution. So, constructive comments are always welcomed.
