Do you have an E-Commerce Website? Boost your Online Exposure and Conversions with Shopping Feeds

E-commerce websites always have a difficult challenge with organic/natural placement for a myriad of reasons. Some of the most common challenges are frequent content changes when new products are added, replaced, or removed, finding a shopping cart or a CMS solution that is SEO friendly as well as user friendly (and affordable)! This list can go on and on.

An E-commerce website should not rely on solely driving direct traffic in order to garner a profit. By utilizing shopping feeds, you can gain valuable exposure in very highly trafficked shopping portals, such as Amazon, Biz Rate, NexTag, Google Base (aka: Froogle), and Yahoo! Shopping, just to name a few. If you are an E-commerce site and haven’t looked into shopping feeds yet, you should learn how to gain additional exposure through these channels.

So, how do you add shopping feeds (also referred to as product feeds) to your online marketing? The first step is always determining which portals you want your products to appear in. Each portal has a specific file format in order to be accepted. If your feed doesn’t meet their requirements, your products won’t be displayed. This is where many e-commerce websites fail in executing a proper shopping feed strategy. The feed is created in Excel and requires various attributes of your product (these can include a picture, price, size options, color choices, etc). Be sure to fill the attribute requirements out completely, verifying all required fields have been tackled, and check the submission status after your initial submission to be sure it was accepted. Turning away from the project without checking the submission status is another point where companies frequently get off track.

Keep in mind that even after your product feeds have been submitted successfully, requirements set forth today will not always work tomorrow! Shopping feeds require continuous supervision. In addition, your prices may change, and you’ll likely add new products. As you make the changes on your website and product offerings, you should take the extra time to update your product feeds as well.

So now you may be thinking…the task of instituting shopping feeds can seem daunting, but let me reassure you that there are many benefits including:

• Branding
• Product exposure
• Additional revenue opportunities
• Access to targeted buyers

If you are interested in increasing your presence online, putting your products in front of targeted customers should make common sense. If establishing or maintaining the feeds becomes too time consuming then you should consider having an agency, like MoreVisibility manage them on your behalf.

Growing up, as a child, in the suburbs of Washington DC, there were many wonderful opportunities for class field trips. I vividly recall going to see the Mona Lisa at the National Gallery of Art, visiting exhibits at the Smithsonian, and watching Congress in session on Capitol Hill. Strangely enough, one of my most memorable field trips in the late 1960’s, was visiting the offices of UNIVAC. This was my first encounter with computers. I will never forget the cold sterile rooms, which housed the enormous, monster ancestors of the personal computers we use today. Throughout the guided tour, there was much excited discussion about how computers would radically alter our lives, in the future. We were shown a scale model of a “Smart House” and imagined with awe, the day we would live in a home that was completely run by computers. Back in the day, it all seemed so futuristic, like the concept of flying cars!

I don’t know if any of the people at UNIVAC could have envisioned the invention of the Internet and the subsequent rise of the search engines. It is with the same awe, I regard the continuing evolution of search and the new online marketing opportunities that are continually being created. Google’s Universal Search, unveiled earlier this year, returns blended search results including articles, images, videos, news, results from local and book search engines, in addition to web page results. What this means with regard to online marketing, is that it is now possible to leverage your company’s position, through the use of all digital content, not just your company’s web pages.

Because of the constant evolution of search and new online marketing channels created by the engines, it has never been more important to have a comprehensive online marketing strategy in place. In addition to SEO (search engine optimization) and SEM (paid search marketing), blogs, social media, videos, company news and optimized press releases can all be utilized to maximize ownership of online real estate. What will work best for your business? With so many variables in the marketing mix, how can you keep up? Many companies come to MoreVisibility for help in finding a customized strategy. Our team is dedicated and focused on finding every new online marketing opportunity that can potentially serve our clients. I am very proud to work for a company that remains on the cutting edge of SEO and SEM.