The affiliate scheme is your “every customer is a sales channel” lever. Existing customers (or paid influencers) share a unique referral link; new buyers who arrive through it get attributed; the referrer earns a reward you control. This page covers the setup decisions — reward amounts, payout cadence, attribution rules. For the conceptual overview see Affiliate Scheme Overview.

Step 1 — Decide on a reward structure

The three patterns we see most:

• Flat per-referral reward — £2 site credit to the referrer for each new customer who places a paid order. Simple, predictable; works well if your AOV is £10+.
• Percentage of referred spend— 5% of the referred customer’s first order, capped at £10. Rewards high-value referrals more, which is usually what you want.
• Tiered VIP — £2 for the first referral, £3 for the next four, £5 each after that. Encourages volume from power-users. More complex; only worth it once you have a few known super-referrers.

Whatever you pick: reward in site credit, not cash. Credit gets spent on more competitions. Cash leaves your bank.

Step 2 — Configure in admin

1. Open Admin → Marketing → Affiliate Scheme.
2. Toggle Scheme active on.
3. Set the referrer reward — fixed amount or percentage of referred spend, plus an optional cap.
4. Set the minimum referred-spend threshold for attribution. Default is £5 — under this, no reward fires (prevents abuse with £0.50 self-referrals).
5. Set per-month earnings cap per referrer. £50/mo is typical. Stops one person draining your scheme.
6. Set the payout delay. The default is 14 days after the referred order — long enough that chargebacks / refunds resolve before credit lands. Don’t make this shorter.

Step 3 — Attribution window

How long after clicking a referral link does a customer have to purchase for the referrer to get credit? Default is 30 days via a first-party cookie on your domain. This is the industry standard.

• Shorter than 30 days (e.g. 7) reduces fraud surface but loses slow-converting referrals.
• Longer than 30 days rarely helps — most genuine referral-conversions happen within 7 days. After 30 the cookie is likely already expired from browser ITP.

Step 4 — Terms & eligibility

• Self-referrals— block. The customer who shares the link can’t earn from their own subsequent purchases.
• Same-household referrals — common abuse vector. Same IP + same payment card = block. We do this automatically when both conditions match within 24 hours.
• Pre-existing customers as referees — block. Only new customers count. Otherwise existing customers refer each other in a circle.
• Discount-code stacking — decide if a referred customer can also use a discount code on their first order. Default: yes, but the referrer reward is calculated on the discounted total.

Step 5 — Promotion to your customers

• Auto-prompt: after a customer’s 2nd paid order, the confirmation email includes their referral link.
• Account dashboard: every customer sees their referral link at /account/affiliate. Customise the page copy in Admin → Pages.
• SMS broadcast: a one-off “here’s how to earn credit” send to your engaged list. See SMS Campaigns.
• Influencer accounts: create dedicated codes for known affiliates (rather than them using their normal user link) so you can pay them on a different structure.

Step 6 — Monitor & iterate

Once it’s running, watch the Admin → Reports → Acquisition Attribution report weekly. Two things to track:

• Affiliate-attributed orders as a % of all new customers. Healthy is 8–15%. Under 5% means nobody is sharing — sweeten the reward or surface the program more aggressively. Over 25% may indicate self-referral abuse surviving your blocks.
• Cost per affiliate-acquired customer— your total reward outlay divided by attributed orders. Should be well below your blended ad CAC. If it isn’t, the reward is too generous.

Related: Affiliate Scheme Overview · UTM Tags & Attribution.