Introduction

Using the Product Mash you can advertise your Actinic products using several product portals. Those currently supported are Froogle (from Google), Google Sitemap, Google Base, Kelkoo, Affiliate Window, Ebay, Amazon, PriceRunner, Paid On Results, WebGains, The Peoples Web, PlayTrade, PriceGrabber, RSS Feeds, Shopping.com and Shopzilla

The Product Mash works with all versions of Actinic (from V4 onwards).

To advertise your products using the various advertising schemes you should do the following :

1. Register for the scheme. See the Feed Registration section.
2. Set the product options. See the Basic and Advanced mashing options sections.
3. Select the feeds to create.
4. Set-up the feed options by pressing the Feed Options button. See the Feed Options section.
5. Press the Mash now button to produce the feeds.
6. Press the Upload Feed button to send the feeds to the relevant advertising schemes sites (where applicable).

Feed Summary

Feed Registration and information

Froogle

More information can be found out using the following link :

http://www.google.co.uk/froogle/merchants/

Kelkoo

Kelkoo has 2 versions Free and paid for. To sign-up with Kelkoo use the following link :

http://www.kelkoo.co.uk/

Click on About us at the bottom of the page. On the next page you should use the relevant link under Merchant Help. At the current time this is titled List your products on Kelkoo. From this page you can sign up for a free trial or the full paid for version.

Affiliate Window

To apply for an affiliate window account you must sign up as a merchant. To do this, or find out more information use the following link :

http://www.affiliatewindow.com/merchants_join.php

Google Sitemap

Google can provide better search results on your website by you submitting the information about your website. This needs to be done whenever your website changes to provide uptodate information. You should create your sitemap before registering with Google (as it looks for this file during registration). To register your website using the following link :

http://www.google.co.uk/webmasters/sitemaps

Google Base

Google base is a single location where different types of content can be entered. Google will use this content in the main Google search, Froogle, Google local and Google base itself. To use Google Base you will need to register yourself at :

http://base.google.co.uk

From here you will define your content type, FTP details and filename. The FTP details and filename will then be entered into the Product Mash to allow your Actinic products to be automatically uploaded.

Shopzilla

Shopzilla is a shopping directory, that uses a pay-per-click approach to marketing. For more information use the following link :

http://merchant.shopzilla.co.uk/oa/shopping_search/

Yahoo Sitemap

Yahoo can provide more accurate search results on your website by you submitting the information about your website. This needs to be done whenever your website changes to provide up-to-date information. You simply need to create your sitemap, upload it to your website and tell Yahoo where to look for your file. To register your sitemap usethe following link :

http://uk.search.yahoo.com/free/request

Ebay

Ebay is the world’s largest online auction website. The 3 main products for handling multiple auctions are described below :

Turbo Lister

This is a PC based product that is free (from Ebay). You create all of your auctions on the PC and then upload them to Ebay. You can then download the sales to handle the order processing, in a similar way to Actinic.

This is a free product (with the normal Ebay listing fees applying).

More information can be found at the following link :

http://pages.ebay.co.uk/turbo_lister/

Spoonfeeder

This is a product not written by Ebay. This has enhanced order processing facilities and can work out cheaper to sell items if you have a lot of graphical content in your items (as they host the images for free). This may not be as useful to an Actinic shop as you can simply reference your images already on your website (again saving the Ebay image listing fees).

There is a one off payment for the software with an additional monthly fee if you require support.

More information can be found at the following link :

http://www.spoonfeeder.com/

Amazon

Amazon is the world’s largest online shop. You can list items on Amazon using either Marketplace or Zshops. To sell items you must have a Pro-merchant account. Amazon suggest you have aa Pro-merchant account if you anticipate selling more than 30 items per month.

Primarily Zshops are designed for retailers who want to sell items that Amazon doesn’t. The listings for your items appear at the end of the main listings.

Marketplace listings are for selling items that Amazon already does. Your items will appear in the main product choice area. If your prices are the cheapest they will have a buy-now button next to your item. This is very similar in the approach used by Kelkoo to sell items giving the customer a variety of prices to pay for the same item.

Like other selling portals (e.g. Ebay, Shopzilla) each vendor is given ratings by customers, the better your rating the more likely customers will shop with you (and not just on price).

