Operations
A Branded Commerce engagement has two operational rhythms:
- One-time partner onboarding — domain, branding, ad pixels, affiliate mode, merchant list. Done once when the partner first comes online.
- Per-product / per-campaign workflow — the recurring rhythm: partner identifies a product or curates a landing page, Firmly resolves and configures, partner reviews on staging, then go-live.
Partner onboarding and the per-product workflow are currently handled through direct coordination between the partner’s team and Firmly’s ops team. Once a partner is live, they access their own operational data through the Branded Commerce dashboard — funnel reports, orders, merchant performance, team management. Further automation (self-service product submission, public API) is a future phase — see What comes next below.
What “operational” means here
Branded Commerce operations are a partner-and-Firmly working relationship — both sides have specific responsibilities at each step, both have things to do, both have approval gates.
The pages in this section document who does what, when — both partner-side and Firmly-side responsibilities are captured on the same page, so there’s no ambiguity at each step.
Sandbox
Every Branded Commerce engagement gets a staging environment alongside production:
| Environment | Hostname | Purpose |
|---|---|---|
| Production | deals.partner.example (or any partner subdomain) |
Live buyer traffic |
| UAT / Staging | deals-staging.partner.example |
Pre-production testing — themes, new campaigns, smoke tests before launch |
Staging is not retired after launch — it stays in place permanently for ongoing pre-production testing. Every new product or campaign is validated on staging first.
The partner provides the staging CNAME during onboarding; Firmly enrolls it in Cloudflare for SaaS and provisions TLS just like production.
Performance tracking
Partners running paid ads need visibility into how their spend converts. Two dimensions are tracked:
| # | Dimension | How it works |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Engagement funnel | Firmly tracks sessions, buy-now clicks, and orders, with drop-off analysis and friction signals between steps. Surfaced through the Branded Commerce dashboard funnel report |
| 2 | ROAS / ad-platform conversion tracking | Firmly fires ad-platform conversion events with preserved click IDs (fbclid, gclid, etc.). The channel mix is determined by which credentials the partner supplies per platform — see Integration Patterns → Ad-platform pixel channels |
One known limitation — “Visit Merchant” path
When the buyer taps VISIT [MERCHANT].COM on the PDP and completes the purchase on the merchant’s own website:
| Buy on Firmly | Visit Merchant | |
|---|---|---|
| Affiliate attribution | Tracked | Tracked (affiliate redirect) |
| Ad ROAS | Tracked (Firmly fires the pixel) | Not tracked — Firmly does not control the merchant’s pages |
This is a fundamental constraint — Firmly can only fire the partner’s ad pixels on pages it hosts. Partners should be aware during onboarding that ROAS measurement covers Firmly-hosted conversions only. Affiliate commission is tracked regardless of path.
What comes next
Automation is arriving in three stages. The Branded Commerce dashboard (the Destination Dashboard scoped to Branded Commerce) has shipped — partners can already see funnel reports, orders, merchant performance, and audit logs. Onboarding and per-product publishing remain manual today; the next two stages automate them.
| Stage | What changes |
|---|---|
| Today — dashboard live | Partners have a logged-in dashboard for funnel reports, orders, merchants, settings, team, audit logs. Onboarding and per-product publishing are direct coordination between partner and Firmly ops |
| Next — Self-service product submission | Partner submits product URLs and affiliate links through the dashboard. Firmly resolves and configures automatically. Partner reviews and approves in the dashboard |
| After — API | Partner integrates programmatically — product submission, launch-URL generation, campaign metadata sync. Enables bulk product publishing and CI/CD-style campaign management |
The documentation here will be updated as each phase ships.
Related
- Partner onboarding — one-time setup
- Operational workflow — ongoing per-product rhythm
- Integration Patterns — the technical setup
- Why Firmly — ownership boundary