Setting up a Google Shopping Merchant Center

Due to high competition in the market, Ukrainian online store owners are constantly looking for new ways to attract potential customers. One of the most effective tools for this today is the Google Shopping service.

This is an advertising platform from Google, which allows advertisers to show their products in search of the most interested audience, and for buyers to easily find and compare the products they need within one site and without opening a lot of tabs in the browser.

Google Shopping appeared in Ukraine quite recently – in 2018, and quickly gained popularity among sellers due to its high performance. Unlike traditional text-based contextual advertising, shopping ads are often less expensive while attracting more targeted, high-converting traffic.

What is Google Shopping?

Google Shopping (also known as Google Shopping) is a marketing tool from the world’s largest search engine designed to promote the range of online stores. At its core, Google Shopping is reminiscent of a price aggregator: when a user enters keywords into the search bar, the service displays highlighted ads with products from different online stores.

Each of them contains a photo of the product, name, price and a link to the seller’s resource. This format appears in regular search results in a special carousel at the top of the page, attracting additional attention. It helps customers quickly find the products they need and make ordering decisions without leaving the search engine results:

The history of Google Shopping dates back to 2002, when the service was launched under the name Froogle. After ten years, it received its current name, and Ukrainian companies had the opportunity to set up an advertising campaign of this format in the spring of 2018.

The main advantage of the platform for buyers is convenience and time saving. Today, people want to get answers to their queries as quickly as possible, without having to open multiple tabs. Such ads show all the important information at once, allowing you to compare offers by price and appearance, as well as see the rating of a product item based on customer reviews.

How does Google Shopping work?

In order for product ads to be displayed in the “Shopping” tab, the seller will need to create an account in Google Merchant Center and establish a connection with the Google Ads account.

Next, you need to upload a special file (feed) there, which contains all the important information about the assortment: headings, descriptions, photographs, prices and other characteristics. This information is automatically loaded into the system, and advertisements are then generated from it.

When a visitor enters keywords related to a specific product into the Google search bar, algorithms analyze feeds from different sellers and display the most relevant ads in a special carousel above the organic results:

Ads are ranked based on product popularity, customer ratings and other factors to show you the most in-demand offers.

The Google shopping service works quite effectively, and this is confirmed by the numbers. According to a joint study by Google and the international research group Millward Brown:

• 90% of users, after seeing a product gallery, go to one of the proposed websites.
• 83% of them end up making an order.
• 77% try to find out more about the brand that interests them.
• 73% add items to their cart directly at the checkout.

Using this platform, you can promote yourself in a variety of formats. For example, an advertiser has access to standard shopping campaigns, advertising campaigns with maximum efficiency Performance Max, dynamic remarketing and free product distribution in the “Shopping” section.

In what cases does Google Shopping advertising work well?

The effectiveness of shopping campaigns may vary depending on the specifics of the business and the characteristics of the product. Google Shopping ads show the highest conversion rates for:

1. Retailers from competitive niches with a high cost per click. In such areas, each transition is expensive, so it is extremely important to attract only the target audience interested in placing an order. In the case of shopping ads, a potential client will immediately see the cost and will not click on the link if he is not satisfied with it.
2. Online stores with a large assortment. The search results can simultaneously display several offers from one company in the Google Shopping service. This significantly increases the likelihood of attracting a client to your resource.
3. Companies that want to stand out among competitors due to lower prices. For example, this could be any household appliance that is searched by model (refrigerators, TVs, boilers) or power tools. The buyer, as a rule, has already decided on the model and is looking for where to buy cheaper. Thus, advertising with an emphasis on cost will be very effective.
4. Companies where the price list is updated several times a day. If you don’t have time to manually change prices in each ad or don’t have a contextologist on staff who could constantly make changes, product campaigns are exactly what you need. The cost will be pulled up from the feed automatically, which will save time and resources.

At the same time, there are many niches in which this format will not work. For example, it can take a long time to choose clothes, shoes or cosmetics, study the size chart, material, photos and other characteristics. If the customer is not looking for a specific model, the price may not be so important for him.

Similarly, for complex products, such as industrial equipment, machine tools, etc. You will definitely need prior consultation with a specialist, which will greatly reduce the effectiveness of such advertising.

Therefore, to understand whether this format is suitable in your case, test it. Install end-to-end analytics and call tracking to evaluate the return on investment of each traffic channel. This will help you understand whether the game is worth the candle in your topic.