ZShops

More information can be found at the following link :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=3150171

Marketplace

More information can be found at the following link :

http://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/help/customer/display.html?nodeId=3149141

Pro Merchant

Amazon now have a new approach used for Marketplace listings. Existing retailers and the majority of new ones are being put onto Seller Central/Pro Merchant.

http://www.amazonservices.com/businesssolutions/

PriceRunner

PriceRunner is a price comparison website. It also allows customers to rate your store, giving other customers confidence in where to shop. There are 2 versions free and fee paying. Each area of products is looked after by a different department within the company.

For more information use the following link :

http://www.pricerunner.co.uk/userguide.html#forbusiness

Paid On Results

Paid On Results is an affiliate company. You provide them with details of your products and they get affiliates for you. You can also handle affiliates captured from your own site. The more detail you provide on your products the easier it is for their affiliates to choose your products to advertise. You can provide the basic details of your products but you can also provide your own custom properties. You are only charged on actual sales (as a percentage of the affiliates remuneration).

For more details use the following link :

http://www.paidonresults.com/

WebGains is an affiliate company that provides a supported scheme. They work with you to manage the scheme. You provide them with details of your products and your business goals. They assign you an account manager to handle the process. You can provide the basic details of your products but you can also provide your own custom properties. You are only charged on actual sales (as a percentage of the affiliates remuneration, which is normally 30%. For example, on a sale of goods for £100 you are paid £93.50 (£5 commision for the affililate and £1.5 paid to WebGains). You can also choose for a lead based approach (pay per click).

For more details use the following link :

http://www.webgains.com/

Peoples Web

The Peoples Web provides various features for different individuals. However, for selling products, it is a fixed price easy maintenance approach. They currently report an audience of around 2 million people.

They charge a fixed annual fee, for retailers (a RetailPlus account) £250 ( + VAT). If you enter the code moleendbiz in the 'cashback' username field when registering you will get an additional 6 months membership (from 12 months to 18 months). You can register at here.

For more details use the following link :

http://www.thepeoplesweb.com/

PlayTrade is Play.com's new selling platform. If you sell any of the product's that Play.com sell you can also sell the same product. You have to include the price of shipping in your product prices, effectively showing free shipping. With the Prodict Mash PlayTrade options can add on your shipping rates to your Actinic shop prices. You can compete with other retailers on Play.com for prices or if Play.com goes out of stock it is likely that shoppers will buy from you.

To use the product import feature you need to have a monthly subscription to become a ProTrader. This costs £19.99 per month. There are other benefits, you should refer to the Play.com website for more details.

For more details use the following link :

http://www.playtrade.com

PriceGrabber is a price comparison website. Customers can also rate your (and other) shops and products. This site is used by the larger online retailers and smaller retailers obtain sales by giving the consumers confidence in them, based upon their shop's own customer rating.

After the initial set-up fee there is a CPC (Cost per click) for each sales lead. The price various depending upon the area and product type that you sell.

For more details use the following link :

http://www.pricegrabber.co.uk

RSS (Really Simple Syndication) feeds are used for people to update frequently changing information. There are various feed readers (such as www.rssreader.com or www.feedreader.com) that can monitor RSS feeds and report on any changes being made. Basic functionality is also built into variouis web browsers (e.g. Internet Explorer or FireFox). You can place a link on your website for your customers to bookmark (or add to their RSS reader) that will automatically when you have new products on your website (or changed prices).

Some shopping portals/sites can also take your product information as an RSS feed.

You can place a link onto your website in a similar way to how we have done this at http://www.mole-end.biz in the bottom left hand corner of the main page (which links to http://www.mole-end.biz/RSSMoleEnd.xml).

Shopping.com

Shopping.com is a price and product comparison website. Retailers and products get reviews and ratings. This site is used by the all types of online retailers.

After the initial set-up fee (if applicable) there is a CPC (Cost per click) for each sales lead. The price various depending upon the area and product type that you sell.

For more details use the following link :

http://www.shopping.com

Product Options

Basic mashing options

Exclude 0 value products

Some feeds (including Froogle) does not allow 0 value products. Tick the Exclude 0 value products box to not have these products included in the feed.

Remove Tabs, Line Feeds and Carriage Returns

If you want to remove text formatting (that would have been added for your website) tick the Remove Tabs, Line Feeds and Carriage Returns option.

