If you’ve been reading about copy shortcode buttons on my site, you may be wondering…
What is a shortcode button?
Don’t worry – this guide will go into everything that you need to know!
What is a shortcode?
Before I explain what our shortcode buttons are, let’s first define a shortcode.
A shortcode is small piece of code that when added to a website, does something. It could be anything.
WordPress plugins like AAWP and AmaLinks Pro use Amazon’s Product Advertising API to pull in product info and images. To make it easy for us to pull in that data, these plugins use simple shortcodes like [amazon box=”875GA5TJ”] to display this data as beautiful product boxes.
The random numbers above are the product’s ASIN. The API (which is configured in the plugin settings already), will pull in data on that specific product and update automatically every 24 hours.
Here’s an example using AAWP:
What is a 'shortcode button'?
A Copy Shortcode button is a custom button that we’ve overlayed on top of Amazon product listings. When the button is clicked, whatever shortcode was added to the button is copied to your clipboard – along with that products’ ASIN!
Each button is unique and can have unique shortcodes added to them. For example, if you have both AmaLinks Pro and AAWP installed on your site, you’ll notice that each plugin has different shortcodes. With AMZTA, you can create different copy buttons for each plugin.
As long as you enter |ASIN Value| somewhere in your shortcode text box – it will add the Amazon ASIN’s wherever you need it go.
So, why should you use AMZTA?
AAWP and AmaLinks Pro are great, but there’s one big problem…
You still have to enter the ASIN into their shortcodes manually! You still have to remember the correct shortcodes to use and how to format it correctly. AmaLinks Pro is slightly easier because you can add products in directly from WordPress, but if you’re like me – the majority of product research is done on Amazon.com.
So, we solved that problem.
Using Copy Shortcode buttons, you can create a button that will automatically build the perfect shortcode for whatever plugin you use in just 1 click.
The Best Amazon Affiliate Chrome Extension
The beauty of this plugin is that it’s universal; it’ll work with ANY wordpress plugin that supports shortcodes. And even if the table builder plugin you use doesn’t make use of shortcodes…you can still use it to quickly Amazon ASIN’s into whatever plugin or tool you do use!
It’s important to note that AMZ Table Assistant is not a wordpress plugin. In fact, it doesn’t need to interact with WordPress at all! However, we’ve built our extension to work alongside two of the best Amazon Affiliate plugins on the market today: AAWP and AmaLinks Pro.
Does that make AMZ Table Assistant the best Amazon Affiliate Chrome Extension? We hope so!
AMZTA makes it SUPER easy to write product reviews or do research on Amazon. No more needing to copy the “skeleton” shortcode (the shortcode with no ASIN) to WordPress first, then switch to Amazon and copy the ASIN, and then back to WordPress to paste it in. Now you can accomplish all of that in one click!
Default Copy Shortcode Buttons
To get you started, we’ve added some default copy buttons. These are the buttons that automatically show up on Amazon.com.
If you ever delete a button or forget the syntax, you can always visit our default buttons page for the up-to-date list.
Note: You can also re-download the extension from the Chrome store which will add the default copy buttons right back.
Click here to view all default button shortcodes.
Here’s an example of what the default buttons look like:
Hiding or Deleting Buttons
You probably won’t need ALL of the default copy shortcode buttons we’ve given you. So, you have two options: you can either hide the buttons or delete them in the options.
When should you hide a button vs deleting one?
I recommend deleting buttons if they’ll only be used one time or if they’re simply not needed at all. (For example, if you don’t have Azonpress installed, just delete the button.)
However, let’s say you have two websites: One that sports a dark theme and the other a light theme. You might use the AAWP shortcode [amazon box=”|ASIN Value|” style=”light] for one website, but use [amazon box=”|ASIN Value|” style=”dark”] for the other.
You don’t need to see both buttons on every Amazon.com product listing, so in this scenario I’d recommend hiding it until you need it again.
To hide a button: simply click the AMZTA logo in top right corner of Chrome and click the button to deselect it. The button color will turn grey and will automatically disappear from Amazon.com.
Creating Custom Copy Shortcode Buttons
In case you haven’t read my introduction to AMZ Table Assistant blog post, one of the biggest features released in update 1.4 was the ability to create custom shortcode buttons!
I used to manually create tons of shortcode variations and hardcoded those into the extension to accommodate everyone. Obviously this wasn’t very practical, so we released the ability to make custom shortcode copy buttons!
Default copy buttons are the most basic shortcodes (like a simple product box). Custom copy shortcode buttons can be made as simple or complex as you’d like. You can change the color of your buttons, give them unique names, or give them unique attributes like new window or nofollow.
For example, if you wanted to create a complex AAWP shortcode grid with a dark theme, you would create a custom button like this: [amazon box=”|ASIN Value|” grid=”1″ style=”dark”]
We didn’t make this a ‘default copy button’ because not many people would use it, but if you have a black-background website – it might be something you’d use.
The point is – you can make these custom shortcode buttons as simple or complex as you want. You can create commonly used shortcode buttons, or create ones that may only be used in a certain post. You can make all your buttons a shade of red for 1 website, and blue for the other.
To view the full list of custom copy shortcode examples, click here.
Entering Custom Titles into Custom Buttons
Starting with update 1.6, AMZTA users can now be prompted to enter custom titles inside their shortcode buttons!
Just add |Custom Title| inside your shortcode. If you click the button that has that delimiter added to it, a box will pop up asking you to enter a custom title.
After you enter the custom title, it automatically gets copied to clipboard as well.
For more into on Custom Titles, check out our latest blog post.
Turning the Extension On and Off
Yep, you can do that too.
Just click the 3 lines in the Options panel and an uncheck Enabled.
This will keep all of your buttons and configurations; it just won’t show the buttons on Amazon.com.
Wrapping Up
All in all, creating custom copy shortcode buttons is super easy to do. Instead of repetitively tryping the same shortcode into each new blog post, simply create your template once – and let Amazon automatically insert the ASIN into it for you!
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