CIOInsider India Magazine

The nail art videos these days are alluringly beautiful and strangely satisfying even if it’s just watching. Tis, but a brutal fact that there are fewer nail art salons that do nail art similar to the ones that pop on Instagram, Facebook, etc., and finding those salons that not only match expectations but are also wallet friendly is a must try. Once that’s done, it’s now time to head straight to the salon and after arriving there, the receptionist or the attendee asks how their place was discovered with the answer being that their place was listed on Google’s search results.

But what sounds like a simple reply, that is, Googling it means much more for that respective salon. Since it took a single click on the Google search result page and wham, bam there you have a customer ma’am! Or sir or whoever it is.

Again there’s a lot of brain juice squeezed into making business websites appear on Google’s search result page, even when online businesses are said to be convenient to handle. However, it has become a race now, since most offline businesses went online there’s not only a crowd but provoked a challenge and that is to be discoverable and relevant. To add more to the woe, that race is only getting harder and harder as more brick and mortar businesses are also shifting their physical stores online clubbed with a surge of new online businesses? If a business fails to have a not necessarily strong but even a moderate presence online, not only does it have issues building and maintaining customer relationships, but will lose the purpose of its existence if the same tends to persist.

For this reason, the Google Search center has introduced a latest guide to best practices for developers to help set-up e-commerce websites online and ensure that they are compatible with Google. This guide is meant for every business out there, even if that particular business does not necessarily have products that have to do with e-commerce. Down below is the list and key to get that business online and running.

Where e-commerce content can appear on Google
Since the tech giant runs multiple platforms such as Google search, Google Maps, Google Images, Google Lens, Google Shopping Lab, Google My Business. It is key to know which of these platforms fit one’s business category the most. If that’s understood, the next step becomes simple in knowing where to place it.

On a side note, Google’s official developer’s website which carries the list has listed links in each of its platforms such as Google Search for instance has a link highlighted in blue called ‘Search Engine Optimization’ starter guide to know more on how to get it going in every particular platform. Now onto the next practice is about sharing one’s product details into Google.

Share your product data with Google
To boost one’s business’ eligibility for popularity on more of the tech giant’s platforms to fetch more traffic, it is important to feed one’s product data with Google.

Include structured data relevant to e-commerce
It’s also important to make Google understand by providing clear-cut information about what one’s website is planned for along with structured data. Then Google takes care of the job through its algorithms to know more about the fed content as well as the intent.

How to launch a new e-commerce website
Now it’s essential to acquire some intel on how to set the website sailing and along the way, the user is required to understand timing considerations when registering the website with Google.

Designing a URL structure for e-commerce sites
Here issues related to crawling are a big no no and emphasizes on URL designs that are specific to e-commerce sites.

Help Google understand your e-commerce site structure
How one can help the tech giant to understand is to first start out by developing a site navigation structure and link between pages. Doing this helps Google to get a clear picture of what’s most important on the website.

Pagination, incremental page loading and their impact on Google search
Again to do this, there is learning involved and that is to learn about the common UX patterns specifically made for e-commerce sites while understanding how these patterns’ role help Google to crawl and index one’s content.

Websites Can Now be Available on SERPs
Developers can utilize this e-commerce best practices guide to construct e-commerce websites that are more visible on the SERPs, potentially generating more traffic to their businesses and increasing profit.

Hear it from the tech giant itself, “when you share your e-commerce data and site structure with Google, Google can more easily identify and process your content, allowing it to appear in Google Search and other Google surfaces. This can assist customers in finding your website and products”.

But hold on, there’s more! Yes, Google is also offering pieces of advice that businesses should develop for their websites to fetch relevancy as well as more customers.

Such aspects come of much benefit for the MSMEs (Micro, Small and Medium Enterprises), since a lot of these businesses are basically unaware about the kinds of high-end technologies to improvise their products and services and probably get a push to their business on the go. At the same time, a lot of them who are aware of such technologies still fall short as these technologies are exuberantly pricey that only large-scale industries are able to afford them. Even though there are certain organizations that exist for the good cause of making the latest technologies for affordable costs and selling them to the MSMEs.

Nonetheless, even if there are such high-end tech materials and such, what matters most is to be known. Since adding a bit of popularity dust on that relevancy aspect can pool more customers even if the business’ website happens to have certain products not matching what the customer is looking for.

There again, just by the fact that a customer had come across a website even if it is not what they were looking for, it still plays relevance, where the customer can tell or share about such a business being online to their near and dear ones. Those near and dear ones then pass on the same to their near and dear ones, thereby creating a chain of customers visiting the website for a purpose or curiosity and hiking the website’s views and the story goes on.