Exclude Product Duplicates

If you have created product duplicates (applicable to Actinic V7 and above), these can be ignored when generating your feed. For example, if you have a storage container available in every section of your shop, (that was created by using Actinic product duplicates) you may only want to show this on Kelkoo once.

Rounding

When prices are calculated some information may be lost (due to rounding etc.). You can choose the best rounding model that suits your pricing structure. This should match how your prices are specified within Actinic. The following models are available :

Scientific

A price that is 0.5 or above is always rounded up to the next whole number. For example, £3.50 is rounded to £4.

Round up

A price that is more than a whole number is always rounded up. For example, £1.02 is rounded to £2.

Round down

A price that is 0.5 or below is rounded down to the whole number and any decimal value above 0.5 is rounded to the next whole number. For example, £3.5 is rounded to £3.

Truncate

All the decimal part of a price is ignored. For example, £7.86 is rounded to £7.

Advanced mashing

Add tax to price

Some feeds require that prices shown for european sites include VAT. If you show products on your site without VAT you should tick the Add TAX box. The VAT rate is taken from each product. If different products have different VAT rates those rates will be used. When VAT is calculated it uses the Rounding method specified in the Basic mashing settings.

Exclude out of stock products
If you use stock control and you don’t want to include products that are out of stock (which is a requirement for some schemes) tick this box.

Exclude products that cannot be ordered online

If you do not want to include products that can’t be ordered online tick this option. If this option is ticked, only products, within Actinic, are included that have the Can be ordered Online property ticked.

Ignore Actinic ‘Exclude from Froogle Data Feed’ setting

If you want to bypass Actinic’s feature of hiding certain products (or sections) from your feeds tick this box.

Include hidden products

You can include hidden products in the feed (e.g. for Amazon). This is useful when the feed needs to represent your different product permutations as separate products (where your product linked products permutations are hidden on the website).

Convert Price

If you have are using a non GBP (Sterling) currency on your website and you want it to be listed in GBP (Sterling) tick the Convert Price box. You will need to enter a suitable exchange rate.  This feature is useful if you have GBP or dollars as a second currency on your Actinic site. You will be eligable for inclusion in Froogle because you are showing prices in pounds or dollars but Actinic will export prices in your primary currency.

Product Short Description

Basic mashing will always use the Actinic Product Short Description. With Advanced mashing you can use different text specified by a custom variable (defined and set-up within Actinic). This allows you to have slightly different text on your website and tailor the text for the advertising programs.

If you are using Actinic V8 you would create CustomVars by creating Variables in the Design Library. You would normally create these in the General Group.

You can additionally include the Actinic Extended Info Text.

Remove Embedded HTML

If you have HTML in your product descriptions you can remove this using the Remove Embedded HTML option. There are 2 types of HTML to remove :

Remove embedded HTML

This will remove all of the HTML from the product details.

Remove Actinic Markers

This will only remove the HTML that Actinic places within the product, leaving any specific HTML that you want to pass through to the feed.

Get text from HTML

This will remove all the HTML markup from the text and just include the text.

Link to Product Page/Link to Product/Link to Extended Info.

When people click on your product displayed in Froogle you can choose to direct them to the product section page or the individual product. For example, if you sell shoes, the Link to Product Page will take you to the page showing all the different types of shoes (whichever shoe is clicked on). If you have Link to Product, it will take you to the actual shoe.

You can also enter the character to use to go to the product. By default this is a #. For some feeds, for example PriceRunner, this must the %23.

If you use your Extended Info link to allow the individual products to be ordered use the Link to Extended Info button.

Use Append Options to URL if you want to put on additional information to your URLs to track how people get to your website.

Product Image

Depending on how you have set-up your shop or set-up your images you can use from one of 3 main sources. You can use the image defined in 1 of 3 areas in your product definitions; main product image (the default), Extended info, image or thumbnail image.

Use default image if product does not have one defined

Some feeds require that you must have an image for each product (e.g. Affiliate Window). You can either have a fixed image for all products where an image can’t be found (from Actinic) or you can add a CustomVar to your products that defines a specific image. Using the CustomVar approach you can also define a default image that will be used if a CustomVar has not been set-up.

NOTE: If you have also defined specific image information in a specific feed, for example, added an image_link Custom property to your Google Base feed, the feed’s value will override the default value provided in this section.

There are more advanced ways to include information from Actinic (or from different fields). See the Advanced Features section for more details

Automating the creation and uploading of feeds

Once you have set-up your feed settings (and tested that they create the correct feed information and are accepted by the feed recipients (e.g. Google)) you can automate the creation and uploading of the feed.

