I can say with confidence that the feed conversions range from 4% to 7% based on traffic (for my clients).

A simple trick that I do to track performance is creating a unique afiiliate ID for each feed's links. This allows us to easily see Clicks vs. Sales via BV2004 monthly reports for each feed.

I review the sites with clients and we look at the feed(s) performance. Normally, we say there's INSERTNUMBER orders you would've lost had you not had the feed!

Some stores lend themselves to product feeds while some stores don't. If the customer base is the price shopping crowd, serious time should be spent on feeds. Some stores are high end or sell products that simply don't get searched for in product listing websites, I do the feeds no matter what but the conversions don't add up for sites like these.

Keep in mind that it's quite normal to see the top three Froogle/Google Base product results appear at the top in an organic google search. The appearance of those listings is sporadic and I have yet to grasp the formula google uses to decide when to list them. (insight would be appreciated if anyone here knows more on this)

Thanks for that, to ask a daft question, if a search term is picked up as a product type item then the Froogle search pops up at the top of the Google page - correct.

If I have pushed my product to that particular item where will I rank on the page - is it just the lowest price goes first and that is all??


I see the relevance results I guess I mean is that all there is to it, none of the complicated Google ranking for example???

Thanks for the nugget Noah...will pass it onto my clients :)

Happy Thanksgiving.....


http://www.bvsoftware.com/Forum...lt.aspx?f=79&m=42581

I think the success rate of your froogle feed greatly depends on your industry. As an example going to froogle and typing in NEC 20" LCD will give about 2000 results. However, type in a specific model and you'll get about 80 results. If you're a reseller that changes the manufacturers sku when you sell froogle may not benefit you a great deal without significant work on FEO, if you sell by direct skus it can be a totally different ball game. If you sell a product you make that is part of a larger category likewise I imagine Noah is correct in there being a lot of work to get it up in the standings.

BigHeadRob has it right. Part of the GAP stems from those that were "in" on development and understand what the overall design was all about. The framework was put in place for great things in the future, the gap is that there was very little in the way of end user examples of these features. Some of it is one group looking at what it can do in the future versus the store owner wanting to know what can be done now. The common goal is there but the lack of understanding or the assumption of understanding ends up being the source of "heat".

There were two main areas I was critical of in the release, the lack of continuity in themes from the previous version which Cliff helped to eliminate, and the lack of a froogle feed. Rob is right, there are some companies that have a staff member who is tech savy or that have $5,000 to spend on themes and development, but for many that is a budget buster at least to start. Having a good working base, a series of themes consistent with the previous version (again mainly done now) and some examples of the features such as the froogle feed is huge. I haven't yet tried the froogle feed, I will on Monday, but it's exactly what was discussed, helpful but not to the point it eliminates the need for a paid plugin later. I also hope it serves as an example of how to integrate a plugin for those of us that haven't already done so.

I still think Cliff should have been adopted for a week by BV to morph the Fresh Start theme for this version. Hopefully in a future SP that will be included as I think it's something that will entice newcomers.

Everyone needs to see the other perspective, I need to realize that the help may be there for $$$ and those that get the $$$ need to realize the answer for a lot of small businesses isn't to spend $$$ at least initially. By bridging that GAP hopefully more will flourish from the little web store to a bigger web store generating more business for everyone from BV to the hosts and developers. If the barrier to entry is so great, or the obstacles making success more difficult too great, nobody benefits other than those already doing well, or that already have the $$$. We're all in the same boat to an extent. If the web store owners had unlimited money we'd just hire people for whatever we needed but that is unrealistic. Likewise though the "other side" needs to understand the fundamental arguement you are making in saying things like the software would have to come out a year later to include these things are admitting that Marcus isn't sitting on the rights to a diamond mine and has infinite amounts of money to hire developers. If the store owners can't expect infinite resources for development the people saying we shouldn't be asking these things need to understand for many the layout of $1500-2000 is a significant drain. It's a tradeoff all around and there is a middle ground.