Now comes the announcement that somewhat similar is going to happen in AI Mode of Google & Gemini!

This is a huge news for the Agentic commerce wave!

This year co-pilot also announced same thing.

Universal Commerce Protocol (UCP)

Now, i thought this is same as ACP (Agentic Commerce Protocol) that’s worked by ChatGPT Shopping, but you know that Google AKA Gemini (pun intended) has more shopping data and Google Shopping is already a good in that.

Note: We’re building AI Search visibility for Shopify at FSEO.AI

Now comes the UCP aka Universal Commerce Protocol

UCP is built for the real use cases of commerce like discounts, loyalty programs, subscriptions and more. Customers demand accurate pricing, fulfillment options and terms in the moment they are ready to checkout - and UCP supports it all.

I’m very bullish on where this is going and will write more on this topic if it intrestes more folks out there. Email me on felix@fixmystore.com and will take it from there!

You woke up in the morning to find following message on Shopify Admin and Advanced Cash on Delivery :

And when you open your shopify store, it says

“This store can’t accept payments right now. Refresh this page or come back later”

Well what’s going on?

Problem

Advanced cash on Delivery app has officailly shutted down! If you’re trying to add a fee for cash on delivery that might not work!

Solution

Find an alternative app and we recommend “Advanced Cash On Delivery”

Using this app, you can do more than what was possible before!

Want to add Shipping charges on COD? (We recommend it our clients too at https://conversionab.com/ — A/B Testing & CRO Agency for Shopify) to increase the AOV of the order! This app lets you do that!

I hope this solves your problem! ConversionAB is also helping out Shopify brands with this migration for free of cost!

I’ve also posted about this on LinkedIn tagging the founder Sabeeh who’ve made this incredible tool!

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7235581935547248640/

And if this was a lifesaver — make sure to hit a follow. I’m very active on X and Linkedin!

Felix Josemon

Linkedin/X

I talk about Shopify, E-commerce, Conversion Rate Optimisation. Make sure to give a follow!

My family runs a small business my grandfather started. It’s been live and active for so long I can remember. It’s perhaps the oldest home improvement local business in the locality.

I am the one who handles the Digital side of things during my spare time for the last few years. I like to do it for the curiosity and the fun involved in the learning. I have consistently been able to rank it on top using Local SEO, Google My Business, and Website. I have been helping other local businesses as well as using some of the techniques mentioned here.

I couldn’t find an article that I need to read, hence writing this. A few Value-packed Actionable guidelines which made it rank well on search buyer intents.

Just for privacy, I won’t be revealing much of details about my family business but can take an example of similar businesses in the US or UK.

Let’s take the example of the Home Service Industry in the US, which includes Painting, Roofing, Moving, Property management, Pest Control, HVAC, Glass Repair, and whatnot.

It’s a huge industry with highly competitive that demands professionalism as well as modern digital tools in the current times. To give a little perspective, the Painting Business is a 40+ Billion dollar industry, and Roofing 47+ Billion dollar industry. It will only be growing as the years pass on.

Imagine if we were doing painting business in a particular territory, billing a couple of thousand dollars for home or commercial painting per painting jobs. The Painting Contractor goes to the location, gives a price estimate and quote. Once confirmed, the works start real quick.

Getting leads for these painting businesses is a huge challenge, when I spoke with Digital marketing agencies who take care of similar projects( Google My Business, Local SEO), they spend $200+ to get a lead(Not even a conversion!)! Which is crazy in my opinion.

They depend on Home Advisor, Yelp, Houzz, Angieslist, Thumbtack, Porch services as well as run Google Ads for the above-mentioned amount.

What if I could reduce the cost per conversion(not lead), and thereby increase the revenue? (By 10–20 times?)

Yes, It’s possible and I will show you how.

Some efforts here are short term, where others take a few weeks. But these are worth it, considering the amount and time one could save.

As the title said, much of the things have to do with Google My Business which’s a free service for a business listing on Google Search and Google Maps.

