If you operate an e-commerce enabled website, don’t forget about price comparison service Google Product Search (sometimes known as “Google Shopping” or “Froogle”).

It’s free to use and can send you highly targeted visitors looking to buy the very products that you sell online. If you’re looking for a way of increasing your website sales, Google Product Search is certainly worth investing some time in.

Here’s how it works.

1. Create a Google Base account.

2. Create a small file (or ‘feed’) of your products. This is a basically a big spreadsheet containing all the important information about your products. This typically includes your unique product code, a title and description of the product, what sort of category it would fit in, a direct link to the product on your website, a price and the relevant product image from your website. A full description of this process can be found in the Google Base help and will vary slightly depending on what sort of products you sell. If you run a large e-commerce store however, your web developers or content management system may be able to create this file automatically for you, to save you having to do it manually.

3. Upload your finished product file to Google, who will then process it.

4. Wait. Google will inform you if there are any problems with the file and you can correct them if necessary. If there aren’t any errors, in about 24 hours, you’ll start to see your products displayed on Google Product Search and within the Google search results pages.

For example:

There are some restrictions with what can and can’t be sold with Google Product Search. Also, it’s not guaranteed that your products will always appear. Feeds expire after about a month and will need to be resubmitted (just to keep all their results fresh). Error messages might sometimes be confusing too for the less experienced, but even so, Google Product Search is still a golden opportunity to promote your e-commerce enabled products if you’re not already doing so.

And did we mention it’s free? Perfect for start-ups and small businesses.

If you need any more advice on promoting your website or business, or would like to receive one of our free marketing advice packs then contact us.