This time, I would like to look more closely at the Product Listing Ads (PLAs) themselves and examine a few bidding strategies. It is worth mentioning again that you will need to have at least one PLA campaign running in an active AdWords account for your products to appear in the Google Shopping Search and Comparison Engine. So if you have been enjoying free referrals using the old Google Base system you now need to get your wallet out…

Arguably the most important link in the chain is your Google product feed. This is an XML feed that contains all of your sites product information. Assuming your site has this functionality, you can use the ‘plain vanilla’ feed but you can do so much more if you optimise this feed for different purposes. In this post, I will concentrate on AdWords PLAs.

1. Submit an XML test feed to Google.

Log into your Google Merchant Centre account using your Google log in and fill in all of the required information. Don’t cut any corners – give your site a compelling description with your USP. Be sure to fill in all of the delivery options that you offer.

Submit your XML feed to Google as a test feed. This will allow you to troubleshoot any errors and warnings. *Important note about feed quality. Errors and warnings mean different things when it comes to your Google Shopping feed.

• Warnings generally refer to optimisation issues such as missing fields in the product or category information. It is good practice to sort these issues out but the feed should still function. This does require some technical expertise.
• Errors will stop your feed from functioning full stop. If you submit a feed to Google that has errors they will get in a huff and suspend your feed indefinitely.

Once you have a nice clean feed, submit this and schedule how often you want to submit it. This will depend on how often you update your stock.

2. Link your AdWords Account to your Merchant Centre Account

This bit is very easy thankfully. Google has included a function to get you started. Just follow the directions on the dashboard inside your Google Merchant Centre account. You can link an existing AdWords account or set a basic PLA campaign up directly from scratch using your Merchant Centre dashboard. You will need to have a valid form of payment at this point. The Google system will suggest an initial bid amount for you which you can of course set manually. This default campaigns will get you started with PLAs and Google Shopping but this will be a ‘catch all’ campaign and may not be what you want in order to achieve your marketing goals.

Please note that you can use PLAs and AdWords Product Extensions together. In fact, this is good practice. What’s the difference? In Google’s own words…

• Product Listing Ads are a stand-alone shopping ad format that uses product information from an advertiser’s Merchant Center account. These ads appear in a variety of formats and feature relevant product information, such as a product image, price, or name. They can also include an optional promotional message managed in the advertiser’s AdWords account. Product Listing Ads focus on targeting product information to shoppers and aren’t designed to focus solely on merchants.
• Product extensions are an ad format in which product information accompanies a standard text ad with standard keyword targeting. They also use product details from a merchant’s Merchant Center account and feature multiple products from only that merchant. Product information appears next to the text ad, which allows customers to get a better sense of the advertiser’s product selection prior to clicking through to visit the advertiser’s site.

Please note that you can use PLAs and AdWords Product Extensions together. In fact, this is good practice. What’s the difference? In Google’s own words…

• Product Listing Ads are a stand-alone shopping ad format that uses product information from an advertiser’s Merchant Center account. These ads appear in a variety of formats and feature relevant product information, such as a product image, price, or name. They can also include an optional promotional message managed in the advertiser’s AdWords account. Product Listing Ads focus on targeting product information to shoppers and aren’t designed to focus solely on merchants.
• Product extensions are an ad format in which product information accompanies a standard text ad with standard keyword targeting. They also use product details from a merchant’s Merchant Center account and feature multiple products from only that merchant. Product information appears next to the text ad, which allows customers to get a better sense of the advertiser’s product selection prior to clicking through to visit the advertiser’s site.

Google Product Listing Ads

A Google Product listing ad will look something like this..

If a user clicks on the product title, they will be taken directly to the product on the site. If they click on the “Shop for…” option, they will be taken to the Google Shopping comparison page. Please consider this however; comparison sites may not be for you if you are not keen on price. In fact, they can work against you in this respect.

PLA Bidding Tips

1. Ideally, you should consider creating different ad groups for different product categories. This way you can set different bids for each category depending on your marketing objectives.

2. You can either use the categories that Google uses for it’s Google Shopping Search Engine or create your own if you have a managed feed.

3. PLAs are extremely bid sensitive so you will need to set your bids higher than what you would for your text ads. This is because you need to get your PLAs in the top 2 or 3 to get any click-through.

4. The are no hard and fast rules with PLA bidding. You just have to try different bidding strategies and look at your conversion rate with respect to your goals.

Are PLAs Effective?

It’s early days for PLAs in the UK but most of the campaigns I’ve seen that use them seem to benefit. The conversion rates I’m seeing are definitely higher than text ads which is interesting.