Most search on Google Maps instead of Google Search or Browser, Same way In many countries People search on Playstore instead of Browser. You will be amazed to know that many people know the Amazon shopping app more than Amazon.com!

Set up a Google My Business page if you haven’t, it’s worth it!

The search I did was for “Painters of Oahu”, which resulted in 2 promoted Ads, and other organic searches.

For this study, we will be taking a deep look at how and which of these Local businesses will be more likely to get more leads in the short term as well as long term.

Clearly, with 2 Ads being promoted, they will be having a large number of clicks, I said clicks, not conversions. Here’s why:

The promoted businesses don’t have a single review, nor any images, testimonials which reduces the trust factor. It would have been worthwhile if they invested in building a trusted brand before spending 1000s of dollars on Google Ads.

Moving on to Impact Painting(which seems to have the most reviews) and Oahu Pro Painter (they sound professional right there).

Of these 2, which one do you think will rank and gets more conversion?

Yes Oahu Pro Painters, the reason is self-explanatory.

Though Impact Painting is ranking in the screenshot, It won’t be the case when Someone’s searching to paint their house or commercial property.

I went through all the search results and found Oahu Pro Painters has cracked it well.

So How did they do it?

Title: “Oahu”

Someone in the Oahu locality will be searching with Oahu in the keyword. example: Painting contractors in Oahu, Commercial painting Oahu, best painting quote in Oahu, etc

Website: https://www.oahupropainters.com/

The website too has keyword included, and in Google Business profile we can set the CTA(call to action) to custom, in this case, “Request A Quote”. See the Bonus tip in the end!

Highlights: Online estimates, Onsite services

These are highlights we can set for ourselves if you are a Google My Business Admin. Here’s how it looks like:

Products: Interior House Painting, etc

Notice that the keyword for the product is repeated (“Interior Painting”) with Oahu, and CTA is linked to the website( we will come to that in a second)

Categories

The above products are listed onto categories. One can add multiple products in a category. The example above has kept the category and product names as one.

Ask a Question

You can have your friends or colleagues, asks questions here, and answer from Google Business Admin. They add to the trust factor and Buyer intend Keywords.

All of the above was simple and fairly straightforward, isn’t it? What if I say there is more to it than meets the eye?

3 Bonus

Bonus Invisible Category:

These are Primary, and Other categories only the Google My Business Admin can see. This is the masterpiece of the ranking methods.

Want to know what invisible category your competitor is using?

Bonus Reviews:

We think reviews are just there for the sake of it right? not quite, Google gets the keywords and all that from the reviews. Here’s what I mean:

So next time you ask someone to review your Google My Business page, make sure to write 2–3 sentences with keywords in mind

Bonus Website:

A tip if Oahu Pro Painters are reading this would be to add the Service Area category on the website as well. Each of these landing pages pointed to their separate pages( Note: Use Canonical Tags when doing so, otherwise Google can mark those pages as spam repetitive pages).

The website is perfectly optimized with proper Heading Tags, Alt Text to All Images, and site schema for SEO. I love it, but room for some improvements as well:)

That’s all for today, If you enjoyed this, leave a thumbs up where I will come back with more unspoken growth tactics similar to this 99% won’t even notice that makes all the difference.

Reach me at hello@felixjosemon.com or on Linkedin for any suggestions:)

https://reach.at/felix

Buy Felix a Coffee: https://www.buymeacoffee.com/felixbmc

“Support for Progressive Web Apps arrives for on Mac, bringing support for PWAs to all desktop and mobile platforms, making it easy to create installable apps, delivered through the web” Source

Using Chrome latest update, users can now get installable apps for PWAs on Chrome Desktop. I decided to try it out and write down my experience.

