Integration with Google Products

 

Description

The HikaShop plugin for Google Products enables you to download a XML file in order to add to your Google Merchant account. You can also automatically upload this file with this plugin. This plugin is only available in our commercial editions. It is installed automatically with them. It is a great way of marketing your products by reaching all the users of the Google Products service.

Once your Google Merchant account will be setup, your products will be listed in the Google Shopping service: http://www.google.com/prdhp

Note that if you want to use the auto update, you first need to configure the cron task in your HikaShop configuration and then setup a new feed in your Google Merchant account where you will specify a file name that you will have to put in the "File Name" option of this plugin.

Please note that if you want to use the auto update feature of this plugin, you will need to make sure that your hosting company allows outgoing connections from your website, otherwise, it won't work.

Please note that this plugin is available only with the Essential and the Business editions of HikaShop.

 

Settings

  • You can set some parameters into the HikaShop Google product plugin:
  • Enable Auto Update: Automatically update your Google merchant feed via FTP. When you use this option, you also have to complete the 3 next fields.
  • Local xml file path: XML for inventory feeds path (generate an XML file of your content).
  • Increase performances: Use this setting if you have issues with memory limits or timeouts when using Google plugin, you can turn on that option.
  • Channel description: Define the main description of your shop, you can leave it empty, the description of your website from your Joomla configuration will be automatically used.
  • Use products brand: Use the brand [brand] attribute to indicate the product's brand name. The brand is used to help identify your product and will be shown to customers.
  • Brand override: Define if you want use the brand configured in the 'Brand' setting of your products OR not ?
  • Product categories: Define your product category (one or several).
  • Google Product Category: Use the following Google product categories to let us know when you're submitting a mobile phone or tablet with a contract or an installment plan.
  • Price Displayed: Choose which price you want to display.
  • Taxed prices: Applied tax OR not?
  • No discount: Use discount OR not.
  • User groups of the products: Determine the user group that can reach the product.

More information on creating these credentials can be found here: http://support.google.com/merchants/bin/answer.py?hl=en&answer=160627
  • Product Condition: Your products condition (used, new,...).
  • Short Description: Do not add the full description of the product but only up to the read more tag.
  • Message if No Description: Message displayed if a product doesn't have a description.
  • Item id: If you want to display your products in a special context you can add here a menu id.
  • Add Product Code (mpn): Display or not the product code.
  • MPN: Use the MPN [mpn] attribute to submit your product's Manufacturer Part Number (MPN). MPNs are used to uniquely identify a specific product among all products from the same manufacturer.
  • GTIN: A Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is a unique and internationally recognized identifier for a product.
  • In Stock Products Only: Do not add the products without any stock to Google Merchant.
  • Identifier exists: Use the identifier exists attribute to indicate that unique product identifiers (UPIs) aren’t available for your product.
  • Age Group: Use the age group [age_group] attribute to set the demographic that your product is designed for.
  • Gender: Specify the gender your product is designed for using the gender attribute.
  • Size: Use the size attribute to describe the standardized size of your product.
  • Color: Use the color attribute to describe your product's color.
  • Shipping: The shipping attribute can also be used to specify the countries to which your product ships for programs that don't require shipping costs.
  • Shipping label: For example, for free shipping, some retailers only want certain products to get free shipping and they can add that shipping service to those products with a label.
  • Download: Download the XML file. Then, you can import it manually in your Google account.

For the fields "Category", "Brand", "Age group", "Gender", "Size" and "Color", you might need to have different values for different products. In that case, create a custom field of the table "product" via the menu Display->Custom field for each one of these options and instead of entering the value in the option of the plugin, you would enter here the corresponding custom product field's column name. Then, in each product you would enter the value you want in the custom fields.
The plugin would then automatically pick the corresponding values in the products for these fields.

If you have the error message "Invalid attribute: price", it means that the main currency configured in HikaShop is not the currency of the country selected in your data feed options, in your Google Merchant center account. You either need to change the currency in HikaShop  or the country in your feed.