macdonaldGD's Blog

You’ve probably noticed that when you search for a product or a related phrase in Google you will see listing’s from Google’s Shopping system occupying some prime real estate in the top half of the page. Google Shopping (also known as Google Product Search) started off life a number of years ago as “froogle” and has been targeted firmly at the price comparison websites such as Shopping.com and Price Grabber. For consumers the big difference is that its product listings are much more accessible and easy to stumble across than the competitors as they appear as part of many searches as well as through the dedicated shoping pages. Google Shopping is expanding rapidly and it looks to be that this is yet another area that Google will triumph and become the dominant player in that market. Its important to note that Google Shopping only provides links to your website for the product and the rest of the shopping process is carried out on your own e-commerce system (so no 30% fees etc). Remember that a visitor from Google Shopping is much more likely to buy than a normal visitor from Google as they have actually already clicked a “Buy Now” button in Google – if they’re then not buying then there is probably something wrong with your website that is deterring them.

If you sell products online Google Shopping’s popularity is not the only attraction to get your products listed on it, in fact the real highlight for you is that its FREE and easy to setup. Free? you ask – yup, they make their money through advertising and Adwords listings to the side of the products.

To get setup all you need to do is create a Google Merchant account (very quick if you already have a Google account) and then add your products. As usual the help documentation is excellent and simple to use. A list of you products needs to be created along the lines of Google’s instructions. You can use an Excel spreadsheet but I’ve found XML files to be more reliable. That product list file can be put on you website’s server as well so Google can check for updates once a month.

Some tips:

• It takes about 2-3 minutes normally to check and list your products when you submit them. If it says zero products have been listed that means you have an error in your products list… not that it just hasn’t got round to listing them.
• If you want to list products for more than one domain name on the same Google account you need to apply for a “multi-client” account (search in the help section for the link).
• Google Shopping currently has versions targeted at the UK, US and German markets so don’t forget to create tailored product listings for all three.
• The headline stats seem to be overly negative performance wise. View the individual product’s click and impression count is much more revealing.

Gaucho Belts’s website has just had a major revamp. Despite being very dated the old website saw a lot of traffic but it was crying out for a major update. In the end we went for a ground up rebuild but maintained the overall site structure where possible so as not to damage its position in the search engines (as a result of dead links).

The new website is built using conventional HTML code but with snippets of Flash here and there to provide some exciting graphics. The old e-commerce system was no longer fit for purpose so we setup a new “hosted” system with RomanCart. A hosted e-commerce (shopping basket) system means that the basket’s data and transactions are run from a separate server, in this case managed by RomanCart. It allows simpler and cheaper integration of an online shop into a website as well as removing security worries onto the website’s server. While RomanCart doesn’t win any awards for a sexy interface it is a very powerful and adaptable service that I’m rating increasingly highly. Like most decent online shop systems out there, there is a fee and in this case we have just gone for one of RomanCart’s lower packages (£60 per annum) which provides everything we need including, most importantly, the ability to connect it to a payment gateway and take online card payments. Gaucho Belts had previously just been using PayPal’s Web Payments Standard that, while free, pushes customers to sign up for a PayPal account while paying for their items. This often results in customers terminating the transaction as many object to being forced to sign up for yet another account (even if it is one as useful as PayPal). We’ve now integrated PayPal’s Web Payments Pro which allows direct credit/debit card payments from within the shopping cart’s checkout pages. This is excellent as you get the convenience of PayPal’s security and background resources while allowing the customers to pay by card unaware that the transaction is still being handled by PayPal. Payments Pro does cost £20 a month but, as with many comparisons regarding PayPal, that cost is competitive and removes the need for things such as an Internet Merchant Account with your bank (que. more fees there!).

New logo:

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Check out the new website for Cloud Drinks. Cloud are a new independent brand whose range of soft drinks including pink lemonade and fiery ginger beer is aimed at the likes of pubs, bars and restaurants. Find out more at the link below:

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A new micro-site has gone online for Sims Reed Gallery’s upcoming exhibition of Naftali Rakuzin’s work. The three week exhibition will take place at the Gallery at the foot of the Economist Building, London between 5th and 26th of June. Rakuzin, born in 1948 in Moscow, paints distinctive works, primarily of books, is the latest exhibition at the Gallery, following in the footsteps of Hockney, Russell Young and Sarah Graham.

The micro-site once again uses our bespoke Adobe Flex based platform we’ve built for Sims Reed.

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