Desktop PWA in Action

I did try installing PWA apps on Chrome Desktop( Note: This works only if you are using latest chrome. chrome://settings/help to check)

Afterward, when you are visiting the PWA website(ex- https://airhorner.com/)

I do like the button mentioning install app in Airhorner.com. You can also add in prompt( details and how to implement: https://developers.google.com/web/fundamentals/app-install-banners/ )

The Desktop app generated felt native and greater experience without the address bar. Having some web apps as Desktop apps make total sense, since navigating among multiple chrome tabs are time draining. Now having it on App launcher, allows it to be just a click away from launching the app. Plus alt-tab (command-tab in Mac) allows to interchange among apps easily.

What's the Future?

The Desktop PWAs are really good and serve a far better experience than normal Desktop apps of web apps.

BONUS:

One can convert any website(not just PWA) to Desktop apps using

Setting-> More Tools-> Create Shortcut (Not distributable)

Or Use open source tools like Nativefier to create electron wrapper.

Or one-click solutions like Web2Desk (Distributable)

And in perspective of PWA, in the past few weeks/months we have seen chrome updates aligned for progressive web apps. The update allowed Full-screen PWA app experience( Thanks to TWA) and uploading on Google play, thus arrived tools like PWA2APK.

Desktop PWA is a once step forward to a larger mission, which is “closing the capability gap between the web and native and make it easy for developers to build great experiences on the open web.”

Chrome’s latest update allows PWAs to be installable on Desktop and Future of Desktop Apps! was originally published in Appmaker.xyz on Medium, where people are continuing the conversation by highlighting and responding to this story.

This is a WIP document

1. Whatruns

WhatRuns is a free technology lookup tool for developers, designers and salespeople to discover the technologies used on any website.

2. Buy Me A Coffee

Buy Me A Coffee help creators receive support from their audience in a friendly manner 🎉

😻Set up a page like this in 2 minutes

💰Accept donations via Paypal, Card & Apple/Android Pay

🎁Reward your supporters with a thank you note or content (they’ll love it)

🎨Showcase your goals

3. Web2Desk

Web2Desk is a tool to convert your favorite websites to Desktop app in just one click. Regardless of Platform( Mac, Linux, Windows) we got it covered and it’s free!

4. Collect.Chat

Collect.chat is an interactive chatbot widget that can replace static webforms to collect data on websites.

5. Refly

Refly is a smart editor for content writers who are trying to scale their content globally. Refly helps you improve your language, SEO and track your writing goals. Also, you can publish or schedule your publish to multiple blogs in a single click. And the best part, it’s free !! The latest version is out in the AppStore

6. Castr

(Castr) Get total control over your video live streams + many cool features like cloud recording and adaptive bitrate streaming. Best part? We are (probably) the easiest way to set up live video streaming, and you’ll go live in no time 🚀

7. MailCastr

Mailcastr is an email tracking tool with which you can create your own email signature and track emails sent with it.🚀🚀

8. Virgin

Trixie React-Virgin is a simple & beautiful UI kit for react-native.

9. Messengerify

Messengerify is a website widget which will connect a website with your Facebook Page and provide a better chat experience for your customers. Even if visitor leaves your website the conversation can continue via Messenger

* Use Facebook as your CRM

* Ongoing Conversations

* Customize to match your website

10. Marketfox

Marketfox(First YC Company from Kerala) is a marketing automation platform optimised for mobile and web. You will have the ability to acquire user through blog, deep linking and social media management. Convert them through in-app messaging, optimised landing pages, and smart forms

Few Mentions- Stash of List, Typito, Sieve, Radiohere, NoPhone

There are many products from Kerala that is being launched to Producthunt.com on daily basis. #KeralaProductHunt ensures proper visibility and support that needed to launch it. We also wish to have many more product launches (especially from the College Community) with the help of meetups happening every two months across Kerala.

Note- In here, I have noted down 10 highest(not in order) upvoted products launched from product hunt community in Kerala(#KeralaProductHunt). There are many more products that fit into the ‘Best’ Category.

Read- List of Startups & Products launched from Kerala on Product Hunt #KeralaProductHunt