E-commerce in India used to be a very complex process, but now it is limited to just two big players who control a huge chunk of the market, along with many small players who operate very locally or with hyper-specialization. And while it is certainly easy to search for and buy a product on either Amazon India or Flipkart, you may not always know where to look for anything else.
Luckily, there’s always Google. A simple search will give you the information you need, but it’ll often be sandwiched between various other pieces of information that you may not necessarily want. Your search will lead you to a wealth of information, making you search specifically for the listing you want. This isn’t always easy for everyone, and while millennials who grew up with access to the internet may know how to “Google” things effectively, the masses find all those words and lines confusing. That’s where Google Shopping comes in.
What is Google Shopping?
First of all, Google isn't launching its own e-commerce portal. Google Shopping builds on the company's expertise as a search engine, simply allowing you to filter out everything else and give you the specific information you need to buy a product online. It strips away the search functionality, leaving only what's relevant from a buyer's perspective. You can sort results by price and seller, and see images, pricing, and a brief description of each listing without an extra click.
Products are sold by a variety of online retailers, depending on what you’re looking for. The wide range of products offered on platforms like Amazon India and Flipkart means that these two e-commerce portals will likely dominate most searches, but depending on what you’re looking for, you’ll also see listings from specialty online stores. The homepage – google.com/shopping or shopping.google.com – shows you a variety of listings based on what Google thinks you might be interested in. In my case, I saw smartphone listings at the top, since those dominate my Google search history.
How does Google Shopping work?
At the top is a search bar, which allows you to search for something specific. I’m currently looking for a new cabinet for my home, so that was my first search on Google Shopping. What I found was a nice set of clean listings showing an image of the cabinets, the price, and the online store that sold them. In addition to the two big names, I also found listings from Pepperfry and Urban Ladder, which are furniture specialists. A similar search on Google’s general search shows me a few listings, but with a lot of clutter, as it shows Google Maps locations, Indiamart listings, and a bunch of ads.
Clicking on an interesting listing presented me with a few more details, including a link to visit the actual seller of the product. In this case, clicking took me to the Flipkart page for the cabinet I liked, allowing me to see more details and complete the purchase, if I wanted. Therefore, the Google Shopping tool was much more effective at providing me with relevant information and useful links, assuming I was ready to buy the product online.
It's worth noting here that my search was general, so the listings were broad. But what if you know exactly what you want? Google Shopping can also offer you search links to specific products, and I tried searching for a couple of popular smartphones available today, the OnePlus 6T and the Xiaomi Poco F1.
The OnePlus 6T is officially available on Amazon India and oneplus.in, but for some odd reason the official website is very low on the list, while the top results showed me smaller companies selling the OnePlus 6. Since Google Shopping wants to promote less popular products and small to medium-sized companies, this might be smart to some extent.
However, it doesn't always lead you to the most appropriate link or even the safest place to shop, so caution is required. The Xiaomi Poco F1 did somewhat better, with the official Flipkart at the top and the Mi.com/in listing also showing up somewhere in the list. And compared to a standard Google Search, it certainly helps decongest pages with strong SEO that Google will initially promote.
Google Shopping: First Impressions
It's not perfect right now, but Google Shopping certainly has potential if you're looking for products that aren't what you typically buy online. Even with more conventional products, like smartphones, Google Shopping can help by showing you only the most targeted searches. The key benefit of saving you time and helping to clarify the results makes Google Shopping a memorable experience.
We are looking forward to it as soon as possible in Greece!
