Google has updated the Shopping tab Listings report in Search Console, providing merchants with listing statuses and opportunities for growth.
The latest additions to the Shopping tab, introduced last November, should help vendors showcase their products effectively.
Notifications And Growth Opportunities In The Listing Report
The latest Shopping tab Listing report changes could help merchants increase sales by ensuring products are visible on Google.
Whoa, a new report just launched in Google Search Console! Within the ‘Shopping tab listings’ report (previously empty), it now tells you how many products can appear. Apparently it’ll start showing opportunities for getting more clicks/rankings soon! https://t.co/F7dqf1Ikespic.twitter.com/cKPE195BKV
First, merchants will now receive alerts when their products no longer appear on the Shopping tab due to any issues that might arise.
This notification mechanism is expected to act as an early warning system, allowing businesses to resolve issues that prevent products from appearing in Google Search.
Screenshot from Google, September 2023
Second, the updated report will identify opportunities for merchants to boost clicks and enhance the rankings of their products on Google.
For example, it would instruct merchants to enter the most relevant information about shipping and return policies for consumers.
The tool could help businesses optimize their product visibility on the top search engine.
How To Access The New Shopping Tab Listing Report Features
To take advantage of these updates, merchants must associate their Search Console property with a Merchant Center account.
Any Search Console property owner with admin rights to the corresponding Merchant Center account can set up this association.
Once this is done, all users accessing that Search Console property can leverage these newly added features.
Google stated that this rollout will happen gradually over the next few weeks.
Merchants are advised to check the Shopping tab listings section in the Search Console for availability and follow the instructions to integrate these features.
Ensuring Product Visibility For Consumers
This update marks another step by Google to strengthen its ecommerce infrastructure for online store owners.
Thanks to the new Shopping tab features, Google Merchant Center and Search Console users can expect a more streamlined, efficient, and effective way to manage and grow their product listings.
As Amazon has become more competitive, refining your content for your ideal customers is vital to maximizing conversions and ad performance.
Amazon advertising adoption rates have continued to rise, especially with the limitation of targeting capabilities off Amazon’s platform for Google and Meta.
This overall increase in ad spend on Amazon has made it so that you must have a more thorough marketing plan and converting content to be successful on the platform.
A/B testing is one way to ensure you can hold your organic rankings and current ad performance on Amazon. It also allows you to adjust your content to rank for your most important keyword terms more easily and make incremental improvements to your advertising returns.
Since SEO on Amazon is primarily based on conversions, small changes that increase conversion for your most important keywords can significantly impact your ability to capture organic traffic and sales.
We have seen that changing the word order in a title can decrease Total Advertising Cost of Sale (TACOS) and increase the percentage of items attributed to organic sales.
We have also seen that these changes can change how a listing converts for important keyword phrases.
Additionally, A/B testing provides insights into what is important to your customers, which can also help as you develop product extensions for your brand.
Why A/B Testing Is Important
On Amazon, most of the product detail page conversion rate optimization (CRO) is handled for you. However, your primary image and title are pivotal in both ad performance and generating organic traffic.
This is because these two elements are creative for most ROI-focused ad campaigns on the platform.
They are the only part of your listing that customers see from the Amazon search engine result pages (SERPs).
Screenshot from Bebly, July 2023
Small changes to the order or the phasing of a title can greatly impact how your ads perform, allowing you to rank for competitive but highly relevant keywords.
If your brand does not have a lot of existing branded searches, it is especially important to use an exact match of your most relevant keywords in the title whenever possible.
If you have more existing branded search, focus on ensuring that the product and its key features are easily identifiable even when the title is truncated.
Changes to the title, bullets, and A+ content within your listing can significantly impact how well your product is indexed by Amazon’s search algorithm.
Therefore, A/B testing allows you to experiment with different content variations, emphasis, and use cases, and identify what resonates best with your target customers.
When Should You Consider An A/B Test
Low Click-Through Rate (CTR)
A low click-through rate (CTR) on ads often indicates issues with your title or primary image, assuming that target keywords are relevant. Optimizing these elements can help attract more clicks and increase ad performance.
Weak Conversion Rate (USP)
A low conversion rate or a weak Unit Session Percentage (USP) across your entire listing can be a result of suboptimal titles, images, secondary images, or bullet points.
It is crucial to ensure that your listing provides all the necessary purchase information and aligns with your customers’ search keywords.
Testing Pricing
Price elasticity should be considered as well. Assess if there are similar offers priced significantly higher or lower than yours; your pricing may be deterring potential buyers.
Be sure to look at what similar products are running on your listing. If you see a product that is very close to the same quality as yours at a much higher or lower price, check the data in Brand Analytics and see if those competitors are out-converting you for similar keywords.
