MERCHANT GUIDE www.zowasel.com
Zowasel Merchant Guide
Our Story Tired of visiting several sites daily to compare prices, clipping coupons and scouring the Internet for promotional codes and best deals? Worry no more, here comes zowasel.com - the one portal that allows you to compare best prices, track the top deals and unique coupons, all in real-time to save you time and money! No more hunting across stores, no hassles, and no more scissors required to get the best deals by comparing best prices with no hassles.
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Zowasel Merchant Guide
Merchant Guide Join Nigeria’s top leading and most successful retailers by listing your products on Zowasel.com to reach millions of savvy shoppers daily. We compare best prices from credible and reputable online and offline stores in Nigeria only. Zowasel provides you a quick effective way to drive costeffective traffic to your website. Partner to work with us directly by providing all the prices and item details displaying on Zowasel.com for shoppers to compare and click your listings and return back to your site.
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Our affiliate team will work with you to verify all your store listings, and show icons next to all your listings on our site. Our listings are free, however, we would expect you to use our verification logo on our site in return. HOW TO LIST YOUR PRODUCTS There are 2 simple steps to get you live: Step 1 – Talk to Zowasel We can answer your questions, confirm the category in which you want to list your items and take down all the details we need to set you up with a partner agreement. We would love to hear from you! Step 2 – Send your feed Next, send your product feeds of all the items you want to list. We accept feeds in most common formats. To get started just fill in a few details about your business in the form issued alongside this handbook, and one of our team members will be in touch soon. Email us at, suport™zowasel.com, merchants@zowasel.com + 234 (01) 342 4403, 0809 234 9666 // 2
Zowasel Merchant Guide
Merchant Benefits Straight away buyer referrals Consumer insights and buying behaviors Simple and fast advertising bundles Turning browsers into buyers Increased volume of sales with less marketing hassle Open to wide audience and potential buyer You decide discount percentages and sales offers Connect to millions of buyers looking to save cost Compare products and services of competitors
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Zowasel Merchant Guide
5 Reasons to list on Zowasel.com Hundreds of the Nigeria’s most successful retailers list their products on Zowasel.com
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. You can reach over millions of active shoppers each month – across our handpicked partner network stores/ merchants online and offline. . You can drive quality, converting traffic to your site – we will optimize your account to meet your goals and drive sales. . You can be confident in our data – as well as our marketleading auto-matching system, we also have a team of content experts manually matching thousands of items and prices in real-time. . You won’t get any additional costs. There are no hidden charges whatsoever – we don’t charge any set-up or support fees and our ad space rates vary by category to deliver the best margin for you. . We are here to help you – our account managers will work closely with you to get you set-up and are always at hand to answer your questions.
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Zowasel Merchant Guide
Product Feed FAQs 1. Which is the best product feed format to use? We are glad to receive your feed in any text format, most commonly xml, csv or txt files only.
2. Can you work with any plugins/add-ins for the feed like Magento?
We do not accept plugins, but if you have installed a plugin on your Magento or any other e-commerce application generating your product feed, you can send us the URL the product feed appears or downloaded file as an attachment.
3. Do you accept feeds through feed management companies i.e. Channel Advisor, Feed Optimise, Intelligent Reach, Fuse Pump?
Yes, we can accept feeds from any feed Management Company as long as they are in one of the required formats - xml, csv or txt.
4. Can you accept feeds in the same format as Google or any other similar partner? www.zowasel.com
Yes we can, but we do have slightly different mandatory fields to Google and some other partners so you’ll need to make sure they are all included. Please check the above instructions and the Sample Feed format for more details.
5. Can I exclude products from the feed that I send to Zowasel. com?
It’s up to you to manage the feed you send to us but we recommend starting off with your full product range so we can optimise your account to find the sweet spots. In some instances we may be able to exclude certain categories for you but this will be on a case-bycase basis.
6. When is the feed uploaded onto Zowasel.com? Our developer will upload your product feed once tested and found to conform to zowasel.com standards with 24 hours.
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Yes all merchants must have an online store with product count not less that 100.
8. Is there a mandatory minimum operating years before you can be listed on zowasel.com? Yes, merchant must have been operating for a period not less than 6 months.
9. Must I have a product feed to be listed on zowasel.com?
Yes, merchants must have product feed or will be willing to install the Zowasel product feed.
10. Will I have a dedicated account manager for my store? Yes every merchant signed up gets a dedicated account manager, however, every merchant must provide at least 2 contact persons or phone numbers to reach incase of any urgent situation.
