Effective ways to run CSE advertisements
1. Advertise FREE!. There are TWO very popular comparison shopping engines everyone should use: Google Product Search and TheFind.com. If you're not using these two, do it immediately by following the specifications. There is no better ways to bring traffic to your site than doing it FREE.
2. Use CPA before CPC. The next best thing to free traffic is traffic that you pay only when conversion occurs, or Cost-Per-Acquisition (CPA). Cost-Per-Click (CPC) is the most common model employed by CSEs, and they charge you for the traffic they drive to your website regardless of whether the traffic converts or not. One of the well known CPA shopping engine is Bing Cashback.
3. Keep your listings active all times. Most Shopping Comparison Engines (CSEs) have some measure of a listing's popularity, and display the search results in popularity order. If your listing is removed from shopping engines, your popularity score will be reset and visibility of your listing will be impacted when you re-launch your campaign. To maintain your popularity score, keep your listings active all times by funding your campaign "continuously".
4. Update your feed regularly. One of the worst thing that can happen to CSE advertisement is when a consumer clicks on your listing and finds the price that is different (higher) than advertised price. Chances are that this traffic will NOT convert, and you lose advertising money while demaging your brand. The best way to keep your pricing current is by updating your feed whenever you change price.
5. Do not overbid to improve visibility. CSEs use popularity score in addition to bid to determine placement of your listing. Bidding higher will move your listing higher, but there are other things that you can do to improve your popularity score. Becoming a "Trusted Store", positive feedback ratings, and adding eye-catching message may also draw consumers attention to your listing. Be aware that bidding is not the only way to improve your CSE search results.
6. Include relevant data in your product feed. (1) One of the decision criteria is overall price of the item. Including "Shipping Cost" in your product feed will increase your conversion as the consumers will be able to see your total price before clicking on your link. (2) Including MPN and/or UPC code will help CSEs to categorize your item correctly to their taxonomy. (3) Including Sales Price, Promotional Offers and Coupon Codes could also help improve your conversion if used properly.
7. Improve your conversion. Making a profit from CSE advertisement is a challenge. As you're paying for each click, you could potentially lose money if derived traffic do not convert well. Forrester Research suggests that comparison shopping can influence as much as 55% of overall online purchases. Analyze your conversion data, and exclude the items that do not convert well or lower the prices of items that draws large traffic but do not convert. As an advertiser, you should always analyze your traffic and conversion statistics and adjust your product feeds based on the ROI.
8. Improve your merchant rating. Consumers are savvy. They look at your merchant rating before they buy products from you. You should make every effort to obtain positive feedback from consumers, and continue to maintain good merchant rating. By having a great merchant rating, you could potentially sell items at a slightly higher price as consumers do not wish to take risk with merchants with negative reviews.
CSE Feed Specifications & Taxonomy
One of the best way to bring traffic to your ecommerce website is to adding your website to the shopping comparison engines (CSE). CSEs index your product data, and present them to the Internet shoppers for price comparison. Online users browsing CSEs are generally in the market to purchase a merchandise, traffic brought to you by CSEs are targeted traffic you may convert to "real" customers. There are more than a dozen CSEs, some FREE and most PAID engines, will help you increase your sales volume.
FREE Shopping Comparison Engines
There are TWO major CSEs that are bringing you FREE traffic: Google Product Search and TheFind.com. As these two CSEs are offering FREE traffic to merchants, it's important that you signup with them before considering any PAID CSEs.
Allows merchants to list products across several relevant Google services including products, maps, base and their Onebox results for product specific search queries. Free to list, catalogs expire every 31 days and they accept manual or bulk uploads via FTP. Formally known as Google Base.
Google Product Search Taxonomy
Comparison shopping search engine that lists products by brand, stores and styles. Asks users to submit the url of their store homepage and allow bot access to the product pages that you wish to be crawled and indexed. Free to list, free to sign up and use. Crawler keeps items active and updated so merchants don't have to worry about re-submitting.
PAID Comparison Shopping Engines
Nextag is a major player in the Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE) market, with second greatest market share after Google Product Search. Nextag operates on a Cost-Per-Click (CPC) model, with base minimum "bids" preset by product category as shown in the link below.
Win a iSafe Backpack before school starts?