If you have already addressed any potential content issues in your copy and images, now would be the time to see if testing pricing could help your overall sales performance.
How To A/B Test On Amazon
Manage My Experiments
Utilize the “Manage My Experiments” feature whenever possible, as it ensures clean and reliable data while minimizing external factors.
The winning test variant can be automatically implemented on your listing, streamlining the process. Keep in mind that statistically significant results require a sufficient volume of traffic and conversions.
Not all products and not all sellers are eligible to use Manage My Experiments (MME).
Here are some of the requirements of the program:
Only registered brand owners are allowed to run experiments with MME.
ASIN must have significant traffic, as determined by Amazon.
Only one ASIN is allowed to be tested at a time.
ASINs that Amazon determines do not have enough traffic will not show as eligible for testing. The only way to make ASIN eligible is to drive additional traffic, such as with advertising.
Screenshot from Amazon Seller Central, July 2023
When you create your test, you can choose between a set duration – or for “To Significance,” Amazon recommends that you run to significance.
For the set durations, your testing options are 4, 6, 8, or 10 weeks. You can also set the test to publish the winning creative automatically.
Other Testing Options
Manual testing can be done by comparing Detail Sales and Traffic Report data.
Simply make the creative changes through Seller Central for a specific period of time (I recommend at least three weeks with each creative option) and compare the traffic and conversion data for each period.
The product’s conversion rate on Amazon is found in the Detailed Sales and Traffic report under the heading Unit Session Percentage.
A/B Testing Best Practices For Amazon
To make the most of your A/B testing efforts on Amazon, it is essential to follow these best practices:
Test One Variable at A Time
To have clear results, it is important you only test one variable at a time. To a degree, using Manage My Experiments helps with this.
However, especially if you are not using Manage My Experiments, limit big changes to advertising spend and strategy during your testing. Start with more significant changes and then fine-tune. Experiment with substantial modifications to gauge their impact, and gradually refine the details based on your gathered data-driven insights.
Consider Important Shopping Dates
Some dates tend to impact customer buying behaviors.
This is an extreme example, but testing the week of Thanksgiving will not give you the best results, as buyers don’t buy with the same consideration and velocity during this period.
This is also especially important if you run manual tests outside Manage My Experiments.
If someone were to run a test in November with the first creative in the first two weeks and the second creative in the last two weeks, the results would artificially point to the second option because of increased buying in general for most products the week of Thanksgiving.
Consider Outside Variables
Outside influences like blogs or social media mentions can also impact manual tests. Consider running tests for longer durations or repeating them to validate the results.
You might also want to watch for any social mentions or increased traffic on your website to identify if a blog or other mention could have caused an increase in your branded traffic.
Third-party tools like Semrush’s free A/B testing tool can also be helpful but ensure the listing changes take effect to obtain accurate results.
Amazon Handles The Page CRO – Continue To Refine Your Content
Focus on content testing, as Amazon already handles most of the page conversion rate optimization. Refining the content can better align it with your target customers’ preferences.
A/B testing plays a pivotal role in maximizing your Amazon ad performance.
By leveraging this practice, businesses can identify areas for improvement in their listings, optimize content based on customer preferences, and stay competitive in the marketplace.
Utilizing the flags for testing and employing best practices, you can make data-driven decisions and effectively target your ideal customers, resulting in improved conversions and enhanced ad performance on Amazon’s platform.
Optimize your data with greater reliability and efficiency.
In this comprehensive guide, we’ll walk you through some of the strategies, tactics, and tools you need to master multichannel marketing for your ecommerce brand.
Let’s explore four key ways you can improve product discoverability, run smarter ad campaigns, and amplify your online presence:
Feed Management.
Marketplace Integration.
PPC Optimization.
Insights & Analytics.
1. Optimize & Organize All Your Product Data
The key to making sure all of your products are visible is to make sure your feed is optimized.
Your goal here is to make sure your products stand out enough to captivate the right audience and get them to convert.
Successful ecommerce merchants focus on feed management and product categorization to optimize and organize their products for multiple sales channels – and you should, too.
What Is Feed Management?
Feed management is the process of filtering, enriching, and optimizing product data to sell products on multiple platforms in a seamless way.
What Is Product Categorization?
Product categorization, also known as product taxonomy, is organizing products into specific, hierarchical categories.
Basically, this is similar to creating virtual aisles for your online customers to shop in.
Having solid product categories makes it easier and faster for potential customers to find what they’re looking for.
It can also skyrocket your search engine rankings by allowing Google to crawl your site and index pages faster.
Easier navigation for consumers and Google bots means an increase of up to 35% more sales for you.
How To Optimize & Organize Your Product Data For More Sales
Time Required: Varies significantly for each marketplace
Learn: Start by learning the rules and requirements for each individual marketplace. Each marketplace has different rules and requirements for how your product feed should appear.
