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What are Affiliate Storefronts for your eCommerce?
Affiliate storefronts are bespoke, personalized eComm pages given to performance influencers, creator-affiliates, and/or ambassadors. Brands turn to affiliate storefronts to leverage the power of a social creator’s voice and authenticity, directly on their eComm sites.
Affiliate storefronts typically feature curations and collections of the creator’s favorite products from the brand. Most also contain user-generated content (UGC) like ‘get ready with me’, OOTD, looks, hauls, unboxings and more.
The ultimate goal of affiliate storefronts is to deliver an unparalleled social commerce experience natively on eCommerce websites. Bridging the gap between social media and eCommerce has been proven to boost session lengths, conversion rates, and average order values.
Why do your Creators Need Affiliate Storefronts?
Gen Z and the Rise of Social Traffic to eCommerce
Social media and influencer marketing is a significant source of traffic for eCommerce sites. The trends are clear, consumers are spending more time on platforms like Instagram and TikTok, and more importantly, the platforms are inspiring far more purchases.
For Gen Z, these trends are even more pronounced, with 92% of Gen Z adults crediting creator recommendations as a deciding factor in making a purchase.
But eCommerce brands have a big problem. Despite all of this traffic and importance, on average, social media traffic does not convert as highly as other channels. And it is getting worse (down 20% in 2022).
The disconnect is the eCommerce shopping journey. On social media, people are discovering products and getting inspired by creators. No one searches for “pants” on TikTok, you discover a pair of pair from a friend or creator that you are following. Creators drive interest by providing inspiration.
However, when someone is inspired by a creator and lands on the eComm site, there’s a context shift. No longer is the consumer delighted with a creator-centric experience (which is why they are there). Instead, the consumer has to shift context and begin shopping by product categories.
This challenge is not unique to just social media and influencer traffic. With conversion rates of .5 – 1%, affiliate traffic suffers the same challenge. When you discover a product via an affiliate channel, the link provided often guides the user to a generic, non-personalized experience.
Affiliate Storefronts as the Solution to Creator-driven Traffic
That’s the problem that’s solved with affiliate storefronts. They focus on creating a more relevant shopping experience for creator traffic..
Each creator that is driving traffic will receive their own customizable page (as opposed to a generic link) which includes their profile, UGC, and product collections. It’s a shopping experience that is tailored uniquely to their audience.
The result is a triple win:
- It significantely improves conversion rates for traffic generated through creators. Our research suggests brands have experienced 3.24% average conversion rates, which is 4 times the industry average.
- It drives up the AOV (average order value) for consumers, since they want to shop all of the creator’s picks. Shopify cites that product bundles can increase AOV by 60%, so letting creators build product bundles radically scales a powerful conversion tools.
- It creates tremendous excitement and alignment with the creator. This leads to greater creator retention. What is cooler than having your own storefront on the brand’s site?
Which Creators or Customers Should Get an Affiliate Storefront?
If affiliate storefronts are radically improving conversions from social traffic… which publishers should be using them?
- Influencers and affiliates – anytime a brands gives an affiliate link or code, it’s losing sales because of the conversion funnel that doesn’t align with the creator. They will convert more with their own page (and drive more traffic when they feel more aligned with the brand).
- Brand ambassadors and micro-influencers – Perhaps the highest potential segment that needed branded storefronts. These individuals have extremely high conversion rates based on their smaller, hyper-focused audiences. And they will be more excited than anyone to have real-estate on an eCommerce site.
- Customers and brand advocates – Unless the brand wants to open these storefronts to general traffic, the only way to end up on a affiliate storefront is to click a unique link. Cutting edge brands find that there is no downside to offering every single customer their own storefront. It builds alignment and engagement with the brand… and although many customers will not drive meaningful traffic, it still allows them to curate their favorite products and share them with their friends. Word of mouth marketing and loyalty marketing baked into one.
Examples of Affiliate Storefronts
Some of the largest DTC brands and retailers have spent millions of dollars building a home-grown solution for giving creators affiliate storefronts. Here’s just some examples…
Influencer Storefronts on Amazon
Amazon has shifted a large part of its affiliate business to the Amazon Influencer Program. They are solving the same problem with social traffic. Given the wild success of the program, they’ve grown it to include hundreds of thousands of influencers.
In 2024, Alix Earle promoted her Influencer Storefront as part of Amazon’s Prime Day campaign.
Travel Shops on Expedia
Expedia is doubling down on its affiliate program with the launch of Travel Shops. Expedia’s Travel Shops gives creators an all in one personalized storefront on its app. The storefront page features the creator’s profile picture, biography, travel recommendations, and collections. Collections are a group of hotels centered around a common theme; creators can also add a personal touch to collections by adding captions.
Expedia references several benefits of signing up for a Travel Shop:
- Offers a single, shareable link for all affiliate related needs – making it easy to share and monetize travel recommendations across creators’ bio, posts, and stories
- Streamline Travel Shop optimization with access to analytics and tooling
- Opportunity to be featured on the homepage of the Expedia app
Creators with an affiliate account can currently join the waitlist for the program. Expedia hopes to open the program to anyone who wants to join, in 2025.
Affiliate Storefronts on Walmart
Walmart offers influencers their own personal storefront to refer to in UGC. Creators earn commissions on sales that involve their storefront link.
In 2024, Walmart moved its affiliate storefronts from a subdomain (creators.walmart.com) to its main domain.
Examples of Affiliate Storefronts Powered by LoudCrowd
Affiliate Storefronts on boohoo.com
On a boohoo.com affiliate storefront, influencers are able to curate whole collections/edits/looks easily. They can choose products from pre-selected options from the boohoo team, or navigate through the entire website to create collections.
Ambassador Storefronts on Melinda Maria
The Melinda Maria Ambassador Program has hundreds of very passionate creators. Each creator is given their own affiliate storefront on melindamaria.com. The storefront is central to conversation and collaboration amongst the creators. The program generates hundreds of thousands of dollars in eComm revenue per year.
Affiliate Storefronts on Huel
Huel, one of the world’s leading supplement brands, gives affiliate storefronts to members of its Hueligans program.
Creators joining the program will have the option to earn commissions for driving sales and other incentives for posting content on Instagram, TikTok, and their storefront. Plus creators can easily tag storefront UGC with the correct Huel products, to further optimize the shopping journey for customers.
Conclusion
Affiliate storefronts represent the newest social commerce solution for DTC eCommerce brands looking to grow through influencers, creators, and customers. Affiliate storefronts solve a key issue with the social media to eCommerce funnel – context shifting.
By leveraging the power of a creator’s voice, authenticity, and knowledge of their followers, affiliate storefronts boost conversion rates, average order values, and retention.
Every DTC eCommerce brand should be providing affiliate storefronts to its influencers, creators, affiliates, or customers.
Use LoudCrowd to Power Native Affiliate Storefronts
LoudCrowd can empower any eCommerce brand to deliver an enterprise-grade, white-label affiliate storefront experience in as little as hours.
LoudCrowd is the only technology solution in the world that powers affiliate storefronts on a brand’s native domain.; and is the only to support any eCommerce platform – even custom setups. Get in touch with us if you’re interested in launching an affiliate storefronts program.
