I have a soft-spot for comparison shopping engines (CSEs). I think they are a great medium for e-commerce websites to be able to use to get their products to their consumers. Google is always working to give the searcher the most relevant result as fast as possible, and Google Shopping (as well as other CSEs) are an easy way for users looking to buy, to cut out all results that won’t lead them to a shopping cart.
Using CSE’s for our e-commerce clients allows us to reach a target market that is ready to make a purchase. I’ve always put an emphasis on loading data feeds frequently to various CSE’s to ensure the most up-to-date information is available to the searchers. But I take it further by providing as much detail as possible about all the products I am posting. I will spend time analyzing the results pages of CSE’s in order to work toward having my client’s products show up. However, having my client’s product listings appear is only half the battle – I want the users to click on the result as well.
By leveraging titles, images and other product details, I work to improve the click-through rates (CTRs) of their listings. Recently, I realized that there is even more I can do in Google Shopping to increase CTR’s – optimizing the individual product descriptions!
Although it is not the default setting while using the iPad, many searchers using Google Shopping on their iPad have the ability to see product descriptions in the listings before they click on the result. This means that you can optimize the product descriptions and give more information about your product to increase their likelihood of clicking your result and buying.
See the image below from Distilled’s recent blog posting “Guide to Google’s New Tablet Search“.
Product CTRs on Comparison Shopping Engines – Google Shopping
by Allie Kelly on August 31st, 2011 | ~ minute read
