Can someone look at my sites

[Alana]

Hope no one misunderstood me, I am not saying leave where your getting sales, or even leave auction sites your want to list on. But get a website to call home. 


Alana

[2boysandtoys]

Erin: I can't wait for the day when Two Boys has their own little spot on the internet.  The things your imagination and positive support for others could put into such a site just overwhelms me with possibilities for marketing and sales.


You got the social personality going on, your website would be amazing.

You are so nice!! I'm definitely 'thinking 'bout it'!!!!   

[vinewood]

  bays and alana  ~  u both have great sites  ~ keep u the good work  !!!

[Baysbeauty]

Ah, thanks Wes!!!  You have a really nice site as well.  Now have you decided on your colors yet?? 

 

[The Tavern Wench]

Ah, thanks Wes!!!  You have a really nice site as well.  Now have you decided on your colors yet?? 

 

The 'color' ball is in my court now and I'm having designer's block.   

I know it will hit me like a ton of bricks all of a sudden and I'll have one of those "That's it!" moments. 

[Alana]

I envy you Wes, colors would be so much easier for me to work with than what I am currently dealing with. I am re-writing both my website content and articles and it has really been a long long day.  I thought about hiring someone else to do it all for me, but after a few interviews and other inquiries, I have decided my best recourse is to do it myself.

I am rewriting all the content pages and adding 25 new articles for my websites and my much neglected blog, and when I get done with that, I am going to run over to IWACC and do more work on those two web stores.

Hope everyone is doing well, I am burnt out and taking the dog for a walk.  UGH!!!

[The Bar Keep]

Alana,

Here is a silly question. Do you submit to google base for your sites? Also is there a google base feeder mod in the cart system you are using. You may have answered this in another thread but I tried searching a few of your items from the Cherished site in google products search with no results.


Joe - The Bar Keep

[Alana]

You had me worried, I just checked, I have 3605 individual listings in GoogleBase.  I am there by product name. I get a lot of hits from Google Products, but they won't recognize me as a store because I do not use Google Checkout anymore.  But I have tons of product in there.

[Alana]

You can search for Alana's Vintage Collectibles to find my stuff.  I had to use that name to add both websites products.

[The Bar Keep]

You had me worried, I just checked, I have 3605 individual listings in GoogleBase.  I am there by product name. I get a lot of hits from Google Products, but they won't recognize me as a store because I do not use Google Checkout anymore.  But I have tons of product in there.

Sorry didn't mean to scare you. 

You can search for Alana's Vintage Collectibles to find my stuff.  I had to use that name to add both websites products.

Yep found them that search resulted in 75 products.

One more question. When you were using Google checkout, were your base items showing up with in the search results on product search?

[Alana]

I have more than 75 items in there.  I just went to base and it showed all of them and the links to the individual listings per website. There are several pages.

I still have a Google Checkout account and use it from time to time to invoice phone orders etc..

When I put a search in Google products for my Alana's Vintage Collectibles, there is a Google Checkout cart there saying things with Google Checkout.  So you can search for just products with Google Checkout.  I don't have any since I turned checkout off in my admin.

Here is the issues I had with Google Checkout.  Candy Press integrated it into their updated version 4.1. I had a 3.5, I bought a mod to upload with, not an issue, did all the integrations etc. required by Google Checkout, things went fine but almost like clockwork I got emails from Google telling me I was not compliant, each time I proved I was, month would go by and I would get the same letter. The letter always said the same thing, you need Google Checkout Buttons, and each time I showed them the buttons were there.

Well during one of those months, they sent me a notice telling me I could not use Checkout on the books site because I sold Playboys and it was against their policies. However, they told me I could put a disclaimer on all my Playboys and and I did and got approved and the next month I continued to get the usual emails from them.  One day I was testing my checkout and noticed my Google Checkout buttons missing, contacted them, they said I am not in compliance, I asked how long they had those buttons off, and they said a few weeks.  I asked why did they not contact me, I always responded every month to the "your not allowed to use Google Checkout without Google Checkout buttons (which I always had) and they responded every month with ok your in compliance. They never responded.


I just got sick of it.  So I quit using them.  I have this issue with companies that do things to my site without confronting me.

I honestly did not get a lot from my stats from Google Products, however, the book site did get more than the cherished site in my stats.  The majority of searches from my stats show Google search by product. Not coming from Google Products.


The other issue is even though Candy Press integrated Google Checkout in their new version, they never got permission from Google.  So that is and has always been an issue with Candy Press and Google.  So perhaps they bugged me more since I was a Candy Press cart.  I know others with the same cart that have had the same issues even with the upgraded version.

I did not see a drop in my traffic when I quit using them.

[The Tavern Wench]

I just did a Google Base Products search for Alana's Vintage Collectibles and it said there were 3500. 

I wonder if it depends on exactly how you search.  I went to the Google Base home page, clicked products and then entered it into the search box at the top and told it to search Base.

Wow I don't blame you for not using them Alana.  That would have driven me nuts!  So far so good on the one they integrated with Zen, but I know it's taken them over a year to get it working reliably and that's even with having a Google person helping to write the code.

[Alana]

Yeah I see what you mean when you put in Alana's Vintage Collectibles in their search you get 71 Valentine cards from just one of my categories. Which is nuts.  But if you don't use Alana's Vintage Collectibles and say put in this product by name,

Simplicity 7199 Sewing Pattern

Union Made Brown Velvet Women's Hat

I am in there, just can't really find me unless you put in product name, it works better for my book site because people are searching by title name and I do show up.

[Alana]

Yeah I went there three times just now and got different number of product numbers. I am not too sure I am all that impressed with Google Base, put I do upload every month.

[Alana]

As for when doing a regular search on Google, did my products show up as a Google Checkout on the main Google site?  No

The onlyr time I seen the Google Checkout on the main search was on the right side where people have paid ads.  I have never seen that checkout button on main search. In product search on Google I have seen it. In fact I believe they have a whole search in Google Products for Google checkout items only.

I have other gateway options other than PayPal but have never felt a need to use them.  I have a lot of buyers who will checkout with PayPal with no account and it works. One thing I did discover on PayPal that is not really visible is that if you sell a lot of products you can get lower rates.  I will have to find that again.  Or if I can't find it, you can call and ask them about it too.  They do offer that option to lower percentage rates.

The thing about PayPal is it is very expensive but I get money back for using my Paypal debit card, hubby is a truck driver, and all his purchases are with the PayPal debit card.  So this off sets my fees big time.