Tag Archives: Google

Commative launches new Magento extension for Google Shopping

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Commative, the developer of some of the leading Magento themes and extensions, is pleased to announce its latest Magento extension for Google Shopping. This powerful tool enables e-commerce companies to manage and list their products to Google’s latest product listing directory from their Magento admin panel.

Google Shopping is an increasingly dominant price comparison engine that is highly visible when searching for products on Google providing an ideal avenue for online retailers to connect with shoppers on desktop, mobile and tablet devices. When customers search for a product, Google Shopping will show a selection of provide pictures, pricing, product details and all the other information customers need to purchase the product.

With Commative’s new Magento Google Shopping Extension, you can easily manage this new sales opportunity through your Magento admin panel. The tool will automatically update information and prices when you change your main catalog. You can easily map the product to the category of your choice in Google and configure the settings down the product level.

Try this new Magento extension today and buy with confidence: Commative’s extensions and themes all come with 30 day money-back guarantee, free professional support and updates for life!

Thanks,

The Commative Team

 

Google Wallet Mobile ATM – Print Cash from your Phone

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Cash is king and as much as the world continues to go digital, Google realizes that traditional methods of commerce are still important. Starting April 1st, Google is introducing Google Wallet Mobile ATM giving Android users access to cash on demand with their own personal phone-based ATM.

Using the newest encryption methods you’ll be able to access funds from your bank, credit card, and other accounts to give you paper cash on the go. Google’s mobile ATM will also allow users to issue out one dollar bills, as opposed to the traditional limitation of twenties only.This kind of small cash access will revolutionize small transaction commerce and Google’s software will keep a history of all transactions so you can easily monitor your spending and withdrawals.

Leave it to Google to debut its most innovative products each year on April 1st!

The Commative Team

Google Makes 65 Changes to Search in August and September

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Keeping your Magento store on the first page of Google search is among the most important things you can do. That said, it’s vital you stay on top of changes to Google’s search algorithm so that you keep and improve your ranking.

Google is always testing and changing the algorithms that control its search function and it isn’t slowing down going into the Fall. Google has a fresh collection of 65 changes for August and September that are important to stay on top of. Among the updates are:

  • LTS. [project “Other Ranking Components”] We improved our web ranking to determine what pages are relevant for queries containing locations.
  • #83105. [project “Snippets”] We refreshed data used to generate sitelinks.
  • Imadex. [project “Freshness”] This change updated handling of stale content and applies a more granular function based on document age.
  • #83709. [project “Other Ranking Components”] This change was a minor bug fix related to the way links are used in ranking.
  • #84010. [project “Page Quality”] We refreshed data for the “Panda” high-quality sites algorithm.
  • #84211. [project “Snippets”] This launch led to better snippet titles.
  • #81360. [project “Translation and Internationalization”] With this launch, we began showing local URLs to users instead of general homepages where applicable (e.g. blogspot.ch instead of blogspot.com for users in Switzerland). That’s relevant, for example, for global companies where the product pages are the same, but the links for finding the nearest store are country-dependent.

The Commative Team

Google Shopping Goes Live October 17th!

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Google’s massive shift from Froogle-style free product listings to PPC-style paid ads goes live October 17th. Commative has talked about this upcoming shift before, but with the actual go-live date fast approaching you should make sure your store, and your ads, are ready for the new way to go to market this holiday season.

Google has released a summary of information related to the Google Shopping launch that you should definitely read if you’re considering migrating to this new advertising platform. You can learn about creating individual ads, automating ad creation from your product catalog, and of course how to optimize for the most cost effective advertising strategy.

Take a look and get your store ready before traffic picks up.

The Commative Team

Learn More About Your Customers With Google Trends

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Google has recently revamped its powerful Google Trends tool to make it easier than ever to see what the world is searching for. If you haven’t heard of Google Trends or used it before, you should. It allows you to put in any search term and see how much traffic that phrase has received historically and regionally.

This can be great for gaining insight into customer demand to really understand what potential buyers are looking for. See if your products seasonal. Get a sense of changing demand depending on geography. You can even enter multiple phrases (comma separated) to see how they compare.

For example, a simple search for Magento will show you just how how popular the platform has become in the last few years. If you search “Beach” and “Snow” you’ll see just how inverted demand can be.

Try a few searches and see what you can learn.

The Commative Team

The Importance of Logos on Your Magento Store

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Microsoft just did something they haven’t done in 25 years, they updated their logo. The change wasn’t extreme, but Microsoft spent a lot of time and money coordinating the release of an entirely new line of software with a look that embodied the direction they’re going.

