Monday, February 7, 2011

Googland

Googland

[G] Woodcraft.com hammers home a 34% increase in search revenue with Google Commerce Search

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 07:18 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Woodcraft.com hammers home a 34% increase in search revenue with Google Commerce Search

Editor's note: Woodcraft Supply is one of the nation's oldest and largest suppliers of quality woodworking tools and supplies, offering more than 20,000 products through its retail stores, catalog, and website. We've invited today's guest blogger, Nancy Miller, VP of Internet Sales and Development for Woodcraft Supply, to talk about how Google has helped her increase search revenue and transform Woodcraft's online store. To learn more about her experience, read the Woodcraft.com case study.


At Woodcraft, we strive to provide the best experience for our customers, which means helping them find the right tool for the project. To this end, our retail stores are staffed with knowledgeable woodworkers. Online, we need a powerful search engine.

Prior to our switch to Google Commerce Search, Woodcraft had been using another popular third-party search solution - but we just weren't seeing the same level of satisfaction on our website as we were in our stores. Visitors to our site often couldn't find the products they were looking for, and our support team fielded a lot of complaints. Our customers were frustrated and our conversions suffered so we decided to make a change.

After thorough research, we picked Google to host our e-commerce search; their service provided better results, improved rankings, and an intuitive administrator interface. Google Commerce Search is simpler to maintain and much more effective than our old solution - even before customization. In fact, during our testing period we moved half of our traffic to Google Commerce Search and left the remainder on our existing solution – and with Google our conversions from search were 27.7 percent higher and our search revenues were up 34 percent!

Beyond providing a multifaceted search experience with better results, and increasing our online sales, Google Commerce Search has made our customers and employees much happier with our website. The complaints have virtually disappeared, giving us more time to focus on our passion: woodworking.



Above: Nancy Miller, Kyle Crabtree, Chris Brown, Matt Hall, Steve Markle, September Fleming, and Daniel Pennock with their latest woodworking project.

Posted by Nancy Miller, Woodcraft Supply
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/02/woodcraftcom-hammers-home-34-increase.html

[G] Going Google: A Guide for Schools and Universities

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 07:18 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: Going Google: A Guide for Schools and Universities

We talk a lot about "going Google", and with more schools and universities – like Ann Arbor Public Schools, Bryant University, Bucknell University, Henry Ford Community College, NYU, Oklahoma State University, and Southern Oregon University – migrating to Google Apps for Education every day, we want to help make it as easy (and fun) as possible to make the move.



Whether you are just thinking about launching Apps, or you're toasting to your first graduating class after four years in the cloud – it's always a good idea to educate your users about the new ways they can teach and learn with Google Apps. With that in mind, we've created the new Guide to Going Google which provides tools and resources that help students, faculty, staff and alumni make the most of your transition. The guide outlines six steps to successfully going Google: technical deployment, outreach, training, getting the word out, going live, and staying up to date. We designed this guide to be helpful for everyone from a 4th grade teacher in a classroom that's just learning about Google Apps, to a university CIO that's been using Apps for years.




Of course, if you're still evaluating hosted collaboration tools for your school, and want to understand why so many schools have already gone Google, take a minute to hear what CIOs at Kent State, Brandeis, North Carolina State and U.C. Riverside are saying about making the move to Apps:










P.S. For those schools who have already gone Google, we'd love to hear and see your creative approaches to making the transition successful. Maybe you brought your mascot the a faculty training like they did at Brown University; or had a special group of on-the-ground trainers like the Creek Squad. Maybe you did something bold like NC State who created a graffiti wall to mark the occasion of your launch. Let us know how you've gone Google, so we can help other schools can get inspired, too.


Posted by Dana Nguyen and Miriam Schneider, Apps for Education team
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/02/going-google-guide-for-schools-and.html

[G] A Google Docs documents list refresh

Posted: 06 Feb 2011 07:18 AM PST

Official Google Enterprise Blog: A Google Docs documents list refresh

Files stored 100% on the web can be accessed from any computer or device and shared with co-workers with ease. Over the past year, many of you have been taking advantage of the ability to upload any file to Google Docs. With more files and a variety of file types in one place, organizing and quickly being able to find what you need becomes even more important. As a result, we're happy to announce that, over the next couple of days, we'll be rolling out a refresh to the documents list, aimed to make it easier to find, explore and share all your files. We're also rolling out big improvements to our back-end systems to make your experience in the documents list faster and smoother.


Google Apps for Business customers who have the "Enable pre-release features" option selected in the control panel, and customers of all other editions will start seeing the new interface within a few days. Google Apps for Business customers without the "pre-release features" option selected won't see this improvement for a few more weeks. More details can be found on the Google Docs blog.

Posted by Vijay Bangaru, Product Manager, Google Docs
URL: http://googleenterprise.blogspot.com/2011/01/google-docs-documents-list-refresh.html
Posted by at

No comments:

Post a Comment

Subscribe to: Post Comments (Atom)