Shopping from your cell phone with Froogle Wireles

Shopping from your cell phone with Froogle Wireless

by: Jakob Jelling

Many surfers already know about Froogle, Googleกs shopping portal that is still in beta testing. Google has now expanded their Froogle service so that it is available on WMLenabled cellular phones. Most newer cell phones that can connect to the Internet have this capability.

Users just need to enter wml.froogle.com in their cell phone browser, enter their product search terms, and scroll through results to find what they’re looking for. The biggest advantage of this Froogle Wireless feature for consumers is the ability to comparison shop, no matter where they are.

Most people who have shopped on the Internet know you can often find significantly lower prices online if you are willing to wait for shipment. The problem in the past was that it was difficult to comparison shop between virtual merchants and brick & mortar stores.

As an example, when most of us are shopping at our local computer store, and notice they have blank CDs on sale, our first instinct is to stock up because the price looks so good by comparison to their regular price. But with an Internetready cell phone and Froogle Wireless, you would be able to search Froogle right from the store, and compare blank CD prices from online merchants with the sale price at the store. Taking into account shipping costs, whether you need the CDs immediately, and local sales taxes, you can then make an informed decision as to the true value of the sale price.

Since Froogle and Froogle Wireless are both in beta testing, some nicetohave features such as sorting by price aren’t yet available. This can be a problem when using a slower connection over a cell phone, but keep an eye out for improvements Froogle Wireless will likely help you save money in realtime very soon!

By Jakob Jelling

http://www.sitetube.com

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

This article was posted on September 29, 2004

by Jakob Jelling

What is Froogle?

What is Froogle?

by: Jakob Jelling

Keeping in touch with other sites like Amazon.com, Buy.com and Yahoo.com, Google created a new shopping search tool called ขFroogleข. It has been called one of the most innovative price conscious tools on the Internet. Using the same technologies of Google.com, Froogle employs direct data received from merchants and through web crawls alone. Depending on the successes of the beta testing phase will provide adequate information as to whether Google continues with Froogle.

Housing over 15 different products and categories ranging anywhere from electronics, computers, food and gourmet, health care products, books, music and video, sports & outdoor equipment as well as toys and games, the list will only continue to grow in the coming months. Its searching capabilities mirror its mother page; it can be found at froogle.google.com and items can be found either in their product categories or by a dynamic keyword search. The results published are limited to one item per store. Every item appears with a thumbnail attached as well as a detailed product description, which includes price. Google doesn’t bias any website and often you will find products that exist on Amazon and Yahoo. This approach mirrors the Google philosophy of less details, more products.

The remaining products are crawled throughout the Internet as most other keywords are sought. Currently merchants can setup their accounts and sell on Froogle right away! There is no cost or cost per click through associated with adding your products to Froogle. Merchants can sign up for free and monitor how Froogle displays their product. This technology is open to the public at no initial cost or commissions.

Depending on how many items your company may want to sell on Froogle; you have to create a data feed file, which can be done with any spreadsheet software or by a text file. The opportunity to get involved with Froogle is incredible; chances are if you are selling a product and are optimized on the Internet for Google, your product may already exist.

About The Author

Jakob Jelling is the founder of http://www.sitetube.com. Visit his website for the latest on planning, building, promoting and maintaining websites.

This article was posted on August 23, 2004

by Jakob Jelling