Shopping malls exist in the real world because they fulfil a need. There’s parking available, security while you shop and sometimes you can even have your car washed while you maul your way through specials and the latest in whatever blows your hair back. A one-stop shop in every way. There’s a much more subtle function shopping malls fulfil. They allow shoppers to compare products and prices from different retailers without hassle.
That’s pretty much what Google Shopping does. It goes a step further and shows you the products you’re searching for that are available in your area. That’s powerful marketing right there. Shoppers that are looking for your product, actively comparing prices, in their location seeking convenient delivery… What’s not to like? It’s a no-brainer. anybody who is into ecommerce simply cannot ignore it.
Get listed or get shifted
How do you get your products listed in Google Shopping? It’s not that difficult. We’ll take you through some steps. If you run a massive ecommerce store, look at using a Google Shopping data feed to load them. It will save you heaps of time and keeps your feeds current.
To list products on Google, you need a Google Merchant Centre account. It’s simple to set up and navigate, and it will serve as your dashboard for all your products and product information. Hubspot published a helpful guide on Merchant Centre Accounts. It will help you guide and manage your account. Merchant centre also picks up products that are already on your website when you add your website URL and automatically adds them for you – if you don’t want to add them manually.
Data feeds
There are various data feed software programmes like Sellbrite, Godatafeed, Channable, Datafeedwatch and Gepard that will help you upload your catalogue to Google Shopping. Hubspot also published an insightful blog about feeds and how to optimise them for Google. A side note: everything runs around keywords, from your marketing campaigns to how people search. Some time spent on keyword research won’t be wasted. It changes over time so do keyword research every three or four months to keep everything in line with trends. Once you’ve loaded your products, you must link your Google Shopping account with Google Adwords. That’s how you’ll get your products in front of millions of shoppers.
Pixel perfect
Any chef will tell you that the quality of the dishes you make depends on the quality of ingredients you use. It’s much the same with ecommerce. If you use bad quality images on your website, you’ll have years of problems on your plate because your base ingredients are of poor quality. Google Shopping pulls images directly from your website to serve on the platform. There are no cutting corners here. The quality of your images reflects directly in the shopping feed. Google also checks this from time to time to ensure shoppers are having the best experience they could possibly have. In fact, your ads will be denied if your images are poor. You might as well follow the Google guidelines from the start.
List and advertise
To upload products to Google Shopping is free. These products will be listed in the Google Shopping tab when people search for something. Unfortunately, you’re always going to compete with paid campaigns that appear on top of Google searches. Use the free Google listing as research. Watch which products do well on free listing and then pump some money into a paid campaign for those products.
Paid ads on Google Shopping appear on the Google Search Network (next to search results on Google Maps, Shopping and Images), YouTube, Gmail and on the Display Network. Advertising is a complex and ever-changing world. There are millions of blogs and courses you can follow to help you along the way. Here’s a Shopping Ads tutorial by Darrel Wilson that illuminates the whole process of setting yourself up for success with a Merchant account, loading your products and marketing them.
Smart shopping campaigns
Google knows a thing or two about automation and machine learning. They use it to aggregate and automate your bids and ad placements so that you get the maximum out of your advertising investment. Smart Shopping combines everything about your product, digital assets like your website, and your business. It uses the data to create a variety of ads across all the Google networks. Have a look at this video to learn about the ins and outs of Smart Shopping Campaigns.
Speaking of smart. The highest resolution images, best data feed and AdWords campaigns all culminate in the shopping cart.
If your payment provider is not up to scratch, you’ll battle to sell anything. Speak to Truevo about our new upgraded payment plugin that enables your store to accept payments in over 150 currencies, it’s easy to set up, PCI compliant and completely secure. So you can accept online payments from anywhere, at any time and on any device.
