We have also seen recent focus on the pricing aspects of the destination website. Pricing discrepancies are clear triggers for disapproval (displaying ex VAT or ex sales tax being obvious) but Google are now enforcing the way that prices are displayed to ensure that the most prominent and visible price on the page is the VAT inclusive price. That has caused a number of disapprovals from talking to merchants over the last 4 weeks. It’s worth looking at your own price displays to see whether that could be a cause of disapproval in its own right.

Googles tough stance has come as somewhat of a surprise to many merchants listing on Google Shopping, despite the long prior warning period. Its mass cull of submissions has played directly into the hands of the prepared and organised with search levels increasing whilst competition is being reduced.

New Google Merchant Centre feature

Once a feed has been disapproved you can find the reason in the merchant centre under the ‘data quality’ tab, located in the same place as the error messages. A panel appears displaying the message ‘your account has been suspended’, with a button to the right of it stating ‘I have fixed the problems, please submit my feed for review’. As of yet we’ve yet to establish the average response time of this action but it’s safe to say the best course of action is to avoid account suspension in the first place, by eliminating all critical error notifications on your feed.

I’ll keep updating these summaries with anything new that we see as the weeks progress.

On that date new mandatory criteria are set to be introduced. We have now seen some emails issued by Google warning of the possibility of future feed disapprovals and delisting. These are currently being sent out to e-store owners that have yet to include the pre-requisite mandatory data.

The reasoning behind Google’s recent changes is to enhance the end-user experience by making products easily comparable and offering as much information on them as possible. There have been too many instances in the past of poor results in Google Shopping which have been a function of the lack of quality of the original merchant submissions.

Many e-business owners may not have even been aware of this change until receiving an email from Google so now it is vital to take action to ensure the quality of their feed is high enough to continue being listed.

In the long run the changes in merchant and user experience will be beneficial to users and e-businesses alike, but there are some painful moments ahead for companies using outdated Google Product submissions. Fixing any issues before the deadline will be a must for any business bringing in sizeable volumes of Google Shopping clicks.

Some of what Google ask for sounds simple, but if your system lacks key fields of data, and/or your export does not include the information, then it’s important to review this without delay, and certainly well before potential disapproval.

The initial upload for most businesses should just be the beginning of a feed enhancement process. Very rarely is a perfect feed uploaded first time round and even if it is, it may not match the records Google is using to index its own product entries.

The quality and degree of completeness of your submission will affect how much traffic your products attract. Over the past few months we’ve seen drastic increases in traffic and returns from Google Shopping for many clients simply through adding and nurturing the data being submitted. The data quality in the feed is directly linked to the placement of the products which enables in certain cases ensuring that products feature in ’price comparison’ boxes.

By getting each product either placed as high as possible for the highest populated search query and/or entered into a comparison will ensure a higher traffic volume through the channel.

Our new Feed Manager™ Product Optimizer allows clients to review their products as they are positioned in Google Shopping and then find, change and include additional data being submitted to Google with the greatest of ease in order to achieve the best results possible.

Given Google’s recently published articles on listing quality, it is more important than ever before to ensure that your submissions meet that standard – without them your traffic will die away and so will the resulting sales activity.

Now real time adverts are being trialed on 1% of users profiles (more than 5million people)– a service which allows immediate targeted adverts based on what they are posting about, or updating their status about at the time. So if someone posted “I’d like to go to the cinema tonight”, an advert from Vue or Odeon may instantly appear alongside their Facebook homepage.

Similarly, real time targeted advertising has been pioneered by Twitter, which houses promoted Tweets – paid-for brand tweets – next to relevant topics of conversation. Twitter are also trialing geo- targeted adverts, which allows advertisers to narrow down their promoted tweets to users within a specific geographical location, and this is being closely monitored to measure its successes.

This is definitely something that businesses need to be looking into because they could be missing out on something big!

The most unique angle of social media is its ability for consumers to speak directly to an organisation – it suggests transparency to customers and when used correctly will help to reinforce a strong image for a brand. I understand, like many others do, that social media is a key way for businesses to listen to what people want and if they are savvy, adapt accordingly. It also allows you to speak directly to your target audience and this means it’s important to get it right with your brands social media representation. Social media isn’t a fad, and it won’t disappear – in a few years it will be so deeply engrained in every aspect of our lives that it will become a second language.

It can also help businesses gain global recognition, and reach customers in more obscure locations. The benefits are countless – the challenge is applying the right technology to make keeping your social media up to date as easily and time effectively as possible. There are a number of new innovations which optimise communication opportunities with minimum input from the organizations themselves. Our own Social Media Manager was developed with this at the forefront of its design – an innovative piece of software which automatically sorts, loads and precisely schedules a bank of tweets and posts to minimise the effort required to keep social media such as Twitter and Facebook up to date. Social Media Manager is an integral part of Feed Manager and is specifically designed to incorporate daily information about our clients’ products, across multiple social media platforms.

Innovations like these are the best way of using social media as a retail business – they are simple to use, and our service simplifies and shortens the business effort required. I believe that it is vital for businesses to assess their social media, and use the available means to make it as effective and successful as possible.

They were alerted today of an email phishing scam targeting some sellers on other Shopping.com markets with the subject line “Important NOTICE: Registration Suspension”.

This email is NOT from Shopping.com. The login page that you are being redirected to, as well as the email address that it has come from are also NOT part of Shopping.com

As a precautionary measure they are alerting all of our clients. Don’t become a victim of phishing, in which a fake site that mimics a legitimate site is set up to harvest login credentials. By following the tips below, you can avoid such a scam:

Be on alert of wording in emails that require urgent action, confirmation or information about a transaction.