Centralize: Then, instead of creating dozens of different XML, CSV, or text files, create a central hub of information that can easily feed into all of your potential marketplace platforms.
Optimize: Focus on making sure that every piece of required product data, such as GTINs, product availability, optimized product descriptions, etc. is included in your centralized product feed. Then, make sure products are placed in their most intuitive product categories for each channel.
Connect: Finally, begin the process of selecting and connecting all of your marketplace platforms to that centralized document.
If you don’t have the bandwidth to manually import all of your data sources into a single product feed, automation can help.
The Easy Way: How To Automate Feed Management
If your business has thousands of products, your true first task is to speed up your inventory management process.
Use Smart Categorization to categorize millions of products instantly with ecommerce AI.
By merging multiple data sources into one powerful feed, you can start:
Bringing products to market faster and growing your sales in a sustainable way.
Boosting visibility across top-performing channels and reaching your target audience where they are.
Optimizing your inventory to get the most out of each channel and better identify top performers.
Taking your business to the next level by automating low-impact work and focusing on what matters most.
2. Choose The Key Digital Marketplaces That Will Grow Your Revenue
The best way to maximize product discoverability for your business is to position your products where they can be easily found.
Where are your customers shopping? Amazon? Etsy?
You need to be there, too.
How To Configure A Product Feed For Online Marketplaces
Time Required To Upload: Varies significantly for each marketplace
Each marketplace is different and has different product requirements for your product feed.
Repeat these steps for each marketplace you want your products to sell on:
Create: Follow your chosen marketplace’s process to create a seller account. Some marketplaces, such as Amazon, require you to have an initial personal account before you’re allowed to create a business or seller account.
Verify: Follow the process of verifying your business’ legal existence, tax information, shipping policies, and privacy policies.
Discover: Learn the required, optional, and custom product data figures, as well as recommended file types or data transfer methods (XML feed file, API connection, or automated third-party provider).
Configure: Set up your XML file or database, depending on which marketplace you’re connecting to, in accordance with their requirements. Google Merchant Center allows you to connect your products to their marketplace by an API or product feed, so select your preferred method, and plan accordingly.
Map Product Categories: Each marketplace has different product taxonomies, so be sure you map each individual product to the correct version of your chosen marketplace’s categories. For example, you may store candleholders under “Home Decor > Shelf Decor,” however, Google and your users will expect it to be placed under “Home & Garden > Decor > Home Fragrance Accessories > Candle Holders.”
Upload: Connect to or manually upload your completed document to your selected marketplace.
Validate: Each marketplace will need to process and provide insight or repair instructions to make sure your products will display properly.
Check For Orders: Manually check for orders placed on each marketplace and enter them into your point of sale (POS) system or shopper database.
Repeat: Repeat these steps for each individual e-commerce marketplace your audience shops on.
The Easy Way: Upload Products To All Marketplaces In Minutes
Automatically list your products on multiple marketplaces in minutes, not hours.
Ensure your feed will be accepted by easy marketplace by quickly seeing the errors and requirements for the feeds.
Cut your product feed research time down by having everything in one place.
Use fine-tuned controls to adjust your listings and even filter certain products you don’t want to advertise.
Fully synchronize all marketplace orders and manage everything from one place.
3. Engage Your Audience With Optimized, Impactful PPC Ads
At this point, you’ve got your expanded ecommerce business all set up and ready to go.
Your marketplace presence is diverse and your products are all categorized appropriately.
However, on some marketplaces, like Amazon, your products may never be seen without ads.
So, it’s time to get some ads running to help boost brand awareness and generate more product clicks.
The goal here is to be able to configure, launch, and customize your campaigns, all from your product feed – and you want to do it as quickly and efficiently as possible.
Generate your campaigns in no time. Simply generate a Search, Display, and Shopping campaign structure from one place, and keep it automatically updated based on your product feed.
Create targeted ads for all your products. Creating hyper-relevant ads can often be challenging, especially when your product offering is large and you want to highlight all your items. Combine static with dynamic data from your product feed to make your ads more relevant than ever.
Increase engagement with different ad formats. Automatically create a highly customized campaign structure consisting of RSAs, DSAs, Shopping, and PMax campaigns.
Automate your keyword & URL strategy. Easily set up long-tail keywords from your feed, inserting dynamic keywords into your ads, and defining final URLs at keyword level in just a couple of clicks.
Optimize ads with powerful rules. Always ensure that your copy is either included or excluded in ads. Optimize your ads automatically with Channable’s “If-Then” rules. Simply connect your data feed to campaign creation so you can take full control of your ads and enjoy real-time updates to things like sales prices, stock information, shipping costs, and more.
4. Use Data Insights & Analytics To Inform Product Growth
By using data-driven intelligence and performance metrics fine-tuned to your KPIs, you can spot key trends, make more informed decisions, and boost your overall brand image.
