Google Shopping: A Quick Guide

Google as one of the most powerful platforms in the world, is an essential tool for businesses wanting to get their products and services in front of the right people. Google is one of the top-ranked search engines and the most powerful e-commerce platform.

The most valuable promotional activities for e-commerce owners are those that drive highly intentional actions from buyers and Google Shopping ads are one of them. 

So, what are Google Shopping ads and how do they work? Below we will have a look at how you can make the most of Google Shopping and drive sales and revenue. 

What are Google shopping ads?

Google shopping ads are ads featured on the platform that drives customers to purchase through a relevant search. Google Shopping ads — also known as Product Listing Ads or PLAs — rely on the feed that contains your products, including their price, name, image, reviews, and promotions. Google uses the information from this feed to display a grid of products based on the search you’ve made. Then, a user can click through to the product and purchase from the seller’s website as usual.

How to Sell on Google Shopping

Google Shopping campaigns are powered by two systems: Google Merchant Center and Google Ads.

Google Merchant Center

Google Merchant Center helps you upload your store and product data to Google and make it available for Shopping ads and other Google services. Google ads display only the information a retailer has entered into their Merchant Center. If don’t own a Merchants Center account you need to create one.

How to set up your Google merchant account

• Go to the Merchant Center and click ‘Sign up. (Make sure that you are already logged in to your Google Account).
• Enter information about your business (country, name, and website)
• Accept Terms & Conditions
• Enter your website if you have one, then verify and claim it

Finishing the registration will take you to the Google Merchant Center dashboard, from where you can navigate to your business information, your products, and tax and shipping information.

Make sure to become familiar with Merchant Center guidelines before you decide to set up your product feed and your shopping campaign.

Create your product feed

You can do it in two ways: automatically or manually.

The automatic setup means you leverage the platform your online store is hosted on to integrate your product information with your Merchant Center. If your store uses BigCommerce, or Magento you will typically have access to this.

Manual set-up requires you to enter all your product data through a file such as a spreadsheet. For example, in your Merchant Center go to select products then select > Feeds, then click the plus sign and follow the instructions. You will soon reach this step that will provide you with a Google Merchant Center feed spreadsheet.

The following is the most important information for your product feed:

ID: Your product’s unique identifier

Title: Your product’s name

Description: Your product’s description

Link: Your product’s landing page

Image link: The URL of your product’s main image

Availability: Your product’s availability

Price: Your product’s price

Shipping cost: Your product’s delivery cost

Product Condition: Your product’s condition (new, used, refurbished)

When it comes to certain items like clothing, you will also need to provide additional information such as gender, size, age, color, and material.

When all of the above is set you are ready to launch your Shopping campaign.

Google Shopping’s long-term success

If you want to make sure that your campaign is worth your time and investment and it can bring you a positive return, here are some tips to follow.

Try to feature only high-quality images

You have to make sure that the product images you submit are high-resolution and that they match various options such as color and size. You can also try and test multiple variations.

Frequently consult your performance data

At a point, you will notice that some products sell better than others. You can add your best sellers to a specific ad group and raise bids to increase their exposure.

Make the most out of your reviews and ratings

There are some star ratings that are aggregated from multiple sites, including your own side, aggregator sites, and more. Entice your customers to review a product post-purchase using these five tactics. Your online store has the final say. No matter how enticing your Shopping ads are, if your store’s online interface doesn’t infuse trust, your visitors won’t want to buy.

Make your product pages complete with clean headlines that are easy to read, thorough descriptions, high-quality images, reviews, and information on shipping and returns policies or anything else that you consider important for customers to know.

If you follow the right step and best practices you can ensure that you show up for relevant search queries, and thus ensure that you make the best experience for the buyer.

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