Historically, Google always experiment with layout so we expect these ads to evolve in the same way that other ad formats have.

To Sum Up Then…

Setting up and troubleshooting a decent quality XML product feed can be quite tricky. Setting up the original feed does require some expertise. However, once you have this though, setting up a basic PLA campaign is very easy and this will mean that you can enjoy the benefits of PLAs and Google Shopping. However, just using the basics is a missed opportunity.

Your feed will allow you to do all sorts of fancy multi-channel marketing, comparison shopping, as well as product level advertising on AdWords. In some competitive markets, Google Shopping has become a lifeline for many on-line merchants. Here at Fisheye, we build XML feed functionality into all of our e-commerce websites. We also offer various levels of feed management and AdWords services depending on the budget and requirements of the client.

If you are interested in harnessing the potential of Google Shopping and your product XML feed then we would love to hear from you..

How To Set Up Google Product Listing AdsFisheye - Ecommerce Websites That Deliver Results

Due to the large volume of business going through the agency, we require a new Project Manager to manage and ensure the accurate and timely delivery of projects as well as overseeing the support ticketing system. Projects will include new build Magento e-commerce sites and the support and continued development of existing sites.

Main responsibilities of the Project Manager will involve:

• Taking the sales specification and developing it into an internal project specification
• Identifying any risks for scope creep or delivery issues
• Creating project tasks lists and milestones within our project management software and managing resources to deliver this.
• Taking ownership of all projects, solving any problems/issues as they come up and liaising with the necessary departments to ensure all work is executed efficiently, on time and to spec
• Liaising with the client throughout the project, managing client expectations and ensuring that the project is completed to the client’s satisfaction
• Managing  our customer support ticket system, prioritising tickets, monitoring workflow and liaising with clients

Key experience of the Project Manager:

Similar experience in an agency environment (agency experience essential)

• Excellent client facing skills and people management skills
• Understanding and knowledge of retail focused accounts
• Exceptional problem solver, calm and diplomatic approach and natural gravitas
• Ability to manage your own workload and be pro-active

Essentially the main qualities of the Project Manager will be someone who is organised, focused with the ability to communicate with team members and clients effectively.  At Fisheye they will be working in a fast-paced and hardworking environment, but also fun and full of energy!

Hours

You will be working from our head office in Shrewsbury, between the hours of 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday

How to Apply

Please email your CV to workfor@fisheye-webdesign.co.uk or call 01743 262 610 and ask for Dave, Closing date 15th March 2013

Project Manager RequiredFisheye - Ecommerce Websites That Deliver Results

You must be a confident programmer with great problem solving and debugging skills, be able to learn, work off your own back and be comfortable working alongside our designers to find the best solution for our clients.

As a successful PHP Developer you will have strong experience developing PHP5 and have a very good understanding of object oriented design principles, particularly MVC

Key Skills

• PHP5
• OOP programming
• Magento (6months+ experience)
• Linux server administration
• Command Line
• Apache Server
• MYSQL Server
• Debian and CentOS
• Bash Scripts
• MySQL
• JavaScript (Frameworks such as prototype and JQuery)
• Understanding of CSS + HTML (CSS3 + HTML5 is advantageous)
• Ability to have a laugh and enjoy working within a team

Non Essential but useful Skills

• Webmin
• WordPress
• Cloud Networking Knowledge

Qualifications & Experience

You must have at least 1 year commercial experience and a relevant degree.
or 2 years commercial experience if you have no degree.
A Magneto qualification would also be very advantageous.

About Fisheye

We are a team (11) of top notch web designers, developers and marketers. We are a friendly and motivated team producing cutting edge work. Although our offices are based in the sleepy market town of Wem in Shropshire, we are at the forefront of the industry and have clients all over the U.K and Europe.

Hours

You will be working from our head office in Shrewsbury, between the hours of 9am and 5pm Monday to Friday

How to Apply

Please email your CV to jobs@fisheye-webdesign.co.uk or call 01743 262 610 and ask for Dave, Closing date 15th March 2013

Become a Fisheye Magento DeveloperFisheye - Ecommerce Websites That Deliver Results

..or will be on February 13th 2013. If you have been using Google Merchant Centre and Google Product Search (if not why not?!) then you will have probably received an email outlining the upcoming changes to this service. You may have also seen the large red banner in your Merchant Centre account. If you would like to know more about how these changes might effect you then please read on…

What is Google Product Search?

At the time of writing, Google Product Search mainly gets its listings from retailers submitting product data feeds through the Google Merchant Center. Google has never charged for inclusion in its shopping search engine since it began back in December 2002 (when it was called Froogle). That’s about to change.