Advantages of advertising campaigns in Google Shopping

• Visual appeal. Unlike text contextual advertising, product advertising demonstrates what the product looks like, how much it costs and where it can be purchased, which greatly simplifies the selection process and increases the likelihood of conversion. This presentation of information is more clickable and noticeable against the background of other search results.
• Advantageous location. Google Shopping ads appear above results organically and organically, or as a tile to the right of them, making them more visible and increasing CTR.
• Price. A click through to a shopping ad often costs significantly less than a click through to a text ad. This is due to the relatively low competition for this format, which makes it accessible even to companies with a relatively small marketing budget.
• Automatic update. Information about product availability and new price lists are automatically pulled from the feed. Thus, advertising is always relevant, and the advertiser gets rid of unnecessary work on managing the campaign.
• Faster startup. If you have a ready-made feed and automatic uploading from the CMS, shopping campaigns can be launched in the shortest possible time, no matter how large your assortment is.
• A hotter audience. People who see product ads are already at the stage of actively searching and comparing offers from different retailers. They are more likely to click on a link and place an order if the offer interests them, which ensures high conversion and a good return on marketing investment.
• There is no need to collect a semantic core. The system automatically identifies relevant keywords and includes them in the work. This allows you to cover not only high-frequency keywords, but also low-frequency keywords, attracting additional traffic.
• Internal analytics. Makes it possible to determine which products are in greatest demand, which keywords bring the most traffic and sales, and based on this information, adjust the promotion strategy.

What requirements must a site meet to connect to Google Shopping?

To add an online store to Google Shopping, the resource must meet the system requirements:

1. Possibility of payment on the website. Enter your company details or card number in “Contacts” to be able to transfer money. Also, most modern CMS allow you to connect LiqPay, WayForPay and other similar payment gateways in a couple of clicks.
2. Availability of information about delivery conditions. The current methods for receiving an order must be clearly stated. A prerequisite is the availability of door-to-door delivery (such services are now provided by Nova Poshta; if you do not have your own courier service, you can use its services). When describing the conditions, the system does not miss general statements like “After processing the order, our operators will contact you,” because they do not provide complete information and can be misleading.
3. The language on the site and in the feed must match. This is necessary for the correct display of information in advertisements. In addition, it is important to indicate prices in the currency of the country to which the store is focused.
4. State the conditions for returning purchased products and funds. This information must be in a visible place. If some items cannot be returned, it is also important to warn customers about this.
5. All items that can be placed in the cart must be in stock. Otherwise, the file will not pass moderation – because this misleads the visitor, which is contrary to the basic rules.
6. Absence of prohibited goods. The platform prohibits the promotion of counterfeit goods, alcohol, cigarettes, medications, gambling, etc.
7. Be sure to use an SSL certificate. In order for the personal data of visitors to be reliably protected, all pages on which information is collected (card data, email and full name) or payments are processed must be opened using the secure https:// protocol.
8. No usability problems. Pop-ups and banners should not block important elements on pages or interfere with viewing. Each product must be placed on a separate page with a detailed description, prices, delivery times and a list of current payment methods.

How to set up Google Shopping ads?

The entire process of setting up Google Shopping can be divided into several stages. To do this, you will need to register in the Merchant Center, prepare a feed, upload it to the system, configure and launch the campaign.

Creating an account in Google Merchant Center

Before setting up Google Shopping, you need to register in the Merchant Center. This is a platform that is responsible for managing product information. Before registering, be sure to make sure that the resource meets the requirements that we talked about earlier, otherwise your account may be blocked.

To create an account in the Merchant Center, you must provide basic information about the store and contact person. Here it is extremely important to provide only reliable information. If you sell products for adults, be sure to check the appropriate box. Otherwise, moderators will quickly discover the discrepancy and may block the account.

Please note that in the field “What is the name of your store?” It is better to indicate not the legal name of the company, but the name by which customers know you. This name will be displayed in advertisements and will help customers find and recognize the brand more easily.

After filling out the required fields, you will need to confirm your rights to the website. The most common method is to upload an HTML file to the server, it needs to be placed in the root directory. Do not delete this file after confirming rights, otherwise you will have to go through the procedure again.

If you are not very strong in the technical part or do not have access to the source code (for example, this is true for all resources on cloud CMS – Horoshop, Shopify, Prom.ua, etc.), you can use an alternative confirmation method – via Tag Manager.

Linking accounts in Google Ads and Merchant Center

Once you have registered, you will need to link your account to your Google Ads (formerly known as AdWords) advertising account. The process is quite simple and will not take much time.

If you use the same email for Merchant Center and AdWords, the connection will be established automatically. The system will recognize the email match and automatically merge the accounts.

If you use different addresses, you will need to synchronize your accounts manually. In the upper right corner of the Merchant Center main page, find and open the drop-down menu (three vertical dots). In the list that appears, select “Connection with other services”:

In the new window, find the blue “+” button and click on it. In the field that appears, enter your Google Ads account ID (it can be found in settings). Please note that you need to specify the ID, not the email. After that, click on “Submit a request to create an account.”

Now go to the Google Ads interface. Here you will see a request to confirm the connection between the accounts. You will need to accept it to complete the process.

Create a product feed

A feed is a structured file containing detailed information about products in an online store. The effectiveness of trade advertising directly depends on the quality and completeness of the data in the feed.

Google Shopping supports several feed formats – TXT, XML, as well as GZ, ZIP and BZ2 archives. Most often, advertisers use TXT and XML (archiving is necessary only with a very large assortment, when the size of the source file is too large).