Always view the webpage address you are on especially when clicked directly from an email.

Opt to manually type in a webpage address or use a bookmark.

Upgrade your browser version and enable the anti-phishing feature.

Remember, legitimate online services will not ask you for sensitive information via email.

All very sensible advice. At this time of year, these scams multiply to cover comparison sites, Google Adwords accounts, Affiliate marketing accounts etc, not to mention the usual fake bank notices.

At a pressurised time for e-tailers the temptation to click on a link from a genuinely good fake is easy to do – but take the extra bit of time to log in on what you know is the real page, saved from a bookmark or a typed in address. We have seen horrible things happen when advertising accounts are compromised so we hope that this does not happen to you.

With mixed views about Christmas and concerns over the VAT rise in January, retailers will be keen to maximise their post-Christmas sales which is start climbing from mid-November and usually peak in the first two weeks of December.

I believe that the internet will be the saving grace for many retailers this year, as more people shun the high street in search of the best deals. I think that the price sensitivity displayed by consumers is fuelling greater demand for solutions which helps retailers make sure their products appear first when consumers carry out product searches online.

The product feed is essentially the online alternative to instore merchandising. It’s all very well having a presence but if it doesn’t do the job of pulling in the sales, it’s pretty useless. Retailers really should invest in their product feeds as they would in the high street store and it is a shame to think that many retailers will miss out on valuable sales this Christmas due to inaccuracies in their product feed data, which could mean either poor search rankings or being omitted from searches all together.

The good news is that there is still time for retailers to get their product feeds in check, as with solutions like Feed Manager™, information can be updated and pumped out across the web in a matter of days.

One the initial preparatory work is done, the product feeds can be automatically updated so that they match the requirements of each individual product feed site. Retailers will be astounded at the difference a few minor tweaks to their product feeds can have on their sales figures, something which I’m sure most would welcome at this time of year.

In a local shop this week I noticed that Christmas items are already on sale, this is no different for the internet. With lifestyles getting busier and even more hectic many people will be turning to the internet to do their Christmas shopping this year. Not only are they in the comfort of their own home but they can compare prices without trailing through many shops.

With the recession not a distant memory, people are still watching their cash flow and with Christmas being one of the most expensive times of the year product price comparison is going to be big. However, the problem I often find is that many retailers have the information available to update their product feeds, but simply didn’t have the ‘thing’ that could feed this information out to the web and where it needed to go.

Automated ‘intelligent’ product display feeds are consistently proving to save retailers and agencies days or weeks of management and development time to set up and maintain listings on product listing sites and help get products in front of more online shoppers quickly and effectively.

It is a shame to think that many retailers will miss out on valuable sales this Christmas due to inaccuracies in their product feed data, which could mean either poor search rankings, reviews or being omitted from searches all together.

The good news is that there is still time for retailers to get their product feeds in check, as with solutions like Feed Manager, information can be updated and pumped out across the web in a matter of days.

This ties in with our understanding of the ever increasing importance of product reviews in supporting the rankings for relevance in Google’s Shopping and natural results. Google already pulls in reviews from a number of shopping comparison sites and its own Checkout ecommerce offering, and it is easy to appreciate why it wants to extend the range of reviews it can pick up and use to provide as much information to the potential shopper as possible.

We always stress to clients that positive reviews from ecommerce transactions are highly beneficial to conveying trust and convincing new potential customers to engage. Google’s growing emphasis on reviews within their product listings means that estores must continue to refine and improve the quality of their product listings – not just to Google’s Merchant Centre, but to all websites where the client products are listed – a theme we have touched on several times in recent weeks.

A retailer we have been working closely with for the past month or so has seen visits to their site increase by 50% in just one month alone, simply by reviewing and amending their product listings to ensure they match all the requirements set out by the sites that they provide their products to, thus minimising the likelihood of rejection and boosting their visibility.

In fact, the results delivered to date already indicate that the system they implemented to manage this process has already provided them with a significant return on their investment, making it a very profitable and effective means of capitalising on the lucrative Christmas trading period.

After the internal marketing team recognised the need to review the way their product listings were working on the web, they enlisted our help to ensure their product feed strategy was working to it full potential.
We implemented a system which brought their various product output feeds together and ensured they were repackaged for the specific requirements of each output site, be it, Google, Affiliates, shopping comparison websites and so on.

Since implementing Feed Manager™ in June 2010, the client has seen sales revenues grow strongly across all channels, with visitor numbers continuing to climb even during the relatively quiet summer period.

Even by my standards, the results have been literally astounding. But it proves why sometimes, it is far better to outsource specific functions than to lose many more valuable in-house hours. The mass of product listing sites and differing requirements can be challenging for many internal departments to manage in addition to their existing responsibilities.

The great thing about product feed strategies is that the ROI is clear and more than repays the initial investment in outsourcing the function to a specialist provider.

As I’ve said many times before, the problem I often find in my line of work is that many retailers have all the information available to update their product feeds, but simply didn’t have the ‘thing’ that could feed this information out to the web and where it needed to go.

Automated ‘intelligent’ product display feeds are proven to save retailers and agencies days or weeks of management and development time to set up and maintain listings on product comparison sites and help get products in front of more online shoppers quickly and effectively.

So with all this talk of booming online sales, ask yourself if your products are performing to the optimum. And if not, I highly recommend you do something about it, and fast.