7. Do I need to have a number of products be listed on zowasel. // 5
Zowasel Merchant Guide
Product Feed Checklist
1. Check that you are given the correct URL 2. Make sure all headers match the listings instructions and sample feed 3. Check that all mandatory fields are included 4. Make sure each mandatory field has data throughout the column 5. Check category information in your feed make sure all categories are all separated clearly with the correct products in each one. We would love to hear from you if you have any questions please contact us suport@ zowasel.com Telephone: +234 (01) 212 2895, 342 4403, 809 234
Merchant Feed Guide
A data feed is a text file containing all product information. The file has to be in text format, generally xml, txt, csv, html, php or asp for our acceptance.
Merchant needs to have an FTP or HTTP address location where files can be collected each day (i.e. ftp://zowasel:password@ftp.homepage.com or www. homepage.com/zowasel.csv.). If you don’t have a server where you can post the data then please contact our support team to discuss other ways of sending us your feed. Please note we do not host feeds. Merchants must always keep the feed URL and name unchanged. Don’t include dates of updates or any other information in the URL. The URL and name must always be the same so we can match it. Make sure that the data feed contains the current prices. Do not include any html markups within the fields in the data feed. Please be aware that if you limit your feed to less than 80% of your online product inventory (which must be at least 100 products) then we may have to use a previous version of your feed.
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Zowasel Merchant Guide
Field Description of Data Feed
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Zowasel Merchant Guide
User FAQs
1. What is Zowasel.com? Zowasel.com is the largest deal and comparison platform in Nigeria; simply helping consumers save millions of Naira via comparisons, deals and coupons and across a wide variety of products and retailers. We offer unique purchasing tools and tips to compare best prices, cash saving guides, product reviews, coupons, discount alerts, and techniques on any item of choice etc. 2. Is Zowasel.com an online store? We provide a service for (merchants) online stores to list their products and services for sale on our website. If you want to purchase a product, please contact the merchant directly by clicking on the merchant’s logo or the “Grab Now” or “Visit Store” button. 3. Do I get charged to use Zowasel.com? No, Zowasel.com is 100% free for buyers. Merchants who list products on Zowasel pay us a fee based on referrals of users, www.zowasel.com
and may pay fees for enhanced placement or other promotional opportunities on our sites, such as premium marketing messages. 4. I need help with a product I purchased. Can Zowasel.com help me? Zowasel.com does not sell any product or service. We recommend that you contact the merchant from whom you made your purchase or the manufacturer of the product for answers to your questions. 5. How do I compare or grab particular product or service on Zowasel.com? Simply enter the product or service you are looking for in the search box and hit enter or the compare or search button. A list of products and services will then be presented. To filter your results, select a manufacturer, a price range and in certain cases, product features. You can also browse through our listings by category. 6. What is the Zowasel Experience? Zowasel Experience simply helps you
track down top deals, best prices and unique coupons to save millions of Naira seamlessly. 7 How do I check the status of my order? Zowasel.com does not sell any product or service to users. We provide a service for e-shops and online stores to list their products and services for sale on our website. If you have a question regarding an order that you have placed, please contact the merchant directly. 8. What are “Hot” and “Fresh” deals? And what’s “Heating Up”? Hot Deals are the deals you see right on the Zowasel Deals homepage our “deal experts” declared to be best deals of a particular moment! Fresh Deals are recently submitted deals that have not yet become Hot Deals. If you see a Fresh Deal that you think deserves an upgrade to the homepage, make sure to save it, view it, and maybe even leave a comment. // 8
Zowasel Merchant Guide
User FAQs Deals that are Heating Up are the ones well on their way to being Hot. If you think a deal that’s Heating Up is homepage worthy, then go ahead and give it a thumbs up. 9. How do I contact a merchant? Please visit the merchant’s website for the most up-to-date contact information. 10. Why do prices listed on Zowasel.com different from that on the sellers’ web site? We periodically refresh our listings with the latest prices. Sometimes sellers change the prices on their site before they are reflected on Zowasel.com. We cannot vouch for the accuracy of the prices advertised by sellers. The price may have dropped! If you see a lower price on the retailer’s site than on Zowasel.com then it looks like you’ve found a price drop. Make sure to edit the deal with the new price or leave a comment to let other users know that the product is www.zowasel.com
available at a lower price. The deal may have expired! If the retailers’ price is higher than on Zowasel.com and there are no codes or rebates, then unfortunately, the deal has probably expired. Flag the deal as expired, or leave a comment saying that the deal is no longer available. 11. How do I get a product manual or software needed for my product or service? Please visit either the manufacturer of the product’s site or the merchant from which you bought the product for all technical details. Zowasel.com does not possess this kind of information. 12. How do I disable personalized ads, clear my browsing history, or change my browsing preferences? Just click on the “Preferences” link at the bottom of the page to access your search and browsing history preferences. 13. How do I read or add product ratings and reviews on Zowasel.com? Find the product you want to review. In the centre of the product page you can read the
reviews by clicking on the “Read Review” link rate the product by clicking on one of the “Rate Product” buttons or submit a product review by clicking on the “Write a Review” link. 14. How do I read or add seller ratings and reviews on Zowasel.com? Find the seller on any product page and then click on the “Seller Reviews” link in the “Seller Ratings” column. On the next page to add your own ratings, simply click on the “Write a Review” link 15. What is the difference between a product rating and a review? Zowasel.com product rating system shows the average of users’ star ratings of a product. Product reviews are written reviews composed by our users about a product. 16. Do sellers ship to and from international locations? It depends on the particular seller or store. Please search for the product that interests you and then inquire about shipping from any of the sellers or stores. 17.
