Buyer Purchase Flow

This page covers the end-to-end buyer experience for Branded Commerce. The flow happens entirely on the partner’s domain, under the partner’s theme — the buyer never visits the merchant’s website (unless they choose to via the Visit Merchant link on the PDP).

There are two entry-point variations of the same flow:

The PDP, checkout, and thank-you phases are identical across both variations. Everything below applies to both unless flagged.

​​ Phase 1 — Ad click

The buyer sees a paid ad. The ad creative carries the deal message and a CTA that links to the partner’s Firmly-hosted domain.

The ad links to a URL on the partner’s domain. The promo code from the ad is embedded in the URL and auto-applied — the buyer does not need to enter it manually.

Single-product variation:

https://deals.partner.example/buy/<product-handle>?promo=SAVE20

Curated landing-page variation:

https://deals.partner.example/event/<event-name>?promo=MOM20

​​ Phase 2 — Landing page (curated variation only)

A full-page, partner-branded occasion page. The buyer browses curated products before selecting one.

Header (two-part):

1. Partner branding (logo, name) plus “Powered by Firmly” attribution; back arrow to the referring page
2. Promo banner — “Exclusive offer: Save 20% with code MOM20”

Merchant identity — “Shopping with [Merchant]”. For multi-merchant landing pages, the per-product cards each show their own merchant.

Occasion title — large heading identifying the event (“Mother’s Day Gift Guide”, “Summer Skincare Essentials”).

Product grid — two-column grid; each card has product image with discount-badge overlay, product name, brief description, pricing (strikethrough + discounted + promo reference), and a Shop Now button that taps through to the PDP.

Footer — “Discount automatically applied at checkout” notice; “Powered by Firmly”.

For curated landing pages, the buyer can browse products from multiple merchants in the same grid — each product card links to a single-merchant PDP. See Curated landing page → Multi-merchant landing pages for details.

​​ Phase 3 — PDP

A full-page, partner-branded product detail page on the partner’s domain.

Header (two-part):

1. Partner branding + “Powered by Firmly” + back arrow
2. Merchant identity — “You are shopping with [Merchant]” + the merchant’s domain

Product content:

• Product images with thumbnail navigation
• Product name
• Promotional pricing — discounted price prominent, original strikethrough, savings callout, promo reference
• Product description (from the merchant’s catalog)
• Variant selectors — size, color, or others with per-variant prices
• Quantity selector
• Key benefits — bullet list

Two CTAs at the bottom:

The promo code is visible throughout the PDP — in the pricing section, and as a banner below the header.

​​ Phase 4 — Checkout

A full-page, partner-branded checkout. Replaces the PDP — not a slide-out.

Header — same two-part structure: partner branding plus “You are checking out with [Merchant]”.

Order summary — collapsible section. Collapsed: product name + total. Expanded: full product details, promo confirmation, subtotal, shipping, tax, discount, total due today.

Express checkout — wallet options alongside standard card entry:

Clicking an express option skips address and payment entry — the wallet returns both a shipping address and payment authorization.

Standard form (when not using an express wallet):

1. Email — email field, with a Click to Pay consent notice below it
2. Shipping address — name, address fields, city, ZIP, state, phone with country-code selector
3. Shipping method — available options with prices; Change link to select alternatives
4. Payment — card number, MM/YY, CVV; billing-address-same-as-shipping checkbox defaults to checked
5. Order summary — full breakdown at the bottom

Place order — the buyer taps PLACE ORDER. A legal footer sits below the button linking to the partner’s and merchant’s terms and to Firmly’s privacy policy. The exact documents surfaced are described under Pre-purchase disclosure below, which is the authoritative list — the partner’s T&C and privacy policy plus the merchant’s T&C are all shown at checkout.

Payment failure (inline) — if payment fails (e.g., card declined), the error displays inline on the same page:

• Error banner with the failure reason
• Card field highlighted red with inline error text
• TRY AGAIN (primary) — buyer corrects and retries
• VISIT [MERCHANT].COM (secondary) — redirects to the merchant’s site with affiliate parameters preserved

​​ Phase 5 — Thank-you page

After order placement, the checkout transitions to a partner-branded confirmation.

• Success indicator — confirmation heading
• Merchant confirmation notice — "[Merchant] will send the order confirmation"
• Savings callout — “You just saved $[amount] with [Partner]! Coupon SAVE20 was applied to your order” — reinforces the value of the partner’s deal
• Order details — merchant name, order number from the merchant, order total, payment (card type + last 4), email, shipping-to address, shipping method + estimated delivery
• Merchant links — Contact, Returns, Terms — pointing to the merchant’s own pages so the buyer can reach the merchant directly for anything after the order
• Footer — “Powered by Firmly” with Terms and Privacy links

​​ What happens behind the scenes

Each phase corresponds to operations Firmly performs against the merchant’s platform. The buyer-facing experience is unified; the under-the-hood sequence is:

1. Ad click — the partner’s custom domain routes to Firmly’s edge service under first-party TLS
2. Affiliate URL expansion — Resolve the affiliate URL, extract the attribution key, identify the network
3. Session attribution storage — Persist the attribution key server-side through the checkout session (replaces browser cookies)
4. Catalog fetch — Fetch real-time merchant product data via the platform adapter (price, images, variants, stock)
5. PDP or landing-page render — Render under the partner’s theme with the promo applied
6. Session + cart on the merchant — Create an anonymous guest session and a cart on the merchant’s backend
7. Promo application — Apply the promo code from the ad URL to the merchant’s cart
8. Shipping resolution — Submit address; fetch available methods + rates; submit chosen method
9. Tax + billing — Trigger merchant tax calculation; submit billing address
10. Payment tokenization — Tokenize payment data via the merchant’s PSP; submit token
11. Order placement — Submit the finalized checkout to the merchant for order creation; capture the merchant’s order number + confirmation
12. Affiliate conversion posting — Fire the conversion to the affiliate network using the stored attribution key
13. Ad conversion signals — Fire conversion events to the partner’s ad platforms (Meta CAPI, Google Ads Enhanced Conversions, TikTok / Pinterest / Snap / Reddit Conversions APIs) using the partner’s pixel IDs and the click context captured at entry

Steps 12–13 fire automatically after order placement — the partner doesn’t trigger them.

​​ Pre-purchase disclosure

The partner’s T&C and privacy policy plus the merchant’s T&C are both displayed at checkout. See Consent & Disclosure for the broader pattern of what to surface before order placement.

​​ Related

• Use Cases — entry-point variations
• Single-product deal — phase-by-phase walkthrough scoped to the single-product variation
• Curated landing page — the landing-page variation
• Integration Patterns — how partner-hosted setup works
• Cart Lifecycle — how the cart progresses through to a placed order
• Consent & Disclosure