Ecommerce here, eCommerce there, eCommerce businesses seem to be popping up everywhere. How about some stellar tips that’ll help you boost your sales with Google Merchant and stand out above your competition?
Google Merchant Center lets you upload and store product information, which you can use in conjunction with Google Shopping to sell your products.
By doing this and setting up Google Shopping Campaigns, you’ll be able to “sell products to the shoppers who matter most—the ones looking for what you offer, whether they’re at home, on the go, or in-store. You only pay when they click through to your website or view your local inventory.”
Sounds good, right? Of course it does; your products will show up on multiple devices and across the Google network, in places like Google Search, Images, YouTube and more.
It’s especially useful if you’re just starting out and want to get off the ground. Your end goal is to get more sales, and here are 10 tips that’ll help you do just that.
1: Link AdWords with Merchant Center
Google Shopping lets users find products, and vendors attract buyers. Want to attract more buyers? Link your Google AdWords and Merchant Center accounts to increase your product’s visibility.
More than that and as Google points out, “when you approve a link to a Google Merchant Center account, you'll allow your product data to flow into AdWords for use in advertising campaigns. Depending on which type of product data you submit, you can create Shopping campaigns to advertise your products, use dynamic remarketing to drive your Display campaigns, and more.”
We’ll talk more about dynamic remarketing shortly, but once you link you’ll be able to use AdWords campaign tools and product data to show better and more relevant ads to potential customers — a win-win.
2: Definitely Make Use of Dynamic Remarketing
If remarketing lets you show ads to people who’ve visited your site in the past, then “Dynamic remarketing takes this a step further, letting you show previous visitors ads based on products or services they viewed on your website.”
You know for a fact that these people are interested in your products, they did visit your site and browse around, after all, so showing them tailored ads is like a little reminder that what they’re looking for is still right there.
Dynamic remarketing is better than remarketing for the simple fact that it goes above just visiting your website. So instead of showing your ads to people who might’ve accidentally landed on your site, you’re showing them to people who not only visited your site, but also took the time to look through your products.
3: Optimize Your Feed
It’s very important to optimize your data feed. You don’t explicitly choose your keywords for Product Listing Ads (PLA), instead Google sifts through your feed to determine if your products match a query. This includes:
- Title
- Description
- Category
- Product Type
- Images
- Price
- Brand
- Etc.
Using the wrong information cold lead to lost sales and delays in your return. Don’t let this happen — optimize your feed.
4: Focus on Your Titles and Descriptions
Similar to optimizing your feed, you want to place special focus on you titles and descriptions. These are how your potential customers will find you, so make sure to also include keywords and relevant phrases in your copy.
For this, use a ‘left-to-right’ order of importance in your keyword placement; put what will get you found closer to the beginning.
As for finding the best keywords, there are a lot of online tools out there. Some examples are Moz Keyword Explorer, SERPs, Google AdWords Keyword Planner and SpyFu (to help you keep an eye on your competitors).
5: Negative Keywords to Weed Out the Bad
Here’s what Google has to say about negative keywords: “Negative keywords let you exclude search terms from your campaigns and help you focus on only the keywords that matter to your customers. Better targeting can put your ad in front of interested users and increase your return on investment (ROI).”
Think of negative keywords as filters that prevent you for paying for unrelated clicks. So if you sell many types of shoes but not running shoes, setting “running shoes” as a negative keyword prevents your ads from showing up on queries with that keyword. The alternative may lead to wasted money as people looking for running shoes click on your ads, see that you don’t have running shoes, and consequently click out.
6: Showcase Your Best-Selling Products
While it’s important to get all your products found, if you see that one or more are particularly popular, go ahead and promote them! You already know that people like them, and showcasing them will give them an extra boost (and to your bottom line as well).
7: Reviews Can Make or Break You
Reviews let shoppers know who they can and can’t trust. Thinking like a shopper, who would you buy an item from, someone with four stars or someone with no stars (both items are exactly the same in all regards except for the stars)? If you’re like the vast majority of the population, you’ll choose the former.
Because of this, your best bet is to utilize Google’s Seller Ratings, an automated extension that shares your store’s average star rating alongside your ads, to increase your store’s credibility. The best part is of doing this is that on average, according to Google, ads with Seller Ratings get a 17% higher CTR than the same ads without ratings.
Digging a little deeper, Seller Ratings on Google Shopping are partly based on Google Customer Reviews, a free program that collects post-purchase reviews on behalf of advertisers. So make sure to ask for review in after-purchase confirmation emails!
8: Think Like a Shopper and Pay Attention to Aesthetics
As a shopper, you want to buy pretty things. When you buy fruit, you buy the shiny red apple, not the bruised one in the corner. When you buy clothes, you buy the ones that look good on you, and when you don’t know how they look on you, you buy the ones that look good in the pictures.
This same line of thinking applies to all or most online shopping in which you can’t see the actual physical product in front of you — you buy what looks good in the screen. Take this into consideration and pay attention to aesthetics.
9: Don’t Forget About the Special Offers
Merchant Promotions is a free feature on Google Shopping that allows you, the vendor, to make use of special offers and promotions to incentivize shoppers to give you their business. Even better, they’re excellent way to stand out from your competition.
Picture the following scenario: someone’s browsing for wireless speakers (you’re a wireless speaker vendor in this scenario), when they come across your and your competitor’s speakers. At first they’re unsure where to click, but soon enough they spot your special offer or discounted price. “Ahh,” they say, “a special offer. Sounds good to me; a deal is always better than no deal. Yippee!”
Okay, maybe they won’t be as enthusiastic, but they will be very happy. The gist is that promotions and deals make you stand out. They add a sort of ‘limited edition’ aspect to your product that increases its demand. You can also add a time factor, making the promotion temporary, to increase urgency. In other words, special offers make products exclusive, and we like exclusivity.
10: Turn to the Experts
When you’ve tried everything and are thinking of giving up, don’t. You still have an ace up your sleeve that is bound to work: turning to the experts. Get in touch with a reliable digital agency with eCommerce development solutions that’ll be more than willing to help you out. Chances are good that they’ll have experience with whatever you want to do, so come up with some goals, get in touch with them, and sell!
Final Thoughts and TL;DR
The eCommerce industry is tough; there’s no way around it. You have to do whatever you can to get the upper hand over your competitors, and stand out for shoppers. You have a good idea on how to do this if you’ve been reading so far. If not, here’s the tl;dr version:
- Link AdWords with Merchant Center
- Definitely Make Use of Dynamic Remarketing
- Optimize Your Feed
- Focus on Your Titles and Descriptions
- Negative Keywords to Weed Out the Bad
- Showcase Your Best-Selling Products
- Reviews Can Make or Break You
- Think Like a Shopper and Pay Attention to Aesthetics
- Don’t Forget About Special Offers
- Turn to the Experts