A large majority of consumers search the web for companies they want to do business with. Whether you’re a retailer or service provider, have local presence or not, more and more people are turning to the web to find who they want to spend their money with.
Search engine and shopping sites have helped to make that information more readily available to the consumers. Consumers can search for specific products or services and find nearby retailers or service providers that offer what they are looking for.
For the retailer or service provider, there’s a bit more work to get their presence and offerings out there so the consumers can find it. Data feeds must be setup to send business, location, product, pricing and availability information to the shopping sites. Typically, this means interfacing with the application(s) your organization uses to run the business, extracting the appropriate data, formatting it and sending it to the shopping sites. This can be a daunting task for any business because of the complexity, lack of resources or lack of expertise.
That’s where we come in. We created Locator to make it simple and painless to get your information out there so you can take advantage of what the shopping sites have to offer. Locator is the solution to interface your line-of-business application to an online presence with a shopping site.
Locator is a Java-based application that provides retailers with the ability to automate interacting with shopping sites. Being that Locator is Java-based, Locator will run on whatever platform you’re running your business on. Whether it’s UNIX, Linux or Windows, Locator can be installed on it, thus saving you from costly purchases of additional computer hardware.
Locator has three primary functions:
- Extract – Locator pulls the data required by the shopping sites from the application that you use to run your business. To meet the shopping sites’ data requirements, Locator includes an extensive filtering algorithm to remove characters in your data that the shopping sites do not accept. Once the data is extracted, Locator puts it in a format acceptable to the shopping sites. Locator packages the information to be sent to the shopping sites based on data type (store, product, price/quantity).
- Transmission – Locator automatically sends your information to the shopping sites. A scheduler determines when and how often information is sent. Based on configuration options, Locator will check the queue to see if there is updated information to be sent. If it sees that there are updates to be transmitted, it will send it to the shopping sites via their supported transport mechanisms. Locator supports HTTP, HTTPS, FTP, SFTP and XML transport methods.
- Notification – Locator provides status notification of the extraction and transmission processes to those in your organization that need to know. Locator integrates with your email server and sends status notification to individuals you designate. At each step, Locator will provide notification if the process was successful or if a failure occurred. If the process is unsuccessful, Locator provides detailed diagnostic information so that the root cause of the issue can be addressed.
Whatever the challenges may be, why let them get stop you from taking advantage of the no-cost marketing and advertising offered by these shopping sites? Locator can get you there, allowing you to quickly take advantage of the online shopping world.