Sunday, December 11, 2011

Just Finished site: Bay Vue Carpet Cleaners

You would be surprised by the quality of most carpet cleaner websites. The competition is quite stiff. I took a look at several before implementing this design for Bay-Vue Carpet Cleaning in Morro Bay. It has a beautiful photo on the front... an adorable picture of a mother and baby on a white carpet... a great tag-line...

I followed it up with a lengthy testimonials page ... and in several places showed before and after photos. This really helps sell the service. This guy has been in the business for a long time and has a great reputation. Now he has a site that reflects it.

Just finished site: Back Bay Pottery

I just finished a simple but elegant website for a local San Luis Obispo pottery maker - Back Bay Pottery

She makes various pottery items that she sells on Etsy.com

The home page has an Etsy wigit that displays the product lists... for purchase.

The Events page shows a public calendar using an iframe wigit. Then when she updates her events through google, she makes them updated on her site.

How to Share your Google Calendar:
http://support.google.com/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=37083

How to Embed your calendar into your website:
http://support.google.com/calendar/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=41207&ctx=cb&src=cb&cbid=-eqyxton29qwe&cbrank=3

Thursday, December 8, 2011

Google Product Data Feeds

I just finished working on a Google RSS xml data feed.

If you want to do it properly, try the following:

1) Build a RSS with the extra attributes needed for your type of business. Follow the Product Feed Specification guidelines.

2) Make sure you use the proper Google Product Category taxonomy when putting in product categories - that is important. Note that google_product_category (google's taxonomy) is different from product_type whis is the category your business uses.

3) Log into Google... Go to your merchant center, and submit your product feed. You may even set up your shipping and tax rates in Google Merchant, separate from the feed if desired.

4) Sign up your business in one or two product review sites. Then promote at least one of them to have people review you as a vendor. This is reflected in your 0-5 star score with these sites... and google pulls these.