Google Shopping Is Closing Down
Google Shopping is closing down.
Long live Performance Max.
Well that is not strictly true.
I just wanted to hook you in with a shock statement.
Did it work?
Google Shopping is still going to be a significant contributor of success for ecommerce sellers, even in a Performance Max world.
But, in every account we audit there are many errors that means advertisers are leaving money on the table.
July 2022 is the month when ecommerce merchants should migrate their Smart Shopping campaigns to Performance Max.
So, I thought for this weeks newsletter I would provide you with 10 steps you can take to bring about significant improvement in your overall Google shopping results, which in turn will help your Performance Max results.?
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? 1 - Optimize Titles?
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The product title is one of the few things that visitors see on the "search" side of things.
Having an optimized title is beneficial for end users and for Google, so it's good for you as the advertiser.
But what makes up an optimized, or correct title structure?
To begin with, by the time most people get to be clicking on shopping ads they are at the bottom of the funnel.
The end user typically has their credit card in hand, they are looking for specific items and ready to buy.
Depending on what you sell, your optimized title should follow this pattern:
Brand Name - Model - Colour - Size - Gender (e.g. they are looking for "Nike Air Jordan Black Size 10 Men" and not "Nike sneakers").
They might have started off super generic, but when they know what they want to buy they are much more granular.
Google shows the first 75 characters then the title truncates.?
Make sure the most important keyword related terms are at the beginning of your title and inside the first 75 characters.
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? 2 - Optimize Descriptions?
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Product description can be up to 5000 characters.
Most we look at are just the standard product page, not optimized.
Typically if there are 1000 characters we are amazed.
Eliminate ALL HTML code and whitespace as it counts towards the character count.
Make it long enough to explain the key features and benefits of the product, using keyword rich information.
Doing so is beneficial for end users and Google, so it's good for you as the advertiser.
Add in structured data to your individual product pages.?
Structured data helps Google enhance the listings it can show.
Learn how to add structured data to product pages easily by visiting -?
https://www.schemaapp.com/schema-markup/creating-product-schema-markup-using-the-schema-app-highlighter/
The official schema data explanation for products -
https://schema.org/Product
Add videos of the product being used by consumers or "how to" videos to the product description.
Use YouTube video embeds of the product, so that you can create audiences of video viewers from your shopping campaigns as remarketing campaigns.
Encourage customers to make UGC of themselves using your product.?
Use those UGC videos on the description of the product.?
UGC is extremely powerful.
UGC should ideally be provided by customers....but not all UGC is going to be good enough.
None of the product description is shown to the end user in the ads, prior to them clicking through to the product page, unless they are on the Shopping tab in Google.
Having a well optimised product page is helpful in informing Google what the product is, the key features of the product and what keywords might be a good fit for showing the product in search results.
Provide them with the trail to show your products for the keywords that they should.
Otherwise, they will just guess.
Google will still spend your money.
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? 3 - Optimize and prioritize images
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High quality product images are a must.
Your product shots should be shot on a white background.
Never have promotional overlays on product images.
Look at your competitors listings.?
See what they are using for the same or similar products.
Aim to have an image that is more striking in conjunction with the product title than your competitors.
Because it is Google's server, there is no need to worry about site speed and image size.?
Uploading higher resolution images will always be better.?
Shoot product images up to the maximum resolution that you can get hold of.
Let Google worry about optimizing the image at their end.
To get end users to click on your ad it's a combination of:
? Title
? Image?
? Price
? Reviews
? Promotions.?
If you promote your products on other platforms, like Amazon, or Etsy, what product shots perform the best??
Consider using those as the primary image for your shopping feed.
Always use supplementary images.
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? 4 - Optimize Product Category
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Even though you don't need to choose a product category, it's powerful to do the task.
Many advertisers don't do this and they end up competing at higher level product categories, or a mismatch that Google choose for your product based on the landing page content.
Select the lowest level Google product category you can find for each product.
Drill down as far as you are able to.
It's hard work, but helps ensure you are showing your product in the right auction ecosystem and in competition with other products of a similar nature.