Here’s how real-time performance data can help boost your results:
Automate product segmentation based on performance, and optimize campaign goals based on ROAS or CPS. Some tools even provide a full overview of your best and least performing products, so you can lead with data and take your business to the next level.
Monitor your performance data on different levels. For instance, you can import revenue and cost data from your preferred channels over a certain date range right into a platform like Channable. This way, you can always calculate new data such as ROAS at a product level and make the right decisions.
Gain actionable insights with Performance Max. Use performance data to segment your products into PMax that have different goals. Read your goals by understanding which products you need to boost in views or clicks.
Integrate with Google Analytics and Google Ads to import data straight into Channable’s dashboard for performance-based optimizations. Make data-driven decisions for your digital marketing strategy, boost top sellers, or create more visibility for low-performing items.
With smarter data, you can run more accurate campaigns and optimize your product listings to help customers find exactly what they need from you with ease.
Transform Your Ecommerce Marketing Strategy With Channable
We live in a hyperconnected era, where consumer attention spans are fleeting and technology is constantly evolving.
And the only way to thrive in this fast-paced digital landscape is to establish a presence across various platforms, and reach your customers where they are, at the time they’re ready to convert.
Channable can help with that.
Through automated feed management, seamless marketplace integration, targeted PPC optimization, and smarter insights/analytics, you can unleash the full potential of multichannel ecommerce marketing.
In a significant development that heralds a new era in online shopping, Amazon has begun to roll out artificial intelligence (AI)-generated customer review summaries for its products.
These summaries aim to give shoppers a snapshot of a product’s best or worst features, allowing for an expedited decision-making process.
While it has clear benefits for customers, it also raises serious concerns about the reliability of an AI-generated summary and its impact on seller reputation and conversion rates.
How AI-Generated Customer Review Summaries Could Benefit Consumers
AI-generated customer review summaries could have significant implications for sellers as they appear above all other customer reviews.
The summary includes a disclaimer below that it is “AI-generated from the text of customer reviews.”
Screenshot from Amazon, August 2023
For sellers whose products have primarily positive reviews, the benefits are apparent.
Customers will no longer have to sift through hundreds or thousands of reviews to understand a product’s best features.
By offering concise summaries, Amazon could create a more efficient shopping experience, a crucial aspect of today’s fast-paced world.
Hence, accurate AI-generated summaries could boost conversion rates for products with primarily positive reviews.
The Potential Negative Impact Of AI-Generated Content On Amazon Sellers
Unfortunately for Amazon sellers, AI-generated content also has its downsides.
Screenshot from Amazon, August 2023
AI could analyze a set of reviews and oversimplify perceived product problems.
The review summary might overlook subtle nuances – like user error – leading customers to continue searching for related products.
Even if a product has a strong average rating, its AI-generated summary could highlight one negative feature mentioned often by customers.
That one negative feature, emphasized by the AI, could be enough to make customers choose another product.
In addition, the potential for inaccuracies or hallucinations in AI-generated customer review summaries should concern sellers.
AI-generated summaries could create misconceptions and unfairly harm a seller’s reputation if not meticulously executed.
This also raises questions about the review process and timeline for sellers needing inaccurate AI-generated information removed from their product page.
We have reached out to Amazon for comment.
The Future Of Selling On Amazon With Generative AI
This shift in how reviews are presented on Amazon directly impacts sellers by changing how potential customers perceive their products.
While the benefits of efficient and streamlined communication are apparent, there are serious concerns over the possibility of misrepresentation.
The reliability of AI in delivering unbiased and accurate summaries is at the core of this issue and will be closely watched by sellers and marketers alike.
Amazon is reportedly testing a generative artificial intelligence (AI) tool for sellers that writes copy for product listings.
This marks a significant move in integrating large language models (LLMs) into ecommerce. The tool is anticipated to revolutionize how merchants create and optimize product descriptions.
AI-Generated Product Descriptions
Amazon’s new AI tool, first reported by The Information, allows merchants to generate titles, descriptions, and bullet points for products.
Sellers can enter keywords that describe their product, and the AI responds with a potential title and details for the listing.
The tool is currently being tested with a limited number of sellers.
An Amazon spokesperson confirmed to The Information that they are testing AI solutions for sellers to craft product details that appeal to customers.
With the amount of data Amazon has from product users and customers, it should be able to develop a generative AI tool that crafts descriptions to align with consumer needs.
Generative AI Content Must Adhere To Guidelines
Despite the promise of reducing copywriting efforts, Amazon emphasizes that the tool won’t replace human review and editing.
The company’s strict guidelines for product descriptions ensure that details are reviewed for compliance by Amazon.