Have you heard of the iSafe Backpack? When I first saw the iSafe Backpack on TV, I thought of Jaycee Dugard who was kidnapped at the age of 11 and found 18 years later as a mom with two children. We live in a scary world with sex offenders every corner of our neighborhood. Should this girl had the iSafe Backpack, could this terrible incident avoided? Chances are pretty good at least someone would have seen the victim, and may have reported to the authorities and this tragic incident could have been avoided. Or, perhaps the offender may have chose to leave the kid alone while the backpack is alarmed with siren.
As a parent of 3 children, I would feel a little more comfortable if my kids have backpacks with security alarm installed. As with any security devices, nothing is foolproof but having a security alarm in a backpack will certainly add security.
We will give away one iSafe backpack to a lucky blogger!!!! The backpack will be shipped to arrive BEFORE 2010 school year starts! The winner will be selected and the backpack will be shipped on August 17th 2010.
The iSafe Backpack has paired up with Broadband Media to ramdomly give away a iSafe Backpack to one of bloggers!!! There are a number ways you can gain entries in this give away! YOU get to pick and choose which one or all that you would like to participate in… The more you do, the better your odds are of winning!
- Tweet this give away and tell people to go to webtrafficexchange.com, and come back here and provide the link to your tweet.
- Share your thoughts and experiences by adding comment to this article.
- Become a fan of iSafe Bags on facebook, and comment on this blog.
- Become a fan of Kiddie Toys on facebook, and comment on this blog.
- Do a clever ways to spread the word about iSafe backpack, and comment on this blog.
Related Information:
- Where can I buy a iSafe backpack? You may find one at Kiddie Toys or iSafe Bags.
- Backpack Thieves Beware, The iSafe Is Here by CBS channel 11 TV, July 7, 2010.
- "iSafe Backpacks & Bags" is a registered trademark filed under various categories.
- Keep your kids safe with the iSafe Backpack.
- The iSafe Bag – A Smart Way to Keep Kids Safe
Google Merchant Center — Disapproved Data Feed
We are new to ecommerce, and to Google Merchant Center. We have recently signed up with Google Merchant Center, uploaded a data feed but the feed has been disapproved for unknown reason. Help link sends us to Google Program Policy, but I don't see anything we're violating. Any help is greatly appreciated!
Declined credit card transaction shown as approved by bank
Every once in a while customers call us at Kiddie Toys, and tell us that they are seeing "unauthorized" credit card charge(s) on their bank account. Customers attempt to place an order online, and the credit card declines for some reason but the bank account shows that the charge went through. We look up our payment gateway and see multiple "declined" transactions. Customers ask us to remove the charge(s) for those transactions that were never approved on our end. So, here is the customer's question and the merchant's response.
Q. I have tried to purchase an item online, but my credit card was declined. However, when I call my bank they are telling me the charge when through. My credit card company tells me that your company double charged my credit card, and you're telling me the order didn't go through. I trust my bank, so please remove the charge(s) from my bank.
A. The answer is both the merchant and the bank are right!. You're credit card charge has been declined from merchant's perspective, but the charge went through from buyer's perspective. It is the way how the banks operate, so it's not your fault nor merchant's fault. The merchant cannot remove the charge, so please do NOT ask merchant to remove this charge. The charge will be on "pending" state, and the money will never be taken out of your credit card account but the reserve will be put aside so it will reduce your credit limit until the transaction clears on it's own within 2-5 business days. The bank will say "ask the merchant to call in to cancel this transaction", but the merchant CANNOT call in on your behalf as the credit card companies will not share account information with non-account holders such as the merchant.
To understand why this is happening, you'll have to understand how credit card transactions are processed. For full explanation, please read the Credit Card Processing Diagram with explanation below.
1. When a buyer commits an order, the credit card transaction goes to the payment gateway provider such as Authorize.Net and forwards the transaction to Merchant Bank's Processor.
2. The information is then sent to your bank ("issuing bank"), and your bank will either approve or decline the transaction based on customer's available funds. If transaction is declined by your bank, the transaction stops and there is NO problem. The customer's bank account will show transaction declined and so does the merchant's processor so there is no reason to argue with the merchant or bank.
