A few posts back we recommended that if you are advertising your products on NexTag and Shopping.com, you ought to consider installing their respective ROI Trackers. These ROI trackers in particular not only give you another vantage in which to view and analyze your campaign performance, but more importantly, they can boost performance, getting you a higher return for your advertising dollar.

Add Become.com’s newly improved ROI tracker to our recommended list. We recently found that they have made significant improvements to their ROI tracker. Once installed, it will track your products’ conversion rates and use that information to provide a ranking boost to products that are performing well and downrank poor-performing ones. This should improve your conversion rate and ROI! Thanks Become.com!

SingleFeed currently offers an all-in-one shopping engine tracking solution, allowing you to see real-time click and conversion data across all shopping engines in one handy online interface. Even if you have our tracker installed, we still recommend that you install these ROI-improving trackers from NexTag, Shopping.com, and now Become.com.

From Become’s inception, I’ve had a soft spot for them from a merchant perspective.  While they haven’t gotten everything right, I’ve always appreciated their focus on helping merchants succeed.  And this year, Become seems to be out front in effectively communicating their value proposition.  Since the beginning of the year, I believe I’ve received 7 emails announcing new features or making recommedations to improve my performance on Become.  This is a great customer retention strategy as well as an impressive effort to help merchants succeed.

In case you’re curious what Become has been up to, here are some of the recent email topics:

Become.com Tip of the Week:  Product Titles (Optimization)

What’s New on Become.com: Hot Products (Optimization)

Become.com Update:  New Logo Policy (News/Optimization)

Great News from Become.com! (News - qualified leads and conversion % up)

New Become Campaign Management Tool (News/Optimization - Install the new ROI tracker)

Become.com Feature:  ROI Tracker (News/Optimization - Install the new ROI tracker)

Become Tip of the Week: Improving Conversions (Optimization - How the new ROI tracker works)

There’s a lot of great work here to help you perform better. If you’re interested in working with Become, SingleFeed can help you get started or just email Become directly at ‘getclicks at become.com’.  And if you’re a current Become merchant and missed any of these emails, make sure to get in touch with your account manager.

January and February are typically slow times for retailers (with the possible exception of Valentine’s day), which makes this an ideal time to rethink, re-strategize, and re-optimize your sales and marketing campaigns for the coming year. Make sure to include a review of your comparison shopping engine (CSE) campaign and its performance. Here are some tips:

1) Deep dive into your data feed and look for ways to improve your product listings. Could your product names and descriptions have better keyword placement? Are you missing important identifiers such as UPC or MPN? Are there optional fields such as size, color, or material you should be taking advantage of? A thorough review can take a significant amount of time, but can be well worth it.

2) Review each of your active shopping engine accounts. Are your tax and shipping rules set correctly? Are your bids back where you want them (after the holiday rate increase)? Look at category and product level performance and investigate products or categories that did not perform well. Also look for promotional messaging programs and opportunities with each CSE.

3) Check some of your live listings. Are the product names, descriptions, and prices correct? Are the tax and shipping costs correct? Is your store logo being displayed? Is your promotional message compelling?

4) Ensure your analytics tool (Google Analytics, Omniture, etc) is accurately tracking your shopping engine ads. Make sure product URL’s are tagged correctly. Run a couple test orders to ensure conversions are being reported.

Once you’ve done all this, you should be well-oiled for a smooth-running 2009. For even more advice on how to optimize your CSE campaign, consider using SingleFeed, which helps online retailers submit, manage, and optimize their product listings on top shopping sites through a single data feed.
Happy New Year!
 

What does it mean when you see “Published, Searchable Soon” in your Google Base account? 

This question crops up a lot… and for good reason. Your Google Base account doesn’t do a good job of telling you what’s going on here. When you see this message it means that your most recently uploaded Google Base feed is being indexed for search on Google Base. What it neglects to underscore is the fact that your previously uploaded (penultimate) feed IS still searchable on Google Base. So if you see “Published, Searchable soon”, your items (from the previously processed feed) are still live and searchable on Google Base. 

Sometimes merchants complain that their feed is in a perpetual state of “Published, searchable soon”. Their concern is that if their items are in this state constantly, they are never searchable on Base. If you see this message continually, i.e. for more than 24 hours at a time, it is likely because you upload your feed on a daily basis and: 

1) You have a very large feed (50,000+ items) and/or 

2) Google is experiencing slowdowns with feed processing. 

