Promoting Ecommerce Sites with Google Merchant Centre formerly Google Base

Google Merchant Center is a place where vendors can submit products, sell them through this service and promote their goods by search indexing.
Formerly known as Google Base, Merchant Center is better optimised for items listings and products managing. If you are a Google Base user, all your feeds, items and settings have been already relocated into Merchant Center database.
Uploading your products to Merchant Center doesn’t mean targeting a higher position in Google search but being listed when somebody uses the “shopping” link from the Google’s top page, so it’s a targeted action for people searching to buy different stuff using this shopping place. However, depending on their relevancy, uploaded products can also appear in a regular Google search, though this is not a rule.
Items are uploaded into Merchant Center through data feeds so this tutorial will be for submitting products through this method. Its has an extraordinary potential for sales boost so using this service might be a good trick for marketing and selling your items.
Creating a feed translates into compiling your products inventory into a single file that will be added by Google in its products’ searching engine. This is a free service, however, starting to upload your feeds requires setting up a free Google account. So here are the steps for uploading data feeds to Google Merchant Center:
1. Create a Google account

2. Enable Google Merchant Center
Go to Google Merchant Center and fill the required information.

3. Create Data Feed

Accepted data feeds are only in text or XML formats. The easiest way to create a text feed is by working in Microsoft Excel and converting the feed into .txt.
a) On the first line include any relevant information that best describe your items. This header might look like this:

In the rows below, enter information for each product displayed into separate rows:

When you finished your spreadsheet save as .txt and submit it.

b) For uploading items using XML, only RSS 1.0, RSS 2.0, Atom 0.3, and Atom 1.0 versions are supported. Creating and editing these feeds can be done using any text editor, like Notepad for example.

Creating a single item in RSS 2.0 would look like this :

4. Register a data feed

For registering a feed, click on Data Feeds link followed by Register New Data Feed. Here is what you will need to fill in:

Target Country – select the country where you want your items to be displayed in search results
Data feed type – select googlebase
Data feed file name – enter the exactly name of created file and use an extension supported ( text versions with .txt and Atom or RSS with .xml )

Hit Save button. Now data feed is ready to being submitted into Google Merchant Center.

5. Submit Data Feed

There are 3 possibilities for submitting data feeds:

a) Uploading through Google Merchant Center Data Feeds page for files with maximum 20MB size
b) FTP for more than 20MB file size ( a FTP account is required for larger file size )
c) Automatic scheduled upload for a maximum 15MB size
Google recommends uploading via Data Feeds page while the FTP method is prone to encounter different errors. Here are the final steps for uploading a feed to Google Merchant Center:
- sign in and go to Data Feeds link
- locate the feed through the registered ones and click upload file from Uploads column
- click Browse
- select the feed and click Open, verify the name that appears near the Browse button to match with filename
- click Upload and process this file

Once the file have been uploaded a success notification will appear on your screen. It may take 24 hours for a feed to be uploaded, so don’t panic if hours go by and still no updated account.

Online Payment Processing by Streamline.com

eCommerce payment processing by Streamline.com

This service provider in the payment card processing domain claims to be the largest of its kind within Europe and boasts of being able to cater to all types of businesses irrespective of the size. They are a member of The Royal Bank of Scotland Group.

Since this company is also one of the premier providers of merchant accounts, it has the flexibility of accepting both debit and credit card payments by different modes such as by phone or through the website.

With card transactions on the increase, you as a merchant need the support of a company which makes your business dealings easier and more customer friendly. Streamline is the company which makes that possible through their different service offerings.

Services offered

a) Cardholder preferred currency service

This is made possible through the many point of sale terminals provided by the company and the transaction is easily processed due to the terminal duly recognizing the card in question and making available the required currency.

b) Card payment on the move service

This service is for those who are always mobile as the company provides mobile payment terminals through which the card payments can be processed.

c) Streamline online service

This is another management type of service which allows you to view the various card transactions that you have done for the business and since they are up dated daily, you can have real time information on all your card transactions.

d) PAN truncation service

The primary account number truncation is a service wherein the card number is disguised and is not made visible to avoid any fraudsters taking advantage of accessibility to such numbers.

e) Internet trading service

With the growing popularity and access to internet, many businesses are able to now conduct a lot of their business activities through the internet. So ecommerce and online trading activities are very much a part and requirement of many customers. Streamline is able to offer internet retailing opportunities and also provides general guidelines on how to get started on this activity.

Strengths

1. Handle a huge number of transactions within the UK
2. Can process most major card payments and as a merchant you can cater to diverse customers.
3. State of art technology which ensures that transactions are quickly done and there is no waiting time for customers.
4. Great back up systems to ensure total reliability at all times

Support Provided

They provide support services to help customers manage their account much better by helping out in areas like easy authorization, ensuring fraud free sales, reconciling statements to reflect the up dated information and so on.

They place great emphasis on getting proper feedback from customers and encourage it through the online feedback form. Customers can also use the email and visit the website to place complaints or offer suggestions.

They offer both call back as well as Text phone services to enable customers to get through to them.Your browser may not support display of this image. Your browser may not support display of this image. Your browser may not support display of this image. Your browser may not support display of this image.

