Google Base is a web tool that allows you to upload your inventory data to Google. This is a quick and easy way to start generating buyer traffic. Inventory data that is uploaded to Google Base will return in Google product search results.
Google Base Setup
Follow the Google Base Setup tutorial for step-by-step instructions. Once you have completed the setup, continue reading this post to learn more about how Google Base works.
When you submit your Google Base feed from your Auctiva Commerce store, you’re sending product information to Google. There are certain fields pertaining to the product information that you should focus on improving to help your products perform well in search results. In all cases, the more details you can provide the better.
Google Base Summaries
Make sure the Product Summary field for each product has relevant, accurate information about the product. This field is specifically for your Google Base feed. The Product Summary will appear in search results, so make sure your product copy is well written. Try to be concise and add the important details in the first two lines, as that is what’s most likely to display in the search results.
Product Titles
As go through your products and update the Product Summaries, you should also consider updating the Name field in the Product Details page. This field is what Google Base will use as the Product Title that displays in search results. Provide as much details as you can about the product. Google Base limits titles to 70 characters. A Product Title over 70 characters will automatically truncate to fit 70 characters.
Frequency Makes a Difference
You should keep your Google Base feed “fresh” by creating and uploading the feed through your Auctiva Commerce store with some level of frequency. This is different for each store owner and is dependent upon how often your inventory changes. Consider uploading the feed when you make a significant change to one or multiple products, add new inventory, remove inventory and/or have a significant change in inventory levels. Make a note to be more diligent with this task during popular shopping seasons.
By default your feed will expire 30 days from the latest post date. Try to make a habit of refreshing your feed at least once a month. If you’re a busy store owner, you may need to upload your feed several times a week.
As a follow-up to this article we will blog about optimizing your Google Base feed in the near future. There are a lot of little tricks that can help your data feed perform better in the search results. Stay tuned.
Submitting a SiteMap and your store domain to Google will get you one step closer to being indexed in Google search results. It will only take a few minutes to complete this task. Once you’ve submitted your SiteMap and Domain, Google will eventually send its search bot to crawl your store for keywords.
When Should I Let Google Know About My Store?
It’s up to you when you decide to tell Google about your new store. Once you have submitted your domain and sitemap, Google will periodically check the site for new information. It’s plausible that you could start receiving traffic soon after Google indexes your site. So, are you ready for buyers? If not, you might consider holding off on this task until you’re ready to make that first sale.
On the flip side, if you do submit your SiteMap and domain to Google before your store is live, you can start to get a sense of what kind of traffic to expect. Furthermore, you can use Google Analytics to monitor the traffic more closely. If you choose this route, consider disabling the purchasing feature in the Store Settings (Store >Configure> Store Settings) until your store is ready to go live. To avoid frustrating potential customers, add copy to your Home page telling visitors that your store is under construction. If you have a launch date, let them know when they can come back and make a purchase.
Next week we’ll show you how to take this idea one step further by creating a method that will allow potential customers to join a mailing list. This will enable you to capture potential customers and notify them when your store goes live.
Have you made up your mind? If you’re ready to get indexed by Google, follow these two tutorials:
Google Webmasters Tool is another great “behind the scenes” integration that gives you insight on how Google “views” your store for search results.
Just like the Google Analytics Setup in this Boot Camp Series, what’s important is that you get this account started. Over the course of several weeks, we’ll return to Webmaster Tools to identify certain areas of your store that are good opportunities for optimization.
So, we’re going to keep this post short and sweet. All you need to do for today is set up your Google Webmaster Tools account.
Start the Webmaster Tools tutorial to properly set up your account. Questions? Just leave us a comment.
Enable Google Analytics to track eCommerce metrics
One of the most important Google integrations you need to immediately start is Google Analytics. The sooner you implement Google Analytics with your Auctiva Commerce store, the sooner you will capture valuable data about your store visitors. This information will be crucial in increasing the profitability of your store.
Let’s Get This Profitability Party Started
If you have not yet integrated Google Analytics with your Auctiva Commerce store, do so now!
Here’s the step-by-step tutorial for integrating Google Analytics. Take the next five to ten minutes to complete the tutorial. We recommend that you also enable the E-Commerce tracking feature when you go through the tutorial. E-Commerce tracking will allow you to track purchases made on your storefront. When you complete the Google Analytics setup, come back and finish reading this post. We’ve got some house-cleaning to do.
