Many businesses sell their products online today, because that’s where customers look first. As with many online marketing strategies, however, you have a variety of potential sales approaches from which to choose.
You can sell directly from your own website, and hope to pull customers in by using expensive Google AdWords campaigns, or you can achieve great success in the e-commerce market by selling your products through Google, Amazon or other online sites using effective and affordable search engine shopping feeds and APIs.
What Is a Search Engine Shopping Feed?
Have you noticed when you enter a search term in Google, that you can select the “Shopping” results option? The purchasing options presented there use this approach, as do most of the shopping comparison sites, such as Shopify, Price Grabber, Nextag and Shopzilla.
A search engine shopping feed is essentially a packet of electronic information about your products, containing photos, descriptions, pricing and shipping data. The information is generated from your company’s e-commerce site and transmitted automatically to Google, Amazon and any of the shopping sites you choose to work with.
The cost of using this approach is significantly less expensive than generating the equivalent level of traffic through AdWords or other pay-per-click search engine campaigns.
Google Leads the Market with Trusted Stores
E-commerce experts estimate that a full third or more of your online customers will find you through a Google search. So, while you can choose to provide data to whichever shopping sites you prefer, Google Shopping should be your main focus.
The Google Trusted Store program offers an added layer of visibility that you can’t afford to miss. When your company is accepted and approved as a Trusted Store, your customers are given a $1,000 purchase protection guarantee by Google, increasing your credibility and trust level with prospects. The brand recognition you gain by becoming a Trusted Store is invaluable, and your products will be featured prominently in the search results.
Creating Your Shopping Feeds
As with all of your online content, your ability to make sales online depends on choosing the right keywords and phrases for your product descriptions. If your product titles and descriptions don’t match what your customers type into the search engine, they’ll never find you.
The tool that automates the information feed to Google and other sites is known as an API, or application programming interface. Your content API for Google Shopping does tasks like automatically update inventory, push through information about your discounts and special promotions, and remove discontinued items.
Although search engine shopping feeds and APIs are an ideal way of increasing your sales and building your business, the process is highly technical and quite complex. Consequently, it’s important to partner with an online marketing company that knows how to make you successful.
At Be Locally, the members of our e-commerce team are experts at positioning your products online. Our industry-leading approach to API creation ensures that when your potential customers go searching, they will find you and your products. Contact us today to learn how to build your business and sell products online.
Want more? Our expert recommends:
Tips on Building a User-Friendly E-Commerce Site
Website Design for Stores & Restaurants
Using Google AdWords to Target Specific Customers
No comments:
Post a Comment