How to Build an E-commerce Reward Wall

On one side, you reward customers for their loyalty or completing targeted actions. On the other, you earn revenue from your brand partners each time one of their rewards is redeemed. 

Confused or interested to hear more? Let’s go into the basics of construction. 

What is an e-commerce Reward Wall? 

An e-commerce Reward Wall is a curated collection of offers and incentives from brand partners that retailers can embed directly into their websites. 

This creates a win-win-win scenario. Your customers discover valuable offers. Your brand partners gain new customers. And you earn commission each time one of the rewards is redeemed. 

E-commerce Reward Walls represent one of the most accessible entry points into retail media. As we discuss in our ‘Ultimate Guide to Ecommerce Reward Walls’, if you’re looking to unlock a new revenue stream without disrupting your core business, it’s a perfect option. 

How to build an e-commerce Reward Wall

Decided that a reward wall could benefit your business? In this case, you have two primary paths forward. 

1. Building one in-house, using your own resources for everything. That includes recruiting and managing partners, designing a unit, negotiating offers, keeping your Wall updated, and setting up a tracking and payments system.
   
   
2. Partnering with a specialized provider, where you outsource various aspects of the Reward Wall’s creation to a third party. 

Each approach has distinct advantages and considerations. These will impact your timeline, resources, and – ultimately – your success.

The DIY approach: building your own e-commerce Reward Wall

Building an e-commerce Reward Wall internally gives you complete control over the customer experience. It also keeps all your revenue in-house. However, this path requires significant planning, resources, and ongoing management across several key areas.

Technical infrastructure

Your first challenge is creating the technology foundation. This involves developing a content management system that can dynamically display partner offers, track user interactions, and process redemptions in real-time. 

You’ll need to build responsive embed codes that integrate seamlessly with your existing site design while maintaining fast load times.

Consider how your e-commerce Reward Wall handles different screen sizes, browsers, and devices. The unit needs to feel native to your site rather than appearing as a third-party widget. This often requires custom CSS and JavaScript development that aligns with your brand guidelines and user experience standards.

Partner recruitment and management

Perhaps the most time-intensive aspect of the DIY approach is building and maintaining relationships with brand partners. You’ll need to identify companies whose products complement your customer base. You should negotiate commission rates and terms, and establish legal agreements that protect all parties.

This process typically involves outreach to hundreds of potential partners to secure a diverse portfolio of offers. Once secured, you’ll also need ongoing relationship management to refresh offers, resolve partner disputes, and optimize performance.

One of the biggest requirements concerns the individual negotiation of CPA rates. We’ve previously covered retail media earnings in some depth if you’d like to estimate your income. 

Payment processing and commission tracking

When your customer clicks on a reward from your Wall, they’re often taken to your brand partner’s site to redeem it. You’ll need to ensure these referrals are tracked in order to earn a commission. 

Developing reliable systems to track customer actions across your partners’ sites and accurately calculate commissions is technically complex. It includes implementing tracking pixels, managing cookies across domains, and creating reporting dashboards that provide transparency to both you and your partners.

Payment processing adds another layer of complexity. It requires integration with your brand partners’ financial systems (or vice versa) to handle your commission payouts. At the same time, it should maintain detailed transaction records for tax and accounting purposes.

Timeline and resource allocation

Most retailers underestimate the time required for in-house development. Building a functional e-commerce Reward Wall typically takes 6-12 months. Additional time is needed to recruit meaningful brand partners. You’ll need dedicated development resources, business development expertise, and ongoing technical support.

Pros: You have optimal flexibility when it comes to building your solution and keep all your earnings to yourself.

Cons: The opportunity cost is significant, and these resources could impact your core business while an e-commerce Reward Wall slowly takes shape.

The partnership approach: working with specialized providers

Partnering with an established provider to build an e-commerce Reward Wall dramatically reduces complexity while enabling faster time-to-market. 

This approach shifts the burden of technical development, partner recruitment, and ongoing management to specialists who have already solved these challenges at scale.

Rapid implementation

Specialized providers can typically launch your e-commerce Reward Wall within days or weeks rather than months. 

They bring pre-built technology, established partner networks for filling your Wall with attractive offers, and streamlined integration processes. These attributes eliminate most of the development timeline.

While you’re still planning your DIY approach, competitors using specialized providers could already be generating revenue.

Case study: learn how electronics retailer Currys offered post-checkout rewards to its customers in a matter of weeks thanks to a rapid integration with BrandSwap. 

Access to established partner networks

E-commerce Reward Wall providers maintain relationships with hundreds or thousands of brand partners across multiple industries. This gives you immediate access to a portfolio of offers without the effort required for individual partner recruitment.

These established relationships often mean better commission rates and terms than you could negotiate independently. That’s because providers leverage their collective volume across multiple retail partners to strike a deal.

Ongoing optimization and support

Specialist providers continuously optimize e-commerce Reward Wall performance through A/B testing, offer rotation, and performance analytics. At BrandSwap, we use AI to determine the best offers to show based on measurements of engagement and revenue across millions of customer interactions. 

Technical support, troubleshooting, and updates are handled automatically. That frees your team to focus on core business activities.

Simplified commission tracking and payments

One of the most valuable aspects of working with specialized providers is their handling of complex commission tracking and payment processing. They manage all the technical infrastructure required to accurately track customer actions, calculate commissions, and process payments.

This eliminates the need for you to develop sophisticated tracking systems, manage cross-domain cookies, or handle the administrative burden of paying multiple partners. Instead, you receive a single consolidated payment each month, with detailed reporting that breaks down performance by partner and offer type.

Most providers operate on a revenue-sharing model, taking a percentage of commissions earned rather than charging upfront fees. This aligns their incentives with your success and removes financial risk from your initial investment.

Pros: Rapid implementation, a huge saving of time and resources, and simplified ongoing management. 

Cons: Aside from finding the right partner, a percentage of your commission is taken by the provider to cover the ongoing cost of managing your e-commerce Reward Wall. 

Making the right choice for your business

The decision between DIY and partnership approaches for building an e-commerce Reward Wall ultimately depends on your resources, timeline, and strategic priorities. We’ll sum it up:

If you have significant technical capabilities, dedicated business development resources, and can afford a long development timeline, building an e-commerce Reward Wall in-house may provide greater long-term control and revenue retention.

However, most retailers find that partnering with specialized providers offers the best risk-adjusted return. 

In our view, the ability to launch quickly, access established partner networks, and benefit from continuous optimization often outweighs the commission-sharing arrangement.

You can even consider starting with a partnership approach to validate the concept and understand your customer response. Once you have data on performance and engagement, and an idea of what you can earn, you can make an informed decision about whether to eventually bring the capability in-house.

The e-commerce Reward Wall opportunity is significant, but success depends on execution quality and speed-to-market. Choose the approach that best aligns with your capabilities and business objectives, keeping in mind that the goal is generating extra revenue, without disrupting your core customer experience.