Patience is a Virtue in eCommerce Analysis
It takes awhile for your Google Analytics account to acquire enough data about your store visitors before you can find key insights that can boost the performance of your store. This period of time varies from store to store, but if you have a modest amount of traffic, you should feel comfortable with about 3 months of data to review. And, that’s just a start, although, a lot of good information about how users are browsing your store will come in withing the first couple of weeks. We can use this information to continually improve the shopping experience for your customers.
Monitoring trends on your store can give you key insights into customer behavior.
Trends on the Internet are constantly changing. Once you have Google Analytics integrated with your Auctiva Commerce store, you’ll be able to monitor these trends more closely.
We’re going to help you to do that. Over the next several weeks, we’ll be showing you how to look at the data and make actionable decisions that will improve the performance of your store. While we wait for your data to collect, we’re also going to help you learn how to drive more traffic to your store. Tomorrow, we will continue with the Google Integration Boot Camp theme with Google Webmaster Tools Setup. Make sure to check back in with us then.
Your Auctiva Commerce store features a variety of Google integrations that you should consider enabling to help drive buyer traffic to your store. The Google Integration Boot Camp Series is just the foundation to a variety of tasks we’ll be encouraging you to complete this week. Completing this Boot Camp will be a critical milestone for you to move onto the more exciting topics we’ll be exploring on this blog.
This series is developed to do two very important things that will help you manage a successful store. The first thing we’ll want to do is enable Google Analytics to start tracking buyer traffic to your store. Then, we’ll establish a connection with Google’s product search so that you’ll start receiving buyer traffic to your store. In other words, it’s go time!
We recommend you follow the order to each of these items, unless you’re not ready to receive buyer traffic. If you’re still setting up your store, hold off on the Google Base Setup (Item #4 in the list below) until your store is ready to launch.
Let’s Get Google Integrated
Each day we’ll publish a new article in this series. We’ll update this post with links to each new article we release. Feel free to bookmark this and return to it each day or just follow our RSS feed to get the latest updates from us as they happen.
- Google Analytics Setup
- Webmaster Tools Setup
- SiteMap & Domain Submission
- Google Base Setup
Make sure to set aside some time to complete these integrations this week. We estimate that you won’t need more than an hour to complete all four of these integrations. Let us know if there’s something we can help you with and leave a comment on this post.
We Need Your Input!
We realize that many store owners have already integrated their store with Google’s various web tools. We hope to get to more advanced subjects as soon as possible. We’re still in the planning stages and we’d greatly appreciate your input on the topics of SEO, Google Analytics, Store Traffic, Conversion, Store Design, etc. Leave us a comment below and tell us what you’d like to see.
Add keyword and content description Meta Tags to your Auctiva Commerce Store’s Home page to provide useful information about your Store to search engines. This simple step helps to increase traffic from organic searches.
A content description Meta Tag for your Home page is a critical component to how Google indexes your Store. Here’s an example of a content description Meta Tag for a Home page:
<meta name=”description” content=”Shop Women’s Clothing, Jewelry, Earrings, Accessories, Handbags, Shoes ”>
A keyword Meta Tag is also important for search engine optimization. Here is an example of a keyword Meta Tag:
<meta name=”keywords” content=”Women’s Clothing, Designer, Gucci, Coach, Handbag, Jewelry”>
Check out our Meta Tag Tutorial for step-by-step instructions and tips on how to optimize your Store for increased search results.
Providing a good buyer experience is key for every Store. It will mean the difference between completing or missing a sale. That’s why it’s important to test your checkout process from a customer’s perspective to ensure you’re Store is set-up to handle the transactions. We’ve come up with guidelines to help you do just that.
To read the complete article, check out our Auctiva Education Section.
- Read your description – Double-check that descriptions are accurate, catchy and don’t have any glaring spelling mistakes—a sign of a less-than-serious seller.
- Test your shipping calculator – Not only will the calculator provide estimated shipping costs; it will also identify if you have a shipping method associated with the product you’re trying to buy. Try the calculator a few times, using different zip codes, to make sure all of your customers can order your goods, or at least those in the shipping zones where you wish to do business.
