CommerceCubes

Lets get started with Froogle

Why should you get started using Froogle to promote your business? Well one word really… “FREE”… that’s right, its free! Last time I checked, most comparison shopping engines are most certainly NOT free to advertise with.

What does Froogle do? - if you’ve ever used a comparison shopping engine site than you’ll know that the base idea is that it lists prices for customers in a central place with other online retailers. Many of these comparison engines make there money by charging you to advertise on their particular brand of engine but yet Froogle does not. So let’s say you are looking for the DVD series “FireFly” and you’ve stumbled onto Froogle. Simply type in “FireFly series” and you’ll automatically get a list of dozens retailers selling those DVDs in a nice and neat centralized format. Score! From there you can narrow your results based off price, availability, reputation, etc.

Why should I be using Froogle as an online retailer? - When you start and run any business free marketing and advertising is almost unheard of and with enough people surfing the web on Google by the minute you can expose them to your site for FREE… that never gets old.

When should I use Froogle for my Business? - I personally think that it is never too early or late to learn something new and Froogle for your business is no different. Whether you just opened your online store a few months ago or you’ve been running it for a few years Froogle could be a vital and competitive (and FREE) advantage to your business.

How do you ‘Froogle’? – The process of signing up is very easy to do.

1. Go to Froogle.com

2. Click the “Information for Sellers” link at the bottom of the main page

3. Click the “Sign into Google Base” Button on the left hand side of the page

4. Sign into Google Base (If you don’t have an account then you need to create one)

5. Go to the “Settings” Tab of Google Base

6. Edit the “Display Name” field to the name of your online store

7. Describe your store

8. Add the URL where your store exists

9. Choose your settings further below on the “Settings” tab

10. Click on the My Items tab and follow the directions for adding items to your Google Base account

Now that you know a little bit more about Froogle and you have a basic idea of what it does you can begin to play around with it and experiment to see what is possible for your business. Sometimes submitting product feeds from your site can be tedious and tricky so if you ever need help automating things or otherwise feel free to contact me. There are modules out on the market that may suite your needs and can be integrated to your site and if not CommerceCubes can always develop a component to help you out with your particular business need.

Have fun exploring Froogle and Google Base

Lucas