Google Shopping, as its name indicates, is a type of advertisement or rather a type of campaign present in the Google search engine specialized in searching and comparing products and therefore totally dedicated to offering users products to buy.
Over time it has proven to be a very useful tool to respond to the purchasing needs of users, thanks to its focus on this area. Google has also dedicated a specific section to it in the purchase button.
It is not just an online marketplace but a real Google tool available for product promotion.
By inserting products into the shopping center via a feed (usually an xml file), businesses can have their website continually communicate with the Google ADS platform and therefore shop itself.
Google Shopping: how it works
Google Shopping is a Google Ads platform within which merchants do not insert text or graphic ads, but rather standardized data that allows information related to the products for sale to be reported to Google. It is a comparative product search engine that is widespread in more than 40 countries.
Thanks to the Google Shopping product listing (listing), products can achieve considerable visibility by climbing SERPs and appearing to potential customers even before they access the sellers' website. Needless to say, they are very useful tools for increasing sales opportunities, along with SEO which aims to make websites more visible from an organic traffic point of view.
A Google Shopping ad consists of:
- an image
- a product title
- the price
- the name of the distributor
- any retailer-specific information, such as shipping costs or reviews
By optimizing this information, people performing related searches will see images of products, their titles, and prices. The user who will be intrigued by your ad and clicks on it will go to your site to make the purchase, and Google will charge them the cost of the click.
Retailers send feeds containing information about products for sale to Google Shopping. Data upload is free, sellers only pay when someone clicks or makes a purchase from the website they arrived at via the highlighted link. This way, Google can always show up-to-date information about the products on offer.
Selling on Google Shopping obviously offers the advantage of having the largest search engine in the world. Therefore, buyers can trust Big G's reputation and thus reduce their unconscious defenses to purchase.
Google Shopping is a tool that presents a clean, direct and no-nonsense interface for selling. In fact, you can have all the elements that attract attention and facilitate sales, such as images, price and text in evidence.
Google Smart Shopping
Smart Shopping campaigns allow, thanks to the use of artificial intelligence, to increase the visibility of your ads, increase conversions and reach a greater number of subjects.
This platform allows you to display ads according to the needs of the users, and the cost of ads is calculated using the pay-per-click mechanism.
This mode relies on self-learning artificial intelligence to serve ads on different networks, such as the Google Search Network, Google Display Network, YouTube, and Gmail. The platform is based on product and ad feeds, and displays the best performing ads.
In your Google Ads account, you can create up to 100 activated or paused Smart Shopping campaigns. Ads appear on general search results pages and on any other platforms.
Smart shopping campaigns use shopping ads, local stock ads, and display ads.
A Smart Shopping campaign takes the product data provided by your feeds and uses it to automatically generate personalized Shopping ads to better meet customer needs.
How to improve Google Shopping campaigns
Google Shopping is a platform that, if used correctly, allows you to intercept easy-to-convert traffic. Google automatically works on creating ads, so our job is to put you in a position to create the clearest and most profitable ads possible in terms of conversions.
However, it is not a simple platform, and you need experienced consultants who can correctly plan the entire strategy.
Our client portfolio includes the largest Italian e-commerce stores.
If you want to get started with Google Shopping campaigns now, contact us.
To get started without running the risk of making investment mistakes, we can set up a short-term campaign of a few weeks and analyze the costs and returns, to compare the performance of each campaign and adopt improvements for each product group.
Google Ads allows you to divide products into groups, so you can group them by brand, condition, product type, profit margin, etc.
How to get started with Google Shopping
Make sure you optimize your product feed. Google uses it to obtain information about the products to promote, so the easier it is to understand, the more chances we have to stand out. We can create a feed either through an application, a special tool or through a spreadsheet.
When the feed is ready, you can upload it to your Merchant Center account. You will need to claim ownership by inserting a tag on your site that allows you to identify it through Google Analytics or Google Tag Manager. If your site's platform is connected to Merchant Center through its API, you don't need to upload your feed as it will be sent automatically. Otherwise, you have to upload them manually from Products -> Feed. Once the feed has loaded, check from the Diagnostics item if the reading was successful. Check for integrity issues as they may compromise its validity.
Images are key elements to attract users' attention, so they must be of good quality and directed to reach a target audience. Be sure to run tests to see which images increase click-through rate, to adopt the photos that are most likely to convert views.
Equally important are titles, which must communicate the most notable features of the products in a small space to attract interested users. Headlines should be compelling and convey the crucial aspects of the products at first glance. Also in this case it will be good to create texts to check which versions are more attractive.
From the search terms report, you can get useful insights into what type of title converts most effectively.