- Make a payment – If you offer more than one payment option, test all of them to make sure the methods are integrated properly. Most customers will expect you to accept credit cards, so you may want to offer that payment option and test it first.
- Capture the cash – When a customer places an order, you have to go through a process known as ‘payment capture’ in order to actually receive the funds. To do this go into the order’s Summary tab. Become familiar with this page. It tells you how much customers owe, their shipping and mailing addresses as well as the contents of their shipments and their preferred shipping method.
- Deliver goods – Shipping items is essential to good business. Be sure to use Auctiva Commerce’s automated e-mail feature to keep your customers informed about the status of their orders when you ship products. It’s important to test those messages to fully understand your buyers’ experience.
- Refund, cancel and void – After making sure payments work properly, you’ll want to give yourself a refund and cancel and void your order(s). A refund is straightforward: It’s simply the act of returning part or all of your buyer’s money after a transaction has been completed. Canceling, on the other hand, marks an order as having been called off. But it doesn’t prevent payment from being captured on that order. A voided order cancels the order and prevents a payment from being captured.
As a final confirmation, it’s helpful to go through the complete purchasing process a few times to test out every aspect and ensure you don’t miss anything that would leave customers in the lurch. If you don’t have any problems, neither should your buyers. The combination of quality products paired with a wholly functioning site will create a positive customer experience; driving sales and fostering long-term customer relationships and repeat business.
As you know, putting together a store requires a lot of attention to detail. We’ve come up with a checklist you can use to make sure you’ve got the bases covered, and that your buyers have a good shopping experience. Remember, a happy buyer is a loyal customer. Follow these guidelines and you should be all set to sell, sell, sell!
To read the complete article, check out our Auctiva Education Section.
- Select an appropriate Theme – Auctiva Commerce has 70 theme options in its growing Theme File Manager. Customize your theme and change it whenever you want.
- Check your categories and products – First select a category then add your products. Make sure your store has enough categories—and that it has the right ones.
- Select at least one payment method – Auctiva Commerce allows you to accept checks, credit cards, purchase orders and PayPal.
- Create a Warehouse – You need a warehouse to set up shipping methods for your goods. Forgetting to associate a warehouse with a product will mean restricted shipping methods for that product—and more important—it could mean customers can’t buy that item.
- Set up at least one Shipping Method – or integrate with at least one Integrated Shipping provider. Shipping is an essential part of any online business. This potentially complex aspect of your business is made easier with Commerce’s integrated shipping carriers.
- Provide your contact information – Make sure your customers can contact you. All stores come with default contact information to let you know where to input yours. Don’t forget to enter your actual information.
- Don’t forget about taxes. – Since tax laws vary from state to state, and change often, it’s best to consult a tax expert to determine the right approach for your business.
- Update your “About Me” pages – More than ever, customers want to know who they’re buying from. Offering your customers good prices is a good start to building buyer loyalty, but in this age of social networking, connecting with your customers on a more personal level could prove profitable.
- Set your e-mail templates – Auctiva Commerce provides automated e-mails that can keep buyers informed while you tend to other aspects of your business. At a minimum, you should have e-mail templates to notify buyers when an order has been placed, when their payment has been received and when an order has been shipped.
- Add products to Google Base – Google Base allows your products to be easily searchable by attaching attributes—or keywords or phrases—that describe your product.
- Set up Google Analytics – Making sales is about getting people to your store; it’s all about traffic. And it’s a good idea to know where that traffic is coming from, and how they’re interacting with your store, so you know where to devote your efforts. Utilize Google’s free Google Analytics to capture data.
- Be your own first customer – Finally, be sure to triple-check that everything is in place to provide a good buying experience. The best way to do this is to make a test purchase from your store. You can always go back into your dashboard and cancel your fake order later.
As a final confirmation it is helpful to go through the complete purchasing process, from start to finish. Repeat the process using several different addresses to make sure you get the expected results. If you don’t have any problems, neither will your buyers. And that will make buyers happy—and keep them coming back!
Remember, Auctiva Commerce has a complete Help Section, replete with step-by-step tutorials and video guides.
If you have questions or comments, please visit our Community Forums.
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