Basically, Google Shopping shows products for purchase in a format that Google likes. It uses both Google AdWords and Google Merchant Center.

Google Shopping lets shoppers find your products quickly and easily when they search for items in the search engine, with the aim of attracting more buyers! It displays a photo of the product, the title, the price, the company and sometimes a star rating. For example, someone might search for “buy black lamp”, Google will then return suitable products at the top the page, allowing users to make a quick decision and moving them further down the purchasing funnel.

So you probably have heard of Google Adwords, but do I really need Google Merchant Center for Google Shopping? Yes! You need to upload your product inventory into the Merchant Center, then create a shopping campaign in AdWords, Just like normal AdWords campaign, you only pay when someone clicks through to your site. There are a few rules you need to comply with to use Merchant Center, for example, only products that are available for direct purchase can be advertised, you must use official language and you must tell customers about your refund and returns policy. You can find out more about the guidelines here: https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/6363310?hl=en-GB&ref_topic=3163841

Here are some tips for creating successful Google Shopping adverts:

• Think about what you are willing to pay for a customer? If your product is only worth £5, then you don’t want to spend more than £5 winning a bid for your listing to show, but if your product is worth £100, then £5 might seem like nothing. This pricing structure is down to you, and depends on your campaign goals.
• What products are you going to promote? Naturally its a good idea to spend the most time, effort and money on setting up great ads for your most popular products. But you should also think about ‘entry products’ that get people onto your website. Equally if you have products with low competition, it would be wise to focus on these.
• Know what your customers are searching for. There are lots of tools available online to help your choose the best keywords.

If you want your products to appear within Google Shopping, but don’t know how, get in touch with us and find out how we can help.