To create and upload a feed you need to call the Product Mash in batch mode. The options to give to the Product Mash to do this are described below:

-B        Run the Product Mash in batch mode. This must be used with either the –M or –U (or
            both) options.

-M        Mash the feed(s). This will create the specified feeds from your Actinic products.

-U        Upload the feeds. This will upload any feeds that have been configured (and can be
            uploaded).

-F        The feeds to Mash and/or Upload. To include a particular feed you should include the
feed name (as described below). The string included after the –F must not have any spaces in. When including more than 1 feed name you shouldn’t include any spaces between them.

NOTE: If you don’t specify any feeds to create the last selected feeds will be used (when you started the Product Mash in normal mode).

Examples

Create and upload a Googlebase feed

ME_FroogleMash.exe -B –M –U –F Googlebase

Create an Amazon ProMerchant and Ebay feeds
ME_FroogleMash.exe -B –M –F ProMerchantEbay

Create and upload Shopzilla, Google Sitemap, Paid On Results and Price Runner feeds

ME_FroogleMash.exe -B –M –F ShopzillaGoogleSitemapPaidOnResultsPriceRunner

Advanced automated feed creation

Running the Product Mash at a specific time each day (or week)
You can run the Product Mash as a scheduled task (in batch mode) to automatically create and upload your feeds. For example, you may want to create and upload your Googlebase feeds at 5:30pm each day. To do this you need to create a scheduled task in the scheduled tasks folder.

The scheduled task folder is available in the Control Panel. To create a task simply open the folder and click on the Add Scheduled Task icon. The wizard will guide you through setting this up. When asked to select a program to run, if the Product Mash for Actinic is not listed use the browse button to locate the program in the installation directory. On the last page of the Scheduled Task Wizard tick Open advanced properties for this task when I click Finish. You need to amend the program to Run to include the command line options (as shown above). For example, to create and upload a Googlebase feed add -B –M –U –F Googlebase to the end of the program to run.

Automating the feed creation (and uploading) with more than 1 Actinic site

The Product Mash always uses the current Actinic site to get the settings for. To use this with multiple sites you need to manually change the Actinic site. To automate the changing of sites you need to use One Stop Automation with the multi-site option. You can create a task within One Stop Automation to go to each of the selected Actinic sites and create and upload the feeds. Initially you will need to use Actinic to change to each of the Actinic sites and restart the Product Mash to amend the various settings (and feed names) specific to that Actinic site. Once set-up One Stop Automation will change the Actinic site and restart the Product Mash which will reload the settings specific to that site.

You need to create a task in One Stop Automation similar to the one shown below:

This will create and upload a Googlebase feed at 5:30 every weekday at 5:30pm.

The commandline shown above is:

"C:\Program Files\MoleEnd\Utilities\FroogleMash\V8\ME_FroogleMash.exe" -B -M -U -F Googlebase <Window>

Note: You also need to turn on external program calling in the Order Processing Options (as shown below).

NOTE: If you put <Window> at the end of the program to run (as shown in the example above) all the output from the Product Mash is sent to the main One Stop Automation window. This can (if required) be automatically emailed to you. In this way you can monitor your feed uploads remotely.

Feed Options

To set the options for each of the selected feeds press the Feed Options button.

Froogle
Google Sitemap
Googlebase
Kelkoo Merchant Feed
Kelkoo Free Trial
Affiliate Window
Shopzilla
Yahoo Sitemap
Ebay
Amazon Pro Merchant Marketplace
Amazon Seller Central
PriceRunner
Paid On Results
WebGains
PeoplesWeb
PlayTrade
PriceGrabber
RSS Feed
Shopping.com

Creating the Feed files

After the various options have been set-up you can then create all the feed files. To do this press the Mash now button.

Once the feeds have been created you are told how many products were processed and also how many were not. You may want to see certain products were not included. To do this press the Show products not processed button.

If you want to find the product within Actinic double click on the product and select the Product Description. This can then use the Find product feature within Actinic to find the item

Uploading the Feeds

Once you have created the feeds (pressed the Mash now button) you can Upload the Feeds to the various websites. If required, you can view the feeds before the uploading them by pressing the View Output button.

Once you have uploaded the feeds any errors will be shown.