3. If the transaction is approved by your bank, now the transaction is once again go through a security check by the payment gateway company with billing information sent by the issuing bank. If customer entered address, zip code and card code do not match with the credit card billing information provided by the issuing bank, the payment gateway may decline the transaction based upon merchant's fraud security settings. This is the reason why your bank says it's approved, and your merchant says declined -- and, they are both right!! Your bank approved the transaction, but the payment processor declined the transaction.
To conclude, the net result of transaction status is a failure as the payment processor declined the transaction even though your bank approved it. This transaction will NOT show up on your credit card statement as it is declined by the payment processor. To your bank, they'll see this transaction as approved and will temporarily hold ("reserve") this money until the payment processor claims the money (which will never do as it declined the transaction), or a specific time elapses with no action from the payment processor which then releases the reserve. The time it will take to release the fund varies from banks to banks, and it could take anywhere from 2-7 business days.
The reason for multiple "approved" transactions on your bank account may be due to multiple attempts on your part to submit the order when the payment processor declined the previous transaction.
Why would payment gateway company scan a security check and decline the transaction when the issuing bank already approved the transaction? Credit card fraud is one of the fastest growing crimes as more and more people are buying products and services online. When fraud occurs, the banks get their money back from the merchant and the customers get their money back from the banks (with a bit of hassle). It is the merchant who will lose money on fraudulent transactions. To protect merchants and buyers, payment gateway providers implemented additional security check to prevent "possible" fraud.
Note: You may reproduce and distribute contents of this article provided that you give a full credit to the author ("Scott Seong"), and provide a backlink to this page from your webpage. The content shown below is borrowed from Authorize.Net, and we do not have an authority to grant permission to redistribute it's content.
Credit Card Transaction Workflow Diagram
Source: Authorize.Net
1. The merchant submits a credit card transaction to the Authorize.Net Payment Gateway on behalf of a customer via secure Web site connection, retail store, MOTO center or wireless device.
2. Authorize.Net receives the secure transaction information and passes it via a secure connection to the Merchant Bank's Processor.
3. The Merchant Bank's Processor submits the transaction to the Credit Card Network (a system of financial entities that communicate to manage the processing, clearing, and settlement of credit card transactions).
4. The Credit Card Network routes the transaction to the Customer's Credit Card Issuing Bank.
5. The Customer's Credit Card Issuing Bank approves or declines the transaction based on the customer's available funds and passes the transaction results back to the Credit Card Network.
6. The Credit Card Network relays the transaction results to the Merchant Bank's Processor.
7. The Merchant Bank's Processor relays the transaction results to Authorize.Net.
8. Authorize.Net stores the transaction results and sends them to the customer and/or the merchant. This step completes the authorization process – all in about three seconds or less!
9. The Customer's Credit Card Issuing Bank sends the appropriate funds for the transaction to the Credit Card Network, which passes the funds to the Merchant's Bank. The bank then deposits the funds into the merchant's bank account. This step is known as the settlement process and typically the transaction funds are deposited into your primary bank account within two to four business days.
Product Sourcing
If you wish to sell products online, you'll have to source demanding products from reliable suppliers at the best possible prices. One of the requirements for becoming a successful retailer is product sourcing. Product sourcing involves two tasks: (1) identifying the "right" products to sell, and (2) finding one or more reliable sources ("suppliers") at affordable prices. Without "right" products, your effort to launch successful marketing campaigns will fail as not-so-demanding products will not convert well and a lot of your time and money will be wasted.
If you are new to ecommerce and haven't chosen an industry yet, start out with something that you know well. Knowing the industry and category of products that you would like to source will significantly save your time identifying the "right" products. Attend trade shows and subscribe trade magazines to identify the products, manufacturers and distributors.
Trade shows offer great opportunities to meet with multiple suppliers and also help identify upcoming trends. Attending trade show demonstrates that you are a serious buyer, and by being there you'll be able to "see" and "touch" the products and spot potential "hot" items. Looking at the award winners, you'll be able to spot a dozen or more trendy products. Many exhibitors run special promotions in the trade shows, which you can take advantage of. The New York Toy Fair, for example, attracts thousands of exhibitors and tens of thousands of buyers. Trade show is one of the best place to meet with suppliers, and learn more about the products and industry.
· Successful Product Sourcing: How to find REAL Wholeslae Products YOU Can Sell Online by Worldwide Brands.