If you upload a feed on a daily basis, either of the above points could cause your Google Base account to perpetually display the “Published, Searchable Soon” message as Google’s feed processing overlaps into your upload schedule. Some merchants first reaction is to simply stop uploading their feed daily. This is not advisable for a couple of reasons. First, as mentioned previously, even with your current feed in this “Published, Searchable Soon” state, your previously uploaded feed is still searchable, so there’s no reason to stop delivering your feed daily. Second, by sending Google base your feed on a daily basis, you’re allowing Google to make sure your data is fresh. 

As a Google Product Search Approved Partner, SingleFeed recognizes that daily feed submission is optimal. 

How do you do it? Easy! Google Base now supports two new fields, “tax” and “shipping” (SingleFeed now supports these fields under the moniker “Google Tax” and “Google Shipping”). These fields are a little more complex than other fields, so bear with me on this. Since your tax and shipping rules are determined by various factors such as a state-specific tax rate, or the destination of a package, these fields support sub-attributes to outline the specifics of your tax and shipping rules.  

The sub-attributes are: 

For the “tax” field: 

1. “country” - The Country an item is taxed in. (Optional) 

2. “region” - The geographic region a tax rate is applied to. (Optional) 

3. “rate” - The tax rate. (Required) 

4. “tax_ship” - Whether or not you charge tax on any shipping fees. (Optional) 

Within your Google Base “tax” field, you specify all four of these attributes, seperated by a colon (”:”), which acts as the delimiter. If you want to omit one of the optional attributes, no problem, you just need to include the “:” so Google can still read the string of information. So a tax rate of 9% for California, where tax is not applied to the shipping fee, would be specificed as: “US:CA:9:n”. What if you charge a different tax rate for a different tax region? No problem. You can include multiple tax attribute groups within this field also. Just seperate each tax group by a “,” like this: ”US:CA:9:n, US:OR:7:n”. 

For the “shipping” field, there are also four sub-attributes: 

1. “country” - The country an item will ship to. (Optional) 

2. “region” - The geographic region a shipping rate applies to. (Optional) 

3. “service” - The service class or speed. (Optional) 

4. “price” - The shipping price. (Required) 

The shipping field abides by the same rules as the tax field: sub attributes must be separated by a colon (”:”) and the colon must be included for all sub attributes; attribute groups are separated by a comma. (”,”). If you’re a SingleFeed merchant, know that we are already mapping your “shipping cost” field to the “Google Shipping” field. Fill in the “Google Shipping” field only if you have additional, product-specific shipping information. 

If this sounds all too complicated, don’t worry. You can also submit your tax and shipping rules from within your Google Base account. Just log in to your Google Base account, click on “Settings”, then “Tax and Shipping Settings”.

Google recently announced that you can now submit tax and shipping information about your products to Google Base via your Google Base account. They have begun to display this valuable information to shoppers on Google Product Search! This is great for shoppers as it gives them a better idea of their final purchase price, and will likely lead to more qualified traffic to your store. Submitting this information does require a little bit of work, but Google has made it pretty easy and flexible. You can either set default shipping and tax rules right in your Google base account, or you can override those settings by submitting shipping and tax information on a product-level within your data feed (or via the Google Base API). What’s the best approach?

We recommend setting your shipping and tax rules in your Google Base account. This is the easiest way to do it, and will suffice for most merchants. For tax, you can enter tax rate values per state, or you can let Google know what states you charge tax in and they’ll estimate the tax for shoppers. 

For shipping, you can set a flat rate for all products (or specify free shipping); set shipping costs based on a table (such as the number of items, total weight, or cart price); or have Google automatically calculate shipping based on a carrier rate (UPS, FedExm USPS).

As mentioned this will work for most merchants. If you need to submit item-specific tax and shipping rates, you’ll need to do that via the data feed you submit to Google, or via the Google Base API. You can get our take on this here, or just check out Google’s article. Whichever you decide, we recommend that you begin submitting this information to Google Base as soon as possible so they can start to provide better data about your products to potential buyers. This should get you more qualified traffic from Google Product Search.