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Zowasel Merchant Guide
User FAQs
arrangements? Zowasel.com does not book travel arrangements for users. We provide a service for airlines, hotels, and travel agencies to list their services on our website. If you have a question regarding travel arrangements that you have booked, please contact the travel agency directly. 18. What kinds of questions can I ask? Feel free to ask questions about Zowasel comparison, specific deals, coupons or reviews, products you’re interested in, stores or websites where you shop, in short, anything you are curious about. All we ask is that you try and ask the question in the interest where its most relevant so that you get the most relevant answer. 19. How do I need to set up a price alert? Custom price alerts allow you to add a keyword to your alert list. That way, if a deal is added to Zowasel.com with your keyword in it, you will be alerted immediately. For example, if you add the keyword “laptop” to your list, you will receive e-mail every time there’s a deal www.zowasel.com
with the word “laptop” in it. We also offer a daily e-mail subscription: To subscribe to “Daily Deals,” enter your email at the very bottom of any page, and click Submit. To remove yourself from email subscriptions, click the link: “To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now.” at the bottom of your email. 20. Does Zowasel List Only Nigerian Stores? Yes, we compare best prices from credible and reputable online and offline stores in the Nigeria only. 21. Are all Shops Verified on Zowasel? Some stores are verified and work with us directly, providing all the prices and item details displaying on their sites for shoppers to compare best prices on our site. However, some stores don’t work with us directly but we are still able to compare their prices by scraping information directly from their site or working through third party support.
link in the price alert email. If you have an account with Zowasel.com, you can also remove a price alert by logging into your account and clicking “Edit Your Price Alerts”. 23. How do I report a technical problem? Please send email to support@zowasel.com giving a brief description of the problem. Also include the browser version and operating system on which this problem can be reproduced. 24. How do I get more information? Send an email to support@zowasel.com with your question. 25. What if I forgot my password? It happens to the best of us. Just go here and enter the email address that you used to sign up for Zowasel.com
22. How to remove price alert? Please click on the “Remove Price Alert” // 10
Zowasel Merchant Guide
User Benefits • • • • • • • • • • • •
Unique comparison experience Easy-to-use comparison tools. Real-time comparison across sectors Best price comparison guides Real-time offers and exclusive deals alerts Special discounts and promo coupons Product and service reviews Consumer reports analysis Cash saving tips Unique purchasing techniques Products and service insight Market realities
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Zowasel Merchant Guide
Zowasel Terms of Use Important notice – please read these terms of use carefully before using the site or any services, software, or content available on or through the site. The site, and all services, software, and content available on or through it, are for your private and non-commercial use only. You may not sell, auction, alter, duplicate, transfer, distribute or otherwise use in a commercial manner the services, software, or content (including but not limited to deals and offers). By using the site, you agree to these terms of use. If you do not agree to these terms of use, please do not use the site. Zowasel.com reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to change, modify, add or remove portions of these terms of use, at any time. Amended terms will be published on the zowasel.com network and will take effect immediately for new users, and 15 days after date of notification for existing users. It is your responsibility to check these terms of use periodically for changes. Your continued use of the site following the posting of changes will mean that you accept and agree to all such changes.
Copyright • •
Zowasel.com is an independently owned website (“Site”, “we”, “us” “our”). All software offerings and applications owned by Zowasel.com and made available on or through the Site including all Site design, text, images, photographs, graphics, audio, video, offers, interfaces and the selection of arrangements, coupons, and documents including; without limitation; marketing materials, press releases, white papers, product data sheets, and other information are copyrighted by Zowasel.com with all rights reserved. Intellectual property rights protect third parties.
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Contact Us
We would love to hear from you!
Email us support@zowasel.com
Telephone: + 234 (01) 342 4403, 089 234 9666 www.zowasel.com