These policies cover everything from compliance with relevant style guides to avoiding using HTML, JavaScript, or offensive content.
Sellers must accurately describe their products, avoid creating duplicate pages for existing products, and adhere to specific guidelines for variations and listing styles, including character limits for product titles.
The rules also strictly regulate the content allowed in titles, descriptions, bullet points, or images, ensuring they remain free from inappropriate content, personal contact information, promotional material, or time-sensitive information.
By enforcing these policies, Amazon aims to ensure a clear and consistent customer buying experience while controlling AI-generated product descriptions, thereby maintaining accuracy and integrity in product listings.
Ecommerce Platforms With AI Selling Tools
While an intriguing development, Amazon isn’t the first to implement generative AI features in seller tools.
BigCommerce offers 21 apps and integrations for AI chat, marketing, and personalization.
In addition to hundreds of AI apps, Shopify introduced an AI-powered product description writer and an AI assistant for automating small tasks.
Wix also plans to launch AI-generation tools for building websites, crafting product descriptions, writing blog content, and designing logos.
The Larger Implications Of Generative AI In Ecommerce
Launching this tool could give Amazon sellers a distinct advantage over competitors by reducing the time spent writing product descriptions.
Improved product descriptions – assuming they are accurate – could lead to more sales and reduced returns.
However, not everything is smooth sailing. Amazon’s slow adoption compared to other ecommerce companies could indicate potential challenges in implementing AI solutions efficiently.
Amazon’s move to automate product descriptions with AI and other ecommerce platforms like BigCommerce, Shopify, and Wix could redefine copywriting and content marketing in ecommerce.
While it opens the door for more efficient workflows for ecommerce store owners and marketers, it also raises concerns about the reliability of product descriptions for consumers.
Ecommerce businesses will need to take extra time to review AI-generated content for product pages to ensure it accurately aligns with what the consumer will receive.
AdRoll, a major advertising platform, and WooCommerce, an open-source ecommerce platform for WordPress, have formed a strategic partnership.
This alliance will allow brands to better track and reach online shoppers across multiple channels through coordinated campaigns.
The shared goal is to help brands boost conversions and drive revenue by targeting potential customers across websites, social media, and other platforms.
By joining forces, AdRoll and WooCommerce intend to provide a unified solution that maximizes return on ad spend and captures more sales.
Enhancing Customer Engagement and Increasing Conversions
The integration of AdRoll and WooCommerce enables merchants to add tracking pixels to their websites easily.
This allows real-time monitoring of customer actions like adding items to their cart or viewing the checkout page.
Merchants can use the collected data to create customer profiles based on their shopping journey.
These profiles allow merchants to target customized ads and emails to specific segments.
Further, the integration pulls product information into the AdRoll platform. This lets merchants show advertisements featuring the products website visitors showed interest in.
User-friendly Marketing Automation Setup
AdRoll’s integration with WooCommerce enables marketers to set up and launch personalized marketing campaigns without requiring developer support.
The integration facilitates the straightforward configuration of AdRoll’s marketing automation templates, designed to assist businesses in meeting key marketing objectives such as converting cart abandoners and re-engaging with website visitors who browsed but did not purchase.
The automated workflows combine display and social ads on platforms like Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, Pinterest, and email to influence shopper purchasing behaviors.
Vibhor Kapoor, President of AdRoll, expressed his excitement about the partnership, stating in a press release:
“We are thrilled to partner with WooCommerce to help their merchants increase sales and revenue. AdRoll’s mission is to democratize marketing technology for all sized brands, and this integration enables busy marketers to leverage their data to create personalized, cross-channel campaigns quickly and easily.”
Steve Deckert, Interim VP of Strategic Partnerships at WooCommerce, shared similar sentiments. He said:
“We are excited to bring AdRoll’s proven expertise in retargeting and cross-channel marketing to our merchants. The integration helps them leverage their data to create personalized campaigns that increase sales and revenue, and we are looking forward to seeing the results our merchants will achieve with AdRoll’s platform.”
Integration Availability
The integration between AdRoll and WooCommerce is now available and can be set up by merchants within minutes.
Merchants can find more details about this partnership on the AdRoll website or the WooCommerce marketplace.
WooCommerce, the leading e-commerce platform for WordPress sites, shows no signs of slowing down.
Powering over 3.4 million online stores already, WooCommerce has ambitious plans to expand its reach even further.
In a recent interview with Search Engine Journal, WooCommerce CEO Paul Maiorana revealed upcoming improvements focused on performance, payments, product management, and site design.
Despite challenges in the rapidly changing e-commerce industry, Maiorana remains committed to WooCommerce’s central mission of democratizing online commerce.
The company aims to power 10-15% of all websites globally – eventually.
Leveraging Existing Platforms For Rapid Growth
As WordPress has grown, so too has WooCommerce.
