Show Me Your CSEs
TweetComparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) are growing evermore popular, especially at the agency where I work, Zeon Solutions. We used to pitch the idea of expanding into CSEs, but after we had a solid paid and organic search strategy underway. But as more and more clients began experiencing success selling their products in shopping engines, the clearer the revenue stream became to us, and the more we integrated CSEs into the our standard online marketing mix. Now we tell eCommerce clients about CSEs right away and even have prospective clients coming to us solely for CSE feed optimization. We at Zeon have some solid experience with comparison shopping engines, and we use that to our advantage by optimizing and streamlining the data feeds. We can save customers time and prevent costly mistakes in the feeds, then yield high returns for a low cost of entry. OK – enough about Zeon and CSE details. The real beauty of CSEs is the data you can collect prior to making the investment – from a source you may not think of right away. Thanks to Google’s shopping rating system, you can do competitive research prior to creating a feed or signing up for a single service. The Google Product Search store ratings consist of an aggregate ratings score and snippets of customer reviews from third party sites. Do you know what counts as a third party site? Comparison shopping engines! *The Good Stuff Starts Here* To do your competitive research, just do a Google search for a product you are selling. “Nike Shoes” is my example. You will then see Google AdWords PPC ads, some of which have Google Product Ratings (I added red arrows to the ratings). Just click on the Reviews or Rated link on the ad. Once clicked, you will be taken to the store’s rating page. This is where Google spills the beans. On the right side, you will see a list of sources from where the ratings are aggregated. A number of the sources listed are comparison shopping engines. This is where you can see what your competition is using. Simply work your way through your competitor’s ratings and see which service is most popular among your competition. No reason to reinvent the wheel. Start with the most popular amongst your peers (green check) and work your way down as you expand your online footprint....
Read MoreBoost Clickthrough and Conversion with AdWords Reviews
Are you or a client selling goods or services online? Are you paying for AdWords? It’s time for you to sign up for at least one ratings service and politely ask your customers to rate their experience. Google recently started pulling ratings from various services and attaching the *stars* to AdWords text ads. (See Figure: 1) I think that adding reviews directly to an ad is as close as you get to word-of-mouth, which we all know is hands down the best marketing medium out there. You instantly add trust by showing potential customers what people are saying about your company. The only thing holding you back is that Google requires a few things. “If your online store is rated in Google Product Search, you have 4 or more stars, and you have at least 30 reviews, you’ll automatically get seller ratings with your ads.” Seems easy enough; now all you have to do is start asking your customers for reviews. If you’re an eCommerce company, the perfect time to ask for a review (and include an easy-to-use link) is in the Shipment Confirmation email. Check figure 2 for a good list of review sites to look into. Good...
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