How To Profit From Froogle Search
Because Froogle appears to favor the "big box" online
retailers, it may at first appear that there isn't much
advantage to participating. However, my experience with earlier
price-shopping portals like MySimon has given me a little
insight into winning strategies that even the "little guy" can
win with:
Tip 1: Control The Content If you spend just a little time
surfing around Froogle, you'll see very quickly that some
products have clear and enticing descriptions, while others seem
to be random snippets from the product page. Those with clear
descriptions are from the sites that have taken the time to give
Froogle a data feed. It's not enough to show up in the search,
if the searcher doesn't click through to your site.
It appears that Froogle allows merchants to make their product
descriptions into miniature sales pitches. At the moment,
Froogle is just a beta test, but if it becomes a popular
service, it might well be worth engaging the services of a
professional copywriter to create your product descriptions. If
your online store isn't converting traffic into customers as
fast as you'd like, maybe it's time to do that anyway.
Tip 2: Leverage The Price Since you're providing Froogle with a
data feed, you can set the price that's displayed on Froogle.
While you can't offer Froogle's visitors a discount on
everything, it makes sense to offer special discount prices (and
special product URLs) for Froogle within major product
categories. For example. there is a category on Froogle for "DVD
Players" - offering a loss-leader discount on a low-end DVD
player will bring more visitors to your site when they search
that category by price.
It's a relatively simple matter to drill down into the Froogle
catalog, to find the names of the major categories your products
will fall into. You'll also want to consider any common keyword
searches that might occur, such as brand names, etc. How many
folks shopping for electric guitar strings are going to type in
"guitar strings," and how many will type in "gibson strings?"
Make sure your product titles and descriptions include brand
names, if those brands have any value in your marketplace.
How To Make The Most Of Every Froogle Referral Doing a good job
of building your data feed, with effective product names and
descriptions, will certainly bring you more traffic. Once you
get them to your store, there are three things you *must* do:
close the sale, follow up on the sale, and provide a reason for
that visitor to start their shopping excursion at your store
next time, instead of Froogle. This is doubly true if you decide
to offer substantial discounts, or even loss- leaders, to bring
visitors to your website.
1. Upsell and Cross-Sell! If your shopping cart software doesn't
let you suggest guitar strings to someone who's getting ready to
buy a guitar, it might be time to shop for a new cart. If you
can't show the person who's about to buy that $49 loss- leader
DVD player why the $99 player is worth the extra money, you're
throwing profits down the drain.
2. Get Permission To Keep Selling! When someone makes a purchase
from you, capture their email address and ask for permission to
send them further special offers. Amazon probably brings in more
business by follow-up email than they do from any other source.
A personal email from a customer service representative will
dramatically reduce returns, and increase the number of
customers who buy again. The bigger the sale price, the more
important this personal touch can be.
3. Offer Sticky Services And Content! If you sell 20 kinds of
DVD players, providing reviews of them all, and side-by-side
comparisons, will bring people back when it's time to upgrade.
The more useful and impartial the information, the better. There
are plenty of ways you can enhance your website to make it a
better shopping destination.
Is It Worth The Effort? Right now, Froogle is just a "beta
test." Google might expand it, or they might shut it down, at
any time. The fact that Froogle takes no commission, and charges
merchants nothing, should be a strong incentive for merchants to
participate. Beyond that, I have learned not to underestimate
the Google team - a few years ago Google itself was just a
research project, and now they control 2/3rds of all searches on
the web.
Hopefully, this article has given you a few ideas about how to
compete on Froogle, and other price-shopping portals. I welcome
your feedback (you can email me at froogle@cannedhelp.com), and
I'd love to hear anything new you've discovered about Google,
Froogle, or any other search engine.
I wish you success...