Jump starting small e-tailers

Google has built the equivalent of an online product catalogue that's tied in with its popular search site. Online retailers can post products to the catalogue, and even sell directly through the service via Google Check-out. The search engine's popularity coupled with the recent addition of its new shopping tab on the its homepage, has the effect of driving targeted searches for products directly through Google Shopping, where shoppers can view multiple listings for a given product and either purchase directly on Google, or proceed to the merchant web store.

Submitting to Google Product Search costs the online retailer nothing, and there are no fees for posting an unlimited number of products, giving small business e-commerce start-ups a tremendous competitive edge. Rather than having the merchant manually submit products one by one, FastCommerce automatically submits the whole of a merchant's online product catalogue to Google Product Search.

The FastCommerce.com small business e-commerce platform that allows small businesses or individual entrepreneurs to sign up for the free version of the application, build a professional and attractive web store, and post up to 50 products for free. This gives them access to almost the entire FastCommerce platform; simply signing up automatically generates a professional website and back-office tools to manage their business, all from one single system. Merchants then see an immediate effect in having their products automatically listed to Google's Product Search. Clients are then free to sign up for additional services when they are ready.

Source: eMediaWire.com