Your Magento store may not have all the pomp and circumstance of Microsoft, but the logo is an undervalued representation of your company and you should definitely take it seriously. Studies show that customers always start in the upper left corner of the screen so your logo is the first thing they’re going to see.

Once seen, the logo is among the most memorable aspects of your company. You may have a clever name, but most people remember images better than words and the right mix of colors and lines can make the difference in jogging the memory of a customer from long long ago.

A company logo can also be thoughtful and representative of who your company is and what it does. In Microsoft’s case the logo is emblematic of their new Metro user interface that focuses on a collection of brightly colored tiles. For Commative, the logo’s central sphere represents a dense collection of connections (ecommerce) all wrapped in a symbolic gear (steady, reliable work).

Think about what your logo says about your you, how it looks, and how to make it memorable.

The Commative Team

Google Launches Trusted Store Magento Extension

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Google has a little known program called Google Trusted Store that allows online stores to be rated for customer satisfaction. By integrating sales data with Google your store can collect metrics on shipping rates, complaints, and overall quality so that customers can get a better idea of who they’re dealing with.

Now Google has released a Google Trusted Store Magento Extension to help automated this integration, making it easier than ever to give your customers piece of mind when buying. The extension is free and well worth considering if you want to increase conversions and repeat rates.

We can’t stress the importance of reviews enough. Reputation regularly trumps price when it comes to online sales and everything you can do to assure the customer helps. A product or site with lots of great reviews is invaluable to being successful online.

The Commative Team

Google’s June/July Search Changes, All 86 of Them!

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Everyone knows that Google is always hard at work tweaking and modifying its search algorithms, but until you start to keep track of it you don’t really realize the volume of changes they make. These updates cover the gamut of search topics and it’s important to stay on top of what Google is doing to make sure it doesn’t affect you.

Conveniently, Google has a handy Inside Search Blog that makes it easy to keep track of everything they’re doing (they’re as blog-happy as we are). For the months of June and July, Google formally submitted 86 changes to how its search engine works. Among the changes:

  • Improved HTML 5 resource caching for mobile devices
  • Update to comprehension of long-tail queries
  • Change to natural language detection for subjects related to “time”
  • Addition of new parameters for determining trusted sources
  • New functions for identifying freshly updated content

There may not be a whole lot of detail on exactly what has changed (Google is still a black box), but you can still get an idea of the things they’re doing and plan accordingly.

The Commative Team

Keep Your Personal Information Safe (Especially Around Apple)

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You always hear that you have to be really careful about what information you have online.  After recent revelations surrounding Apple’s customer service security protocols (and most probably other companies’ as well) though you’re going to want to be really really really careful.

Wired journalist Mat Honan was targeted by hackers simply because he had a three character Twitter account. He was reasonably cautious with his data and passwords, but some clever social engineering bypassed the need for stolen passwords or bruteforce hacking. With a few simple phone calls to Apple and Amazon and access to publicly available information they were able to get passwords reset, use their newfound access to get into other accounts, and eventually remotely take control of Mat’s iPhone, iPad, .me account, and Twitter account.

It’s scary to think about how vulnerable your information can be (Mat lost all the pictures he had of his daughter’s first year), but there are a few things to remember.

  • Back things up! Even if you’re on the cloud its critical you back up your most important data to disconnected storage with regularity.
  • Don’t use the same passwords! If someone finds one, they’ll have access to your entire online persona.
  • Don’t be obvious! If every email address is yourname@somewhere.com then things can be guessed a little too easily.
  • 2 Factor Authentication!Google supports it and others are starting to as well. It may be slightly more annoying to deal with but it’s dramatically more secure.

Be safe!

The Commative Team

Google Chrome, Your New Best (Free) Friend

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Google’s Chrome browser has risen through the ranks of browsers to become the most popular choice among Internet users, but it does a lot more than just pull up sites. Google was nice enough to include something called Developer Tools with Chrome that allows you to inspect, test, monitor, measure, and analyze your site. In short, you can get just about all the information you need on a site to figure out how to fix problems, make changes, and more.

These tools are perfect for working through a number of the different problems site owners face when trying to troubleshoot or improve their domains.

  • Need to figure out which CSS element controls a certain link or image? Right click on the item in question, select “Inspect Element”, and then see all the associated CSS in the bottom right.
  • Site loading problems? Open up the Developer Tools while on the Console tab and see what errors show up when you refresh the page.
  • Want to modify the code to see what happens? Make changes to your HTML and CSS right in Chrome and get a real time preview of what the site will look like.

There’s a lot more you can do with Chrome so check out our support page, read up on Google, and get to improving your site today.

The Commative Team