Google Base (Google Shopping do you use it)

[jamie1183]

I was quite suprised to hear that many eCommerce website owners and eCommerce Web Designers never informed people about Google Base.

How many people Use it?
How Many have never heard of it?
If you use it does it work for you?

Be interested to hear the view of others on this subject, I recently wrote a blog on this topic after speaking to many eCommerce website owners that don't use it and some never even heard of it. View Blog here if your interested

 

[AndyP]

Other than getting a link in for your blog article why on earth are you either surprised or interested? Surely a website designer is there to design the container, so to speak...not to run the clients business for him? And if a website owner does not know about base then that simply shows their lack of research. As its so hard to get through a day without google the surprise to me is that you can manage not to see anything about base or any other google product for that matter.

 

[Chris Fickling Design]

Jamie - I think this is an interesting topic to raise but your blog doesn't really go deep enough into the subject in my opinion.

So whilst on the subject can anyone confirm or explain whether Google Base is to be discontinued in its current format? I seem to remember reading that the emphasis of base will change to little more than some sort of image repository and would be replaced by a more sophisticated Google Merchant Centre.

So thanks for raising the subject but if anyone genuinely wants to learn about Google Base then I believe there are better articles out there.

 

[jamie1183]

Maybe some of us like to go that extra mile when working for clients and point them in the right direction after all we are the experts customer care costs nothing.

What I was asking is how many people us it and does it benefit your business.

 

[jamie1183]

Hi the Article wasn't really intended as a indepth insight to be honest I'm after opinions of people who use it if it works for them. I'm more interested how many peoples sales benefit from it.

 

[Clodbuster]

I do submit a feed to Google base (or Merchant Center) as it is another way to get your product seen. I do occasionally see orders eminating from there. It is easy and once your feed is created takes seconds.

My beef is how to get to the top of the pile -

 

[AndyP]

Clod

There is no "top of the pile" per se as the page has display relevance options that the viewer can choose such as low to top price, high to low price etc. However, you can considerably improve your product display frequency but adding as many additional feed fields as possible. There are numerous ones that can be used. As an example we use the following: product name, price, quantity, payment note (seems to default to mastercard for some reason), brand, product bnumber, product type, colour, weight, manufacturer, condition, in addition of course to product url and image url.

I hope that helps.

 

[urisjerry]

This is the first time I heard google base, it it works on our job?

 

[AndyP]

Maybe some of us like to go that extra mile when working for clients and point them in the right direction after all we are the experts customer care costs nothing.

What I was asking is how many people us it and does it benefit your business.

I totally agree, customer care costs nothing and I applaud you for that. But nevertheless, customer care from a web designer, to me, is ensuring that the website design is tip top and utilises the latest design technology, that's what I would expect a website designer to be an expert in, not marketing or accountancy or tax etc. But, thats just my view, maybe I am wrong.

 

[jamie1183]

Don't get me wrong I'm not saying you have to do all the marketing for them or go into areas that are not your speciality but at the end of the day we work in the industry so should have a much broader understanding of ways the client can promote their products and advise on ways they can do abit of their own optimisation in the form of linking etc, all it takes is a final email giving them that bit of extra advice which in my experience goes along way.

 

[bbusinesss]

I think Jamie makes a very good point, Google Base / Merchant Centre / Shopping (all the same thing) is an incredibly valuable tool which is hugely underutilised, although it's worth mentioning that it's not suitable for all businesses.

If your product range consists of many different lines of mass produced product, meaning you are likely to be up against a lot of competition on each particular product line then it is a fantastic way to get noticed.

If you offer a bespoke, tailored, hand crafted or otherwise unique product then it will be of very little value to you.

The reason for this is that, if a Google user searches for a product such as "twinings earl grey green tea" (try it!) then google sees that the user's search closely matches a lot of merchants' google base listings - so it inserts a widget at the top of the search page showing the first 3 results (by relevance - same logic as a regular google search). If there are only a few matches in google base then the widget does not get shown.

If you are one of these first three results then this is invaluable, as you would most likely have to do a whole lot more work to get the same kind of positioning in the main body of the google search, simply because everyone is in the main search, while only a few businesses have taken the time to submit their product search feed.

This leads nicely into the real reason that this isn't more commonly talked about, in my opinion anyway....

Anyone who is already using this, web designers / developers / marketers included knows full well that it's success depends on it remaining undersubscribed - once everyone uses it, it becomes as crowded as a regular google search and therefore the added value is lost. Except for Jamie (!!) these people tend to save the benefits for themselves, and for their customers who are willing to pay a premium.

There is a whole lot more to be said about product search, such as the fact that it's API programming interface means that your products will show up on many other services such as the point and scan apps that are popular on the leading smartphones....

I'll have to google this some more, if this info really isn't out there maybe this is it... I finally found something worth blogging about!

Incidentally - whatever line of business you're in it always pays to be willing to step outside the box in the interests of customer care, so this is a totally appropriate point for a good web designer to be making. Wouldn't you expect a good windscreen fitter to mention if your tyres were flat?

Bottom line - if you are selling lots of standardised products then this is a cheap, quick and easy way to stand out on google. Well worth a try.

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