How to sell on Google Shopping

There are many ways to sell online, but Google Shopping combines some of the characteristics of a price comparison site with a more conventional e-commerce platform.

People seeking goods and services online may take different steps as they search for the things to satisfy their needs and wants. Some will start by browsing e-commerce sites first, but others may check out price comparison sites.

Google Shopping is in effect a hybrid of these two things. Formerly known as Product Listing Ads - and by a few other names since it was founded in 2002 - Google Listings offers a chance to compare various different products and services through an online search.

While some price comparison sites earn their money through firms paying them to be listed, Google Shopping goes further by including paid ads in much the same way a standard google search rankings page will display pay-per-click ads in its ranking. The difference is that in this case the results on the page are all of products a consumer might want to buy as they correspond to the search term used.

In addition, there is no minimum bid for product listing ads, so the cost per click can be as little as a penny if you wish. However, the higher the bid, the greater the visibility of your ad.

•          To be able to use Google Shopping, you must first set up accounts for two other services: Google AdWords and Google Merchant Centre. For the later, you must input information about your business and details of your website.

•          Google AdWords is where you would run shopping campaigns. You can use it for optimising content, setting budgets, dealing with bids, scheduling ads and stipulating where your products are available.

•          Google Merchant Centre is where a seller stores details known as the ‘product feed’. These would include colour, price, size and codes such as the EAN and ISBN numbers.

How do you get started?

Once you have set up your accounts with Google AdWords and Google Merchant Centre, you need to take the following steps:

•          Upload your feed in text or XML format, including a list of products you offer and their basic details such as price, colour, brand and availability

•          The information you upload must be accurate, or your product listings may not appear

•          Go to the settings section of Google Merchant Centre and use the ‘AdWords’ option to link the account with your Google AdWords account. You will now be ready to start your first ad campaign.

How do you run campaigns?

Once the two Google accounts are linked, there are two options to start building a campaign:

•          When you link these accounts, the ‘link account’ button turns into a ‘create shopping campaign button’ that you can click

•          Alternatively, you can start building the campaign via Google AdWords by clicking on the ‘+Campaign button’ and selecting the ‘shopping’ option.

Why must you optimise your Google Shopping content?

As with anything else on Google search, SEO is important. Optimising your content includes updating your feed daily, managing bids, adjusting bids according to audience, time and the device used, plus much else.

The reason for doing this is the same as any other optimisation work: You need to make sure your site is not being penalised by Google for shortcomings in content, but is instead putting your products or services in a position to be seen easily when the relevant keywords are searched for.   

What BeUniqueness can do to help

At BeUniqueness we can help you get set up on Google Shopping and also help you supplement what you are doing on this account with further digital marketing and branding services. This will help you raise awareness of your products or services and help generate a great return on investment.

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