As to be expected this time of year, all of the shopping engines are bumping up their minimum CPC rates for the holiday shopping season. This is typically from around the middle of November through the end of the year. So be prepared for a spike in your CPC spend. Also be prepared for a bump up in your conversion rate, which is typical this time of year as more holiday shoppers are clicking that buy button.

There is one suprising exception to all this though: One shopping engine, Shopping.com, has actually REDUCED minimum bids in 25 categories. The rest of their category CPC rates are either staying flat or increasing 20% as per the industry norm (most CSE’s are bumping up rates 15 - 25%). There has been a lot of speculation as to why this reduction in CPC on those categories has taken place. This is of course Shopping.com we’re talking about! I’m not sure either, but I wonder if it has anything to do with this article from their July newsletter. They highlight the top products that shoppers are searching for, and ask that all merchants list these on Shopping.com so that they can be the “premier online comparison shopping engine on the web”. As you look over those top products and compare it to their holiday rate card, you can see that they have reduced, or left flat, the minimum bid on the categories in which these top products lie. It sounds like Shopping.com is simply trying to keep up with, or keep on top of, the competition. And maybe the most efficient way to do that is by maximizing product feeds from their large pool of existing clients, as opposed to recruiting new merchants with those items. Hmm.

Either way, this is great news for those of you who sell consumer electronics. This is a competitive category, as you know, so hopefully this will make things a bit more comfortable as you advertise these items during the holidays!

A recent article was posted on Search Engine Land that highlights some Do’s and Dont’s as online retailers ramp up for the holidays. Especially during this tumultuous economic period, these are things that are truly important as you try to make the most of your marketing dollars. Shopping engines like Shopping.com, NexTag, Pricegrabber, Shopzilla, and others are all increasing their minimum bid rates this holiday season (as they do each year), so make sure you convert the qualified leads they send to your store by following the recommendations laid out in the article. Some highlights:

1. Don’t blindly test. Ads and product listings that converted well during the holiday shopping frenzy may not do as well after the holidays. If you run the same ad strategy in January keep a close eye on it!

2. Don’t make major site changes. Shoppers are likely to visit a site 2 - 5 times before clicking the buy button. Don’t disorient them with site changes during the busy shopping season.

3. Don’t forget to add a recommended gift page. Help shoppers pick out gifts based on who they’re shopping for - Dad, Mom, Ladies, Men, etc, or price point - Under $100, Under $25, etc.

4. Do show delivery dates and shipping options. Going into the holidays, buyers are frantic and need to know that their order will arrive before Christmas. Highlight expedited shipping options, or gift delivery options as well.

5. Do offer Gift wrapping or personalized messaging. Increase your order value and provide a much needed service to your shoppers by offering gift wrapping options.

6. Do give affiliates special banners or offers. Make sure your affiliates are armed with special promotions and banners that speak to holiday shoppers.

See the article for more details and the full list of recommendations!

Google Base recently added a new feature to help merchant’s get feedback on their listed items. If you log into your Google Base account, you’ll notice a new tab called “Performance”. This area of your account now provides you with some helpful performance reports for the products you list on Google Base. The first thing we liked is that there’s a nifty graph that shows you your overall traffic data for Google Base / Google Product Search. Another thing we found helpful is that now you can see overall impressions given through the Google Base API. And finally, what we really really liked: There’s now a handy, downloadable CSV report that gives you PRODUCT-LEVEL click data ( again for Google Base / Google Product Search) and impression data (for the Google Base API). Nice! For a free tool, this is pretty slick stuff. Look for Google Base to be building out this feature with more bells and whistles. We’re hoping for a product-level conversion tracking tool next!

If you’re a Shopping.com merchant, you may have noticed an email in your inbox this last week entitled “The Product Condition Field”. Shopping.com has supported this field for a long time, but they are starting to make it a required field. There are three values you may use: New, Used, or Refurbished. All pretty self-explanatory stuff. If you use SingleFeed to submit your products to Shopping.com, don’t worry - no change is required on your part. We already require this field within our own format. So we’ve been sending this data to Shopping.com ever since you signed up with us! If you’re not a SingleFeed merchant, you’ll want to jump on changing your feed to comply with these new requirements in order to keep your listings published.