You can get the product taxonomy for UK based feeds at:
https://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy-with-ids.en-GB.xls
You can get the product taxonomy for US based feeds at:
领英推荐
https://www.google.com/basepages/producttype/taxonomy-with-ids.en-US.xls
Other country taxonomies are also available.
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? 5 - Optimize the "Optional"
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Many advertisers see the word optional and assume they don't need to fill in data, which is technically true, but doing so leaves money on the table.
Fill in as many of the Optional items you can.?
Google accept listings with optional fields not filled in, but they reward advertisers who add in more.
Sizes and colours are pivotal variants that end users add to searches at the moment of decision in their purchase journey.
Find and use colours that are commonly known to most people, not the ones that you or your manufacturer call them.?
If you have a multi-colour product, add both colours.
Keep colours simple.
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? 6 - Optimize Your Prices
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Consider using minor price changes to influence your position in the auctions.?
If your pricing is competitive, great.?
If you are expensive, you are likely to miss out on traffic.
Pricing is not the only factor for auction position, but it does tend to be an important one.
Better to have 80% of something, than 100% of nothing.
If you work with media buying agencies keep them abreast of price changes you make.?
That way they can be adjusting the strategy to align with more or less likelihood of traffic.
This might cause a drop in performance, traffic and conversion rate and they will look for other factors.
Help them to help you.?
Consider a Google doc or Slack conversation with running details of changes made to the product feed, prices.
Correlate the changes to the traffic and conversion data.
Don't be afraid to roll back a change if it doesn't bring about improvements.
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? 7 - Optimize Your Disapprovals
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Setup alerts for disapprovals in Google Merchant Center by using Adformatic -?
https://adformatic.com/en/merchant-center-alerts/
Adformatic is a Google Sheet addon.
It is €19 per month for unlimited accounts and comes with a 14 day trial.
Your time is valuable.
It's worth more than €19 Euros a month trying to find things to fix.
You will be more than compensated for the cost by having as close to 100% of your products in with a chance of being shown in auctions.
Disapproved products don't get shown.
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? 8 - Review Your Competitive Visibility, Price Competitiveness, Category Best Sellers
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Google has updated Merchant Center and now provides detailed information in crucial areas of competitive visibility, price competitiveness and what are the best selling products in the category.
Take time to analyze the data and act on the suggestions made.
Using the data in best sellers can help inform your decisions on what to do from a pricing stand-point.
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? 9 - Optimize Your Google Merchant Center Account
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Before starting out make sure you have the information that is essential to set up a Google Merchant Center account.
Google Merchant Center is constantly being changed, so keep an eye out for amendments.
Google will permit you to run ads without some of the data, but it's better to provide it and knowing what you need, before you start, is best practise.
To set up a Google Merchant Center account you need the following :
? Business Display Name (your d/b/a not your Legal Name) - This will be used in Performance Max campaigns, so make sure it is 100% what you want to be known as
? Business Address
? Phone Number for verification
? Customer service contact for shopping ads (URL, Email, Phone)
? Business Identity (black owned business)
? Verify and Claim Website
? Branding
? Main Color (hex code)
? Accent Color (hex code)
? Square Logo - minimum 500px (PNG or SVG)
? Rectangular logo (2000px x 1000px) (PNG or SVG)
? Shipping and Returns policy
? Sales Tax Rates
? Time Zone
? Link Accounts
? Automatic Improvements
? Email Notifications (receive as many of these as you like)
That sounds like an exhaustive list.
If you are an advertiser direct it's typically a one and done exercise.
If you are an agency, your processes should plan for that.
Make sure you are asking for all of that information in advance.
Well optimized feeds can yield significant improvements in results.
There are some cool tactical things you can be doing with Reviews, Promotions Shopping Experience Scorecards, but none of those matter if the foundations are not in place.
If you are not an ecommerce merchant, I am sorry there was nothing in this newsletter for you.
I'm planning some articles on Performance Max strategies for lead generation, so stick with it.
This newsletter is going out 1302 people this week. If you know someone who is a DTC (direct to consumer) brand struggling with getting good results from Google Shopping, send them your copy of this newsletter of tell them to get their own by signing up.