To clarify, your sites pages may still appear organically in the ‘Free’ search engine results pages. However, if you want to appear in Google’s dedicated shopping search engine Google Shopping and the product boxes that will appear as part of the new Google Shopping service, you will need to pay.

Also, if you are using a feed management service, or you already use AdWords Product Listing Ads (more on these later), then you don’t need to worry.

Enter stage left – Google Shopping

Google Shopping is the new name for Google Product Search. It is now part of AdWords which is Google’s propriety pay-per-click (PPC) platform (this is how Google pays for all those servers that drive their free search engine) . This means that you will need at least one Product Listing Add (PLA) campaign active in your AdWords account and link it to your Google Merchant Account in order to use Google Shopping and Google Shopping PLAs.

In the current Google layout, the Shopping Search Engine option appears here..

The Google Shopping results pages look like this..

Notice how the search engine uses your location to highlight nearby stores.

What should I do about it?

You can of course, set up AdWords and create a basic PLA campaign yourself by following the instructions inside your Merchant Centre account. However, you would be missing out on some massively important opportunities by doing it yourself -

You need an optimised feed..

If your feed is professionally configured, optimised, submitted and managed, you will never have to worry about the quality and integrity of your xml shopping feed again. In order for PLAs and Google Shopping inclusion to function, you will need to have a robust data feed with all the correct attributes. The days of submitting incomplete feeds to Google are over. In fact, Google will suspend your feed indefinitely if it not configured correctly. Feed best practices are a very complex issue and beyond the scope of this post. Let a professional take care of it otherwise you may be paying for clicks you don’t want/can’t convert or your products may never appear in Google Shopping or in PLAs.

Dynamic Product Level Ads

Due to the fact that a clean feed is required for Google Shopping, it would be the perfect time to use your optimised feed to also drive several product level AdWords campaigns. Imagine having every single item (or selected categories) dynamically advertised on Google. The standard DIY AdWords configuration for PLA is ‘catch all’ which is fine to get you started but doesn’t really cut the mustard for an e-commerce sites long-term strategy.

Get in early..

Another compelling reason to start using Google Shopping now if you aren’t already is that, because this service was launched in the States in October 2012, we have some interesting data coming from across the pond. The problem with the free Google Product Search service was that it was dominated by the big hitters like Amazon and eBay. One good thing about the transition to the paid Google Shopping system is that the playing field has effectively been leveled. This is good news for smaller merchants.

Other Shopping Search Engines

Going forward, it would be a good idea to use your optimised feed to drive other Shopping Search Engines and comparison sites such as ShopZilla or Kelkoo. Please note that most comparison shopping services usually require slightly different versions of the feed. We can take care of this for you.

Google Product Listing Ads

This is an example of how your new Product Listing Ads might look..

Why has it changed?

According to Google, the point of the move is Building a better shopping experience on Google.

“This is about delivering the best answers for people searching for products and helping connect merchants with the right customers,” said Sameer Samat, vice president of product management for Google Shopping

To sum up..

It’s never nice to have to cough up for something that was once free but look upon it as an opportunity to move your business forward. Exploiting the new, pumped up Google Shopping service is a smart move for e-commerce sites. However, we strongly advise getting your feed professionally managed. Fisheye are more than happy to do this for you. Also, free services will never be as good as a fully fleshed out paid service.

Fisheye offers Google Shopping feed management as part of our AdWords services. If you require any advice on how to harness the power of the new Google Shopping Search Engine and AdWords then please feel free to give the Fisheye Marketing Team a call on 01743 292 610.

Changes to Google Shopping UK 2013Fisheye - Ecommerce Websites That Deliver Results

Google Panda – What is it?Fisheye - Ecommerce Websites That Deliver Results

You must be a confident programmer with a keen eye for detail and be able to reproduce our designers work in a pixel perfect fashion.

As a successful candidate you will have strong experience coding in  HTML, CSS, with a good understanding of AJAX and JavaScript.

Previous experience working with CMS & E-Commerce platforms, (Magento and WordPress in particular) would be advantageous.

You need to be a quick learner with an ability to adapt to new trends and technologies.

Talented Front-end Web Developer RequiredFisheye - Ecommerce Websites That Deliver Results

Courtyard House,
39a St John’s Hill
Shrewsbury
Shropshire
SY1 1JQ

Our Fisheye team is now 11 strong and we have fast outgrown our offices in Wem. So the hunt has been on for a bigger, better space, resulting in a fantastic find on St Johns Hill in the centre of Shrewsbury. Its a quirky warehouse style office on 2 floors, a spacious, smart, creative environment, and it has Fisheye’s name on it… or will have when we finish the signage!

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