It has been found during a recent survey that many small business owners that have an ecommerce website are reluctant to use the new Google Shopping platform.
Ecommerce Websites State Lack Of Resources To Use Paid Google Listings
Previously, in order for products sold online to be listed in Google Product Search/Google Shopping, all an ecommerce website needed to do was submit their product data and feeds to Google Merchant Centre or rely on Google being able to easily crawl the web and find their product offerings. Since this shopping search engine was made available in 2002 (when it was named Froogle), there has never been a charge to use this service.
It was a free, organic listing for ecommerce websites to benefit from as their products listings which featured elements of good SEO, could appear at the top of the search engine and access a larger market of shoppers.
However, as of this year only merchants that pay a fee will be listed. Google state the reason behind this change is to better connect merchants with the right customers. However recent results from a survey of 600 ecommerce website owners that had a turnover of less than £31500 revealed that just 15% of them are likely to use this paid listing service. Surprisingly, only one out of four larger retailers who have a significantly greater amount of financial resources will consider listing their products on Google Shopping.
Lack of resources was found to be the main reason for small online businesses shying away from this opportunity to reach larger markets online. Instead, many are going to be relying on word of mouth and social media promotions to reach customers.
Cost Effective Ways To Increase Awareness Of Your Ecommerce Website
Regular increase in traffic is a crucial aspect of successful ecommerce websites. Your website needs to get noticed by more and more people in order to generate increased sales and revenue. Just one standalone ecommerce website will not give your business the best opportunity to reaching wider markets. Multi-channel ecommerce via online marketplaces gives a great opportunity to sell more online.
Completely free multi-channel services like utilising eBay, Amazon and Play.com is an unrealistic expectation. Therefore some budgeting will need to be done in order to make the most out of these opportunities in the most cost effective manner, in order to see a good return on investment.
For more information on how you can achieve this, contact Store Express ecommerce website solutions experts.
Telephone: 0845 050 3500 or email: sales@storeexpress.co.uk