An open-source e-commerce platform built on the platform, WooCommerce has benefited tremendously from the widespread adoption of WordPress.
Maiorana points out that one of the advantages of using WooCommerce with WordPress is that it allows businesses to adapt and change their websites to meet new needs without switching to a new platform – creating .
That creates flexibility to evolve a WooCommerce site within WordPress as it grows.
“With WooCommerce, you can sell anything,” Maiorana notes. “You could build an auction-style site … or run a crowdfunding type of site.”
“WordPress powers 43% of sites on the internet and has broad awareness. Essentially, everybody’s used [it] at some point in their lives.”
Integrating seamlessly into WordPress sites provides WooCommerce access to a massive base of potential customers needing an e-commerce solution.
“As people come into the ecosystem, WooCommerce is the most popular ecommerce solution.”
Simplicity & Flexibility Propel Growth
A core factor in WooCommerce’s success is its blend of simplicity and flexibility, making it easy to set up an online store using WordPress – quickly.
At the same time, WooCommerce offers abundant customization options to meet the needs of larger enterprises.
“You can’t outgrow WooCommerce or WordPress,” Maiorana shares.
A Unified Ecommerce Experience
In response to the demand for a more streamlined ecommerce solution, WooCommerce launched WooExpress, which provides a turnkey solution.
“What we’ve done with WooExpress is essentially to take all of our capabilities in the WooCommerce ecosystem,” Maiorana explains, “and bring those all together into a complete pre-configured package with hosting integrated.” The platform has seen demand that has “blown away our expectations,” according to Maiorana.
Upcoming Enhancements
When asked about future developments and improvements, Maiorana shared a robust roadmap.
The company is focusing on performance and scalability, new checkout interfaces, and introducing a new product editing interface.
Additionally, WooCommerce is adopting the Gutenberg project from WordPress, which provides a visual editing experience for websites.
On future developments, Maiorana shares:
“One of the beauties of working in an open source company is that we work in public, right? So we keep very few things close to our vest, and we have to; it forces us to operate in a very transparent way.”
WooCommerce Enterprise, AI, and Machine Learning
Touching upon the company’s services for larger-scale businesses, Maiorana shared more around the recent launch of WooCommerce Enterprise, which offers stores at scale, just to have a much tighter white-glove support relationship with us.”
To that end, the company is also adapting to the rise of AI and machine learning, with newly-unveiled AI features to assist in product editing; e.g., generating product titles, descriptions, and SEO content.
And, Maiorana adds, “We’ve got a lot that we’re looking at internally, as well.”
Maiorana also mentioned using AI in customer support responses, leveraging tools like DocSpot from the broader WordPress ecosystem to ensure efficient response times.
Future Challenges & Visions
The rapidly changing ecommerce industry presents a significant challenge for WooCommerce: a phenomenon Maiorana acknowledges. However the company is preparing to meet these challenges by staying close to customers and understanding their needs.
“The biggest challenge is that it’s a fast-changing industry. It was already growing quickly pre-COVID,” he explains, “but COVID upended a lot of historical trends, and consumers’ buying patterns have changed dramatically.
As for the future, Maiorana re-affirmed WooCommerce’s mission of democratizing publishing and commerce.
The company aims to increase the percentage of websites powered by WooCommerce, currently at 8.7%, and continue to engage the developer community in its ecosystem.
Takeaways For Marketers & Business Owners
The rise of WooCommerce underscores the power of simplicity, community, and adaptability.
As for what marketers and business owners can do with Maiorana’s observations, the conversation presented some key practical insights:
Leverage existing platforms and communities – and cultivate new ones.
Design intuitive solutions that scale.
Scale with your customers.
Stay true to your core mission, no matter how much you grow.
With ambitious plans for the future, WooCommerce exemplifies how embracing openness and democratization can enable explosive growth.
Google has updated its Product Ratings policies, effective August 28, 2023, on artificial intelligence (AI) and automated content.
Kudos to Duane Forrester, who spotted and shared the policy update on Twitter.
Automated And AI-Generated Reviews
The addition clarifies that reviews generated by an automated program or AI application are not allowed and should be flagged as spam.
Automated Content: We don’t allow reviews that are primarily generated by an automated program or artificial intelligence application. If you have identified such content, it should be marked as spam in your feed using the attribute.
Enforcement Of Updated Policies
To ensure compliance, Google combines automated and human evaluation methods.
Machine-learning algorithms will support this effort while specially trained experts deal with more complex cases requiring context.
Actions against violations can range from disapproving violating content or reviews, issuing warnings, or suspending accounts for repeated or severe offenses.
The corresponding review content will also be blocked if any images are flagged for policy violation.
Additional Product Rating Guidelines
Existing Product Ratings policies aim to maintain the authenticity, legality, and ethicality of the reviews on their platform.