The basis of a feed is a set of attributes, each of which describes a specific product property:

1. Title. This is the title that the user will see. Here you need to indicate the name of the product, as attractive and informative as possible. Typically, this element has the highest impact on CTR.
2. Description. A brief description in which you can write key features, advantages and characteristics. The more relevant information, the higher the likelihood that the ad will be shown for a particular request. If you can organically include keywords that a user might be looking for in the Description, you are guaranteed to get more clicks and impressions.
3. Google_product_category. This attribute helps the search engine understand what category the product belongs to and more accurately target it. Take the attribute value from the official Merchant Center classification.
4. Custom_label_0–4. These attributes provide the ability to add up to five different labels to further categorize products, which can be useful for segmentation and targeting. For example, “Promotion”, “Discount”, etc. At the same time, the number of unique values of each custom_label attribute is limited to a thousand.

If prices on your website often change or the assortment is updated, it is better to create another feed (additional) in addition to the main one. It contains only five attributes: ID, price, availability, discount amount and expiration date. This allows you to quickly update basic information without having to change the entire feed.

Uploading the product feed into the system

Once the feed is ready, you need to upload it to the system. The download process is quite simple and intuitive, but requires compliance with some rules.

Go to the Merchant Center and open the “Products” section. Here you will see the “Feeds” tab – click on it to go to the download and click on the blue “plus sign”:

The service will ask you to indicate the country of sale – this will allow you to target the selected region. It is also necessary to indicate the language in which the feed is compiled:

Then determine which services you are planning to promote. If you don’t need dynamic remarketing on the Display Network, then you need to uncheck the box next to “Display.”

At the next step, select the data loading method in the Merchant Center. For example, you can pour and update it manually, specify the URL, from where the system will periodically request a file, use the table or Content API:

to download the Google table.

At the final stage, set the fidd renewal time. Indicate how often the Merchant Center should update the data. It is better to synchronize this time with the update of information on the site, so that the service always displays relevant information about the price list, availability, etc.

After the load is made, usually the feed is processed from 5 to 15 minutes, depending on the size of the file. If, after processing, the Merchant Center finds errors or rejects some products, it is necessary to fix it. Otherwise, moderators can sooner or later block the account.

Create an advertising campaign in Google shopping

The customs campaign set up in the Google ADS office. Open the “Campaign” tab and press the blue “+” button to create a new RK. From the options listed there, select Shopping:

At the next stage, select the type of campaign. In most cases, Google Standard Shopping is suitable:

Make sure that the FID you need is loaded in the settings and the purpose of the “Buying” conversion has been chosen – this will allow you to monitor the effectiveness of the perfect sales.

Next, you need to fill out the main parameters of the RK. Enter its name (it will be displayed only for you, not for users) and set the daily budget. To begin with, it is better to advance throughout the assortment presented in the catalog so that the system has accumulated data for optimization.

The next important step is the setting of geotargeting. If you work throughout Ukraine, select the corresponding item from the list:

If your delivery service is not working in all regions, it is better to add some cities and the region to the exception list. So you can save the budget and show advertising only the target audience.

It is also important to correctly set the cost of a click (CPC). When setting up the RC, take into account the profitability of your business. So, if the average price of the goods sold is 2000 UAH, margin is 30%, and the conversion is 1.5%, then the optimal price for the transition will be no more than: 2000 * 0.3 * 0.015 = 9 hryvnias.

In the process of optimizing the campaign, be sure to take into account the ROAS metric (the payback coefficient of marketing costs), which shows how much profit you get from each hryvnia marketing.

The cost of the Google Shopping settings in Ukraine

After the Google Shopping in Ukraine settings, the advertiser will be able to both show announcements in a paid issuance and demonstrate their products in the search results for the program for promoting a local assortment. But free extradition is shown only to those who are near the physical store and drive the appropriate goods in the search.

The main function of the platform is the placement of paid commodity ads that are shown in the carousel over the results of organic issuance. They are valid rules of the auction, where the advertiser himself determines the maximum cost, which he is ready to pay for the transfer of the visitor to the website. The real cost of click is usually lower than the indicated and is determined automatically, based on your budget and current rates of competitors.

At the same time, if you yourself have not figured out the advertising room, you will need to order the Google Shopping settings, and it also costs money. Next, we will figure out what the price tag on the work of specialists depends:

1. Technical improvements. To meet the requirements of the platform, it may be necessary to connect SSL-certificates, add feedback to the website, installation of the Google Analytics counter and other improvements.
2. format of the AC. Depending on it, the configuration can be simple (if you decide to promote the goods in whole categories) or complex (if each product moves separately). The price of Google Shopping in the first case starts at $ 50, and in the second – from $ 100. The difference in price is explained by a large volume of work, since it is necessary to exclude irrelevant search queries leading to categories, and not to individual landings of goods.
3. The number of positions in the catalog. The wider the assortment, the more time and resources you will need to configure. This directly affects the total cost of PPC specialists.

Google Shopping training marathon: