BCL Performance Marketing: Ethical Affiliate Marketing Australia: Closing your retail website for a few weeks

Ideally, online businesses should trade all year round because that is what their customers expect. This isn't easy for very small businesses and sole traders. In the offline world, many businesses close from just before Christmas to after New Year. Can your online businesses do the same?

It can... but it needs planning. You have to consider the effect on affiliates and customers or it could turn into a very expensive holiday. Here are some steps to minimise the damage.

1. Plan well ahead. Knee-jerk reactions and closing a website without notice will damage your relationship and reputation with affiliates
2. Warn affiliates well in advance so they don't embark on a big promotion of your site only to find that you've closed it and their time and money has been wasted. The advance notice should be at least one month - even if that means telling them an approximate closure date and confirm it as the day gets closer.
3. Put a prominent notice on every page of your website. A notice on your front page is not enough. Many affiliates, and indeed search engines, send potential customers to deeplinks within your site. Those people will never see the notice on your front page about delivery. You need that notice on every page of the site.
4. Why not just kill the whole site then? If you do that, you'll risk losing all your links in search engines and on affiliate sites. It may not be so easy to regain those links when you want to start selling again. Many affiliates will be reluctant to risk wasting their time a second time on a merchant who closes their site without warning.
5. Maintain your profile. Allow potential customers to see your product range and prices and give them the option of ordering now for delivery when you return or trust that your products are special enough to make them remember to come back.
6. Try to find an alternative so you don't lose momentum and goodwill.

An Alternative to Closing Down

• Communicate with your affiliates and/or network. Let them know that you want to minimise orders for a set time. Most good affiliate programs will have a facility for you to send broadcast emails to your affiliates.
• Remove out of stock and difficult to supply items from your website so they can't be ordered. If you supply a datafeed to affiliates, that should be updated as well.
• Supply those few orders that do come in... even if it means paying someone to do it. That could be the cost of keeping your business alive and maintaining good relationships with affiliates and customers.
• Let your affiliates know when you're back and ready to resume full trading.

This will all make sense if you remember that you are not in business alone. You and your business are part of a marketplace consisting of your current and potential customers, your current and potential affiliates, your affiliate network and your suppliers.

If you take the effect of your method of closing or slowing down on them into account, they are more likely to work with you now to get the best outcome and continue to work with you in the future.