The policies highlight Google’s stance against spam, urging users to flag irrelevant, repetitive, or nonsensical text as spam using the attribute.
The policies also prohibit dangerous products or acts and reviews of potentially harmful or widely illegal regulated products.
To protect reviewers, the policy prevents sharing personal and confidential information, phone numbers, email addresses, or URLs in the review content.
To ensure a clean and respectful review environment, Google’s policies disallow obscene, profane, offensive language, violent or defamatory content, and personal attacks.
The rules clearly state not to submit reviews that stem from conflicts of interest or contain inauthentic remarks.
This includes reviews paid for, employee-written, or composed by individuals with a vested interest in the product.
Illegal content, including unlawful links or those linked to malware, viruses, or harmful software, is strictly prohibited.
In alignment with Google’s safety standards, the policy strictly prohibits sexually explicit content in reviews, promising immediate removal and, in cases involving minors, reporting to law enforcement and the National Center for Missing & Exploited Children.
Reviews that infringe on copyright, trademark, or involve plagiarism also fall foul of the guidelines.
Google’s policy strongly objects to hate speech, cross-promotion of unrelated products or websites, off-topic reviews, impersonation, and duplicate content.
Regarding language, reviews should be submitted in the original language, with Google offering translation options for users.
Maintaining Authenticity
Google’s updated policies highlight the growing need for genuine, human-created content that can be easily distinguished from automated AI-generated content.
This underscores the role of humans in review and rating systems and limits the utility of AI-generated reviews, which could affect how some businesses promote their products.
This commitment helps to ensure that the information and reviews in Google search results are reliable, which is essential for online businesses and consumer trust.
Microsoft is working to improve the online shopping experience for customers by making it less complicated.
Online shoppers encounter pain points such as finding valid deals, determining which product reviews are credible, and navigating a massive variety of products.
Microsoft’s shopping tools, including those on Bing, Microsoft Edge, Microsoft Start, and Outlook, aim to address those pain points.
New AI-Powered Tools for Bing and Edge
Microsoft has launched new e-commerce features for its Bing search engine and Edge web browser that use AI to streamline the shopping experience for users.
These new tools are designed to make shopping more accessible, from finding items to comparing products to purchasing.
They provide shoppers with information from reputable sources to help them make better buying decisions.
Buying Guides
Screenshot from: bings.blog.com, June 2023.
Bing and Microsoft Edge now offer a Buying Guides feature to help people shop for products even when unsure what they want.
For instance, someone searching Bing for “college supplies” will get a customized set of recommendations highlighting the best options in different categories like laptops, backpacks, and calculators.
The recommendations come with easy-to-read comparison charts to see details of similar products side by side.
Buying Guides are currently available to users in the United States, though Microsoft plans to make them accessible to people in other countries over time.
People using the Edge web browser can find the Buying Guides through the sidebar in the browser or through Bing’s chat feature.
Summarized Reviews for Informed Decisions
Screenshot from: bings.blog.com, June 2023.
Choosing a product can be challenging when there are many choices and reviews to consider.
Bing Chat has a new feature, Review Summaries, which will summarize the critical points and prevalent views about a product.
This feature is rolling out worldwide in time for the back-to-school shopping period.
Price Match For The Best Deals
Screenshot from: bings.blog.com, June 2023.
Microsoft has added a new price match feature to its shopping tools in Bing and Edge, tracking an item’s price even after you buy it.
If the price drops after the purchase, the feature can help you request a refund from the retailer for the difference.
Microsoft’s price match feature will work with major U.S. retailers with price match policies. It will roll out to more countries over time.
In Summary
Microsoft’s new AI-based shopping features aim to simplify parts of the online buying experience that can often frustrate customers.
While the tools are currently limited to Bing, Edge, and Start, they show the potential for AI to add value in e-commerce.
However, AI is still imperfect, so double-check its recommendations.
As digital marketing continues to evolve, businesses are constantly looking for innovative ways to stay ahead of the competition.
The emergence of AI-powered tools like ChatGPT has revolutionized the marketing landscape, enabling marketers to generate human-like text and gain valuable insights.
These carefully curated prompts will help ecommerce professionals optimize their marketing strategies, improve website performance, and connect more effectively with their target audience.
In addition, we will be highlighting the best ChatGPT plugins that can enhance your digital marketing workflow, allowing you to unlock the full potential of this powerful AI tool.
Why Getting Prompts Right Are Critical To ChatGPT
Getting the prompts right is essential for ChatGPT because it relies on them to determine the user’s needs and generate relevant responses.
An accurate and clear prompt enables the AI to provide accurate and helpful output, increasing user satisfaction.
Conversely, an unclear or vague prompt can confuse the AI model, leading to irrelevant or nonsensical responses.
