Hello All, I have about 700 products that I am debating on submitting to shopping sites like google, shopping.com, and shopzilla.com. However would this be worth my effort anymore? I know this used to be a huge market, but is it still a good marketing medium? Thanks, Nick
It's probably cost you less than having your own store and paying lend, labor, and etc. I think it's worth the try on these websites depending what 700 products you are selling.. Maybe you can list them on ad free site like craiglist and backpack?
why not you should setup your own shopping store, buy a site and upload them, that give you more profit.
Ok, I already have my own e-commerce store setup. I am just wondering if these are good alternatives to marketing such as Adwords. These types obviously bring targeted traffic, but at a cost none the less.
If you already have a site selling these products then check to see if they have settings / mods etc that allow for easy export to services such as Google Product Search etc. It certainly does no harm listing your products in these other locations as it can increase your backlinks (due to scrapers) it can get you some interesting search results (as Google etc feed in their product search stuff into main results) and it can get you some interesting data on who is search for and who is viewing what products. That data alone can help you focus. The key here is to try and ensure your product information is not exactly the same as many others already listed. As such, if you are using the manufacturer supplied information and details, try to re-write it before submission. This will also help your main site too. Start with your best sellers, then your worst sellers that you wish would sell more, then everything else. If you don't have time but do have the money they get someone else to re-write the copy for you. Finally, look to see if there are any related 'sharing' sites out there. By that I mean, say your site sold clothing, then get a share button on each product page for facebook, twitter etc but more importantly a niche specific site... so in the case of clothing you might use StyleHive as your social bookmarker plus any others you can find. Doing this helps collect more of a niche specific community around your products. Hope that helps
Thanks a ton for this info. I have predetermined titles and descriptions. However I offer a very valuable lowest price guarantee that will help my products be at the top of these websites.
If you are talking about Google Product Search etc then I am not aware of any costs associated. Do you mean something else or have any light to shed on what you are aiming to do that I may have missed?
It's not all weighted on price. Additionally, for Google Product Search, if you can use their Google checkout service as an option of payment, then it allows users to leave reviews. Those reviews can help your product search weighting and get you higher in the results. A second bonus is that if you use Google Checkout you can have the badge displayed next to your adwords to get more attention and bring in those users that prefer to use GC.
I am talking about Shopping.com as well as ShopZilla.com where it is a CPC as well. I do use Google Checkout and am aware of this badge. I am currently working on a full-scale Adwords campaign as we speak.
That product scroller that you have on the front page... I think you should get that at the bottom of every other page. That way, when a user gets to the end of the page, if they have not found what they are after they may well stay and look at something else rather than click away. If possible I would also work a clear "Not found what you were after? We probably have it somewhere else on the site, use the search box to find out" and then obviously chuck a nice clear search box there. The key is to try and keep users on the site. Now, this is important... make sure you are tracking all search requests. You can do this with the 'site search' option in google analytics or get something locally in your cart script. Either way, having this gives you amazing data as it lets you know what people are looking for. You can then look to source the products, make them more visible if you have them, or re-work your sections etc. If you want to get really pro, you start to look at which pages the searches came from and make adjustments to those pages as a result. Finally... extra pro is to track this data through to an email newsletter signup hidden field so that when users register you can have a record of what they search for while on your site... that helps you send super targeted emails when combined with their purchase history etc Lots of food for thought I hope
I would get everything nailed in Google Product Search and PPC then look at expanding to the other shopping networks. Reduce your costs while testing then scale up once you have it sorted.
I have been working more on getting tons of traffic to the website now because I am only getting like 10-30 visitors daily, but will defiantly come back and take this advice when I start to work more on conversion rates! Thanks a bunch, ~Nick
It's worth keeping a 'todo' list on Basecamp, evernote, or even just a text file on your desktop. Regardless of what else you are doing I would at least implement the scroller and a search box at the bottom of all pages right away.