About Google Shopping and Google Shopping Optimization

Here explain about Google Shopping and How to Optimize your Google Shopping Product Listing Ads.

Google Shopping

Google Shopping itself is not an online store, but rather an advertising opportunity. Website owners can use it to get higher positions and click-through rate. Technically, Google Shopping is administered directly from AdWords, with the difference that no specific images or advertising text are integrated manually. The data is standardized and sent from data streams. This data forms the basis of the product offers, in which the product image, price, shipping costs and seller's name are displayed.

If you search for a product on Google, you will see small overlays with photos and prices at the top of the results. These overlays come from the service offered by the most popular search engine: Google Shopping. They show similar products sold by different websites.

The business model is CPC (cost per click). This means that the website owner can set the value of a click for a particular keyword. These CPCs are then auctioned off. The principle is quite simple: the higher the bid, the better the position in the search results.

What are the advantages of Google Shopping?

The most obvious advantage of this system is that it fills the first position of Google. No e-commerce player can avoid this giant. Most of the users go to Google first and then type a keyword in the search bar. Most of them use the Google Shopping tab first. Over time, it has even become as important as the tabs for images, maps and videos.

With Shopping, Google becomes a marketplace that offers unparalleled visibility, and site owners understand that! What's more, users trust Google. Therefore, any results that appear at the top of pages are considered trustworthy. This is why Google Shopping has the highest conversion rate of all web marketing tools.

For all online businesses in a highly competitive market, Google Shopping has become indispensable today, which is not necessarily the case for niche products. Indeed, if there are too few competitors, ads are often not of great interest and it is better to invest in website optimization, which is a more useful and sustainable alternative.

Why it pays to optimize your Google Shopping Product Listing Ads (PLAs)

Paid advertising is a proven tactic to drive more sales. One of the programs with the highest sales is Google Shopping. Instead of linking a typical text ad to a landing page, Google Shopping displays your products directly in the user's search results, making the user far more likely to visit your site than your competitors. Also, when the user clicks, they land directly on your product page, which means they are further along in the buying process than if they landed on your homepage or category pages. This means that the conversion rate will most likely be better.

Google Shopping ad spend is on the rise

According to RKG's Q2 2017 Digital Marketing Report, the second quarter of 2017 shows that Google Shopping and the Product Listing Ad (PLA) accounted for 51% of Google search ad clicks by retailers in the U.K., up from 40% in 2016. In the U.S., PLAs accounted for 53% of Google search ad clicks by retailers, with PLA spend increasing 31% year over year. So if Google Shopping spend is increasing, is optimization doing the same? How many budgets could be getting more bang for their buck?

How does Google Shopping work and how to set it up?

You can have many products on the first position without paying anything. Namely, when one of your online store's products is placed in a list of search results, you pay only if the user actually clicks on the link. This click leads the potential buyer directly to your online store. This is where the role of Google Shopping in the sales process ends.

The costs associated with Google Shopping depend mainly on your competitors. However, it is estimated that the cost is between 10% and 15% of the order value. To achieve a good conversion rate, the presentation of the product must be done carefully. It is important to remember that users do not base their purchase decision on price alone, but on the overall impression of the website they are on.

To start a Google Shopping campaign, you need to sign up in the Merchant Center. All you need is a Google Ads account (formerly Adwords). To sign up for the Merchant Center, go to merchants.google.com. Once you have confirmed your website URL, the Merchant Center needs to be linked to your Google Ads account. Your product data will then be made available to Google (note that these feeds can also be used for other levers such as affiliate marketing).

Once these feeds have been created and uploaded, Shopping campaigns can be created in Google Ads at will. For advertisers who are creating a feed for the first time, we recommend setting up some test feeds first by using the special feature in Merchant Center that allows you not to publish them.

How to optimize Google Shopping?

Those who use Google Shopping, therefore, need to make a special effort to optimize all the data in their product feeds. For example, they can work on:

The title, which should not exceed 70 characters, similar to search engine optimization.

The image format (preferably the JPG, GIF, BMP, PNG or TIF formats).

The product news (for example, the current price).

The correct URL for the product.

To optimize your Google Shopping campaigns and achieve high conversion rates without driving up your CPCs, you need to familiarize yourself with the process. Just like Adwords, CPC is not the only deciding factor in the battle for the top position in paid results. Google also evaluates the quality and completeness of individual data, such as product images.

In the Google Merchant Center on the support page, you will find all the requirements clearly stated. If you follow all of Google's guidelines, you should have every chance of appearing at the top of the page.

Conclusion

Every online store owner who faces tough competition needs to integrate Google Shopping into their web marketing strategy. Opening a Merchant Center account is free, so there's no reason not to get started. Creating feeds is pretty easy and fast and can allow you to reach a much larger audience than if you relied only on organic results.