The rise of online shopping has paved the way for businesses to create e-commerce websites that appeal to a larger market that is not limited to the area where they are physically located. From clothing to accessories and home furnishings, the usefulness of online shopping cannot be underestimated, but it can also confuse most consumers with the multitude of products available in the online marketplace. This is where Google comes in.
In a recent blog post, it announced that Google Shopping will be coming to U.S. smartphones very soon. Here's what you need to know:
What is Google Shopping?
It is one of Google's services that allows merchants to showcase their products through a huge Google Shopping list where users/consumers can use to search, compare and directly purchase the desired product from the website of their choice.
Google Shopping was formerly known as Froogle in the early 2000s, which served as a product search engine, which was converted to paid search closely related to Google ads in the early 2010s. However, they decided to bring back free product search only recently. Google Shopping is also optimized to filter by category, compare prices from different stores, as well as display user reviews per product.
Here we see it in action:
This is the example Google used, but images from users showed the following:
See the difference? Since the new version of Google Shopping will only be released in the U.S., it will take some time for other countries to use this feature.
How to display your products on Google Shopping
Placing your products on Google Shopping is quite easy, as all you need to do is set up your product feed in Google Merchant Center and integrate the corresponding data markup on your product pages. Below we present the process:
- Create your Google Merchant account
- Select “View products across Google platforms” when you reach the “Choose the programs that fit your goals” page
- After setting up your account, you will be taken to the Google Merchant Center overview page, where you will be notified that you have a pending task to display products on Google platforms. Click the “Continue” button to continue.
- You will be taken to the Google product page settings. Click on the “Add product data” section to start populating your product feed. Click on the “+” symbol in the “Primary feeds” section to get started.
- From there, you can set up the flow of your products.
Is Google Shopping actually a good feature ?
We mentioned that e-commerce can be confusing for the average consumer – especially if there are a plethora of products displayed at once. However, with Google Shopping, business owners will have to lower their prices to make their products more attractive to the users viewing them, while ensuring they earn a decent profit.
Since there is also a free option for Google Shopping, we recommend listing your products there. You have nothing to lose except the time it will take to list your products in Google Merchant Center.
However, if you want to take advantage of the paid version, you’ll need to outbid other competitors to achieve higher positions in the Google Shopping feed. This sounds good in the long run, but if you’re selling products for a search that doesn’t resonate, getting a return on your investment can be a bit of a struggle.
Summary
Google Shopping has its advantages and disadvantages. We recommend that interested parties try the free version first to decide if they are satisfied with the results before making any purchases within the service.