Buy or rent shopping cart software which is cost effective

Should you buy or rent ecommerce shopping cart software

If you have an ecommerce website, you cannot do without a shopping cart. It is the shopping cart program that enables your customers to select the products and place them appropriately for payment. Without the shopping cart, your customers will face problems completing their transaction and that will impact your ecommerce initiative severely.

The question is whether you would want to buy one or take one on rent. This article examines the advantages and disadvantages of buying versus renting out a shopping cart.

Buying a shopping cart

When you purchase the shopping cart, you have total ownership, control over how you wish to customize the software to suit your requirements. You can tweak the software to include or delete features. This is of course assuming that you possess the necessary knowledge and expertise to do so.

However, the flip side is that when you buy such software, you need to keep paying for any upgrades that the software may undergo. If you wish to do the upgrade your self, it may not be possible and in the process if you end up making changes to the software, you will stop getting the after sales support from the company you bought the software from.

Renting the shopping cart

When it comes to renting, there are limitations as well. You will not be able to do any customization since you do not own the software and have to make do with the features it already possesses. The only solace is that you are not making a bulk one time payment but paying it over several months and this may come back to haunt you as time passes. The advantage is that you can get started with your business and contribute to the rent per month from the profits you start making in your ecommerce business. If the business starts doing well, you always have the option of buying out the software with the additional cash it has generated for you over time.

The positive aspect of renting the shopping cart is the fact that you can get free upgrades and avail of the benefit of any improvements made to the software without paying anything. You need to check this out when you do rent out the shopping cart with your host. Also make sure that you will have access to regular service help when required so that you are not left high and dry when there is a problem.

Your decision to buy a shopping cart or rent it out thus depends on how technically savvy you are or whether you have access to such a person and what is the importance you wish to accord to customization. If you cannot provide for your own support system and do not attach much importance to customization, then renting out the shopping cart software would be ideal for you. If you are one of those who does not wish to pay a bulk amount upfront, then renting is the right option.

Many web hosting companies do offer such shopping cart software in their monthly hosting package and that is one way you can start using the software without making a huge payment upfront.

However if you wish to buy it outright, you need to always remember that the cost will increase depending on the features you decide to have on it.

Ultimately as mentioned, it is your business requirements that will decide whether to rent or buy the shopping cart software.

You can discuss this post by commenting at UK webmaster blog or UK webmaster forum

Google Commerce Search – helping your customer finding what they are looking for

Haven optimised your website, spend a lot of time building quality back links to get you organic search engine ranking to the top, you perhaps also use PPC to drive targeted traffic and may even use affiliate programme to get even more customers, now the customers are all on your ecommerce site, how do you ensure they find what they are looking for quickly so that you do not lose them? A good easy to navigate site will help with some of the problem, a search feature will be welcomed by your users but how about a very powerful search feature from the company recognised as the Search Engine; Google. That is exactly what Google has just launched; it’s called Commerce Search.

Google Commerce Search unlike most of Google’s products is not free, that is because it was not designed for small companies, its and enterprise tool for the larger ecommerce websites. The ultimate goal of Google commerce search it to reduce bounce rates, here are some of the ways Google says Commerce Search will help online retail ecommerce sites:
· Enable visitors to find the right products faster
· Filter results by category, price, brand or other attributes
· Provide user-friendly spelling options and synonyms
· Increase website conversions and sales
· Boost or promote chosen products within search results
· Deploy search solution in days, and scale effortlessly
· Customize, track, and optimise performance
One company that is already using Google Commerce search is the USA arm of the legendary German sandals company Birkenstock, he was quoted on Google Commerce Search site as saying “With Google Commerce Search, customers more easily find the specific products they’re looking for, and we’ve seen dramatic conversion improvement since implementation.

This tool will probably not be ideal for most of the audience of this blog but if you run an online retail website with vast inventory, implementing Google Commerce Search may help you convert more customers.

Google Checkout store gadget – shopping cart from Google

Given the fact that Google has been sticking its fingers in every possible pie online, its not grate surprise when Google announce the launch of their shopping cart which they call Google checkout store gadget. Google has been know to lead in online technology but with this new entry level shopping cart they are following. Google checkout store gadget and in fact the concept of Google Checkout is not unlike Paypal and PayPal shopping cart, where Google try to be different is the simplicity and ease of use.

In Google Checkout store gadget API, it is claimed you can have and online store setup and running in under five minutes without any need for coding or technical knowledge.

Google Checkout store gadget as you may have guessed run with Google Checkout so you cannot use it without signing up for Google Checkout first. The process is fairly simple once you have Google Checkout account out of the say. You just list your products in a Google spreadsheet, and then embed your new store in a website. Small, medium, and large sizes are available.

The shopping cart which is still in its beta stages is not robust enough to compare with established shopping carts online, its just away of getting more business for Google Checkout and of course other Google applications.

If you are looking for a robust ecommerce shopping cart software, application like Boss Cart its what you need, apart from giving you the flexibility of using any payment gateways you need, its fully fledged, tried and tested.

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