In addition, specific prompts help the AI to narrow down the range of possible responses, thereby improving the quality of the output.
In essence, the effectiveness of ChatGPT’s responses is directly proportional to the clarity and specificity of the prompts.
How To Write A Prompt For ChatGPT
To write a prompt for ChatGPT, you need to clearly articulate your request or question in a way that will guide the AI toward the desired outcome.
The prompt should contain key information – be it specific words, phrases, questions, or keywords that align with your goal.
This process – sometimes referred to as promptology or prompt engineering – is about crafting the most effective prompts to get the desired results from the AI.
Best ChatGPT Prompts For Digital Marketing With The Best ChatGPT Plugins
We’ll also explore the best ChatGPT plugins to enhance your marketing efforts and streamline your workflow.
Whether you’re a seasoned pro or new to the field, these tips and tools are designed to optimize your use of ChatGPT and ensure you get the most out of this AI language model.
The Top 6 ChatGPT Plugins
This list features the top six ChatGPT plugins, each with different capabilities that can change how you use this AI model.
From summarizing web content and automating tasks to assisting with language learning, performing complex mathematical functions, visualizing concepts through diagrams, and updating you with the latest world news, these plugins add immense value and versatility to ChatGPT.
They demonstrate how customizable and adaptable this AI language model can be to meet a wide range of professional, educational, and personal needs.
Link Reader is a simple plugin that reads text from any link, providing a summary of any webpage, PDF, image, etc.
Zapier is designed to streamline and eliminate unnecessary tasks, connecting with over 5,000 different professional apps like Gmail, Microsoft Outlook, and Slack. After establishing a connection and giving consent, you can send full Slack conversations or emails directly from ChatGPT.
Speak is a language-learning ChatGPT plugin, useful for practicing verb conjugation, advanced grammar, and translation. Simply type your request followed by the desired language, and the plugin will respond nearly instantaneously.
Show Me allows ChatGPT to generate real-time diagrams of almost any kind, simplifying complex concepts both visually and textually.
World News updates ChatGPT’s knowledge beyond its 2021 cutoff, providing timely global news in multiple languages with source links, an essential plugin for staying informed.
Keyword Explorer provides popular related keywords to amplify your content optimization.
The Top 15 ChatGPT Prompts
Content Creation And Social Media
Compose a blog article of approximately 500 words on [subject], ensuring to incorporate certain keywords within the title, subtitles, and the main sections of the content. + Plugin Keyword Explorer.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, June 2023
Write a diagram where keywords are classified by intent research for [topic] with all known keywords. + Plugin Show Me.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, June 2023
Draft a YouTube video script in French regarding [product, blog, company, etc.] + Enable Speak plugin.
Compose an informative and engaging 80-word caption for Instagram about [topic], complete with pertinent hashtags. + Integrate Zapier to facilitate direct upload to Instagram.
Create a thread on Twitter focusing on [topic]. + Use Zapier plugin for immediate export to Twitter.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, June 2023
Analytics
Display a mindmap illustrating the key performance indicators critical to [industry]. + Activate the Show Me plugin.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, June 2023
Compose a Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, and Threats (SWOT) analysis pertaining to our website traffic + Utilize the Reader plugin along with a pdf of our web traffic data.
Search for the leading website analytics tools? + Enable the Bing plugin.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, June 2023
Email Campaigns
Create [number] potential subject lines for an email marketing campaign centered around [product or service]. + Integrate Zapier for exporting to your email management software.
Look for the latest news regarding [topic] to be used in drafting the main content for a promotional email campaign, keeping a cheerful and approachable tone. + Employ World News plugin.
Discover 5 current topics that would be suitable for inclusion in my upcoming email newsletter about [topic]. + Use the World News plugin.
Screenshot from ChatGPT, June 2023
Ecommerce
Write a description for a [product type] and include [product attributes] and [keywords]. + Plugin Keyword Explorer + Plugin Zapier to send into your CMS.
Think like an ecommerce expert and write 10 frequently asked questions for [your website name and URL.] + Link Reader to get your HTML code.
Think like an ecommerce SEO expert and write a meta title for [your url] in the [insert industry] industry. + Link Reader to get your HTML code.
Conclusion
Adding ChatGPT prompts to your digital marketing arsenal can significantly enhance your ecommerce efforts.
By using the prompts provided, you can efficiently create engaging product descriptions, identify relevant audience demographics, optimize your website’s SEO, and answer common customer queries.
ChatGPT’s versatility and adaptability make it an invaluable resource for ecommerce professionals looking to streamline their marketing processes and improve overall performance.
With the right prompts and plugins, you can unlock the full potential of ChatGPT to revolutionize your digital marketing strategy and stay ahead in the competitive ecommerce landscape.
Screenshot from Google, September 2023
