Mountain Commerce Updates and Google Product Feed

Mountain Commerce Admin Tools Redesign
When you login to the Mountain Commerce Tools you will notice the application has a new skin. We have gone through just about every screen in the system and improved the formatting, layout and usability.

New Dashboard Page
We added a new dashboard to the system which you will notice when you first login. The idea is to give administrators a summary of important data each time they login. We added an expanded pending order queue, a resource utilization widget, and a sales widget. We have also integrated components from Google Analytics. To see the Google Analytics data you will need to add your Google account credentials to Mountain Commerce under the Feeds & Social tab/Google Analytics. You will need the following Google account data:

  • Google Analytics Account Email
  • Google Analytics Account Password
  • Google Analytics Id

To get your Google Analytics Account Id you will need to login to your Google Analytics account and select it from the URL string, see graphical example:

If you are a Mountain Media Search Engine Marketing customer we would have access to that information and would be happy to set this up for you upon request. Please contact your account representative or email sales@mountainmedia.com

Google Product Feed Update
Google rolled out a major update to the Google Product Feed (AKA Base, Froogle). Here is a quote from Google on the subject “Note: As of May 3rd, 2011, unique product identifiers are required for all products, except those products in the apparel category and custom made goods. We encourage you to provide unique product identifiers whenever possible.” They have also added a field for “brand” which is basically required as well. This means that if you want your products to be visible in the new Google Product feed you have some work to do on your catalog.

Mountain Media has adjusted several aspect of our Mountain Commerce platform to accommodate/support the Google Product Feed. We added the following fields to the product detail screen:

  • GTIN – for UPC, EAN, JAN or ISBN
  • MPN – Manufacturer Part Number
  • Brand – The brand of the product

If you would like more information on this, read this support page on Google  http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?answer=160161

This is important if you want your products visible in the Google Product feed. Mountain Media would be happy to help optimize your Google Product feed for you at our standard rates or as part of your marketing plan. Please contact your account representative or email sales@mountainmedia.com

Taxonomy (The Product Type Attribute)
Another critical part of optimizing your Google Product Feed is providing taxonomy (categorization) information in your product feed. Mountain Media has added a tool to the product detail page of Mountain Commerce to facilitate adding the proper taxonomy to your products. Try typing in a category for your product in the taxonomy field and a widget will open up that allows you to find the best category for your product and generates the proper code to match it to Google’s taxonomy. For more information on taxonomy visit: http://www.google.com/support/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en_US&answer=160081 Here you can drill in and generate your own taxonomy strings and paste them into Mountain Commerce if you would like.

You will also notice a field on the product detail screen called “Product Condition” with a choice of new or used. Please take the time to set those as it will help your visibility in Google’s product feed.

Please note that we are not responsible for changes to the  Google product feed, (you can thank Google for that) but we have taken these measures to keep our users up to date with Google’s changes.

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