Google Shopping: Increase Traffic & Drive Sales

It started as Froogle, became Google Product Search, and has finally landed on Google Shopping, an appropriate name for a powerhouse platform that allows merchants and vendors to gain maximum exposure for their products and online e-commerce stores.

From an advertising perspective, Google Shopping can put your products and brand in front of an entire universe of eyes, but in order to really see a return on your investments you have to maximize your listings and SEO and implement the merchant platform’s best practices.

Below, JXT Group explores the various elements of Google Shopping and how you can use it to drive sales and build awareness for your brand.

Improve Website Traffic and Increase Sales

Google Shopping allows a company to showcase their products to a much wider audience, which can help increase website traffic and conversions as the search results are explicitly tailored to the user’s needs and link directly to a company’s website.

Essentially, this allows you to advertise your products first and your business or brand second. Once a user becomes interested in your product and clicks through to your website, they can discover your brand and learn more about what you have to offer.

Right now, if a user is to do a search on Google for a product keyword they’ll get the usual search results of ads that have ranked well for that related keywords, additionally, Google will also display a side or top panel of Product Listing Ads or PLAs. You can also discover PLAs by clicking on the Shopping tab on the Google search results menu.

These PLAs are the Google Shopping results for a user’s search, showing them photos of the products, pricing, and the company selling the product. This is great placement to get on Google’s SERP, or search engine results page. It is visual, first and foremost, and can have a higher CTR given that it is a direct link to the product the user is searching for.

Google Shopping PLAs are an excellent way to drive traffic to your website and can help increase organic SEO and turn conversions, resulting in more sales for your products and page visits to your site.

Tips and Best Practices

Optimizing your Google Shopping listings is a step in the right direction for ranking higher on the SERP pages and reducing your overall AdSpend. Using high-quality images, mindful descriptions, and adhering to Google’s editorial guidelines will help your product be discovered easier and strengthens your overall campaign.

Additionally, planning for separate campaigns for your PLAs that focus on goals that are unique from the rest of your AdWords campaigns will help

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your data reflect more accurately, allowing for a more targeted approach.

One enhancement to consider is adding promotional text to your ad, this makes the ad more attractive to the searcher and highlights your special offerings.

For more information, Google has created an entire Best Practices Guide that gives detailed instructions on how to lead a successful Shopping Campaign. We suggest brushing up on some best practices!

But What About Amazon?

There’s no arguing that Amazon is a juggernaut when it comes to e-commerce and as far as gaining exposure for your products, it offers an incredible distribution channel, but it is not without its cons.

One major issue with Amazon is that it can absorb your brand and it can be very difficult for your company to stand out amongst the hundreds of others offering similar products on the platform.

This is where Google Shopping shines, as it allows for you to maintain your brand essence while still mass marketing your products in one fell swoop.

Additionally, ChannelAdvisor has been monitoring the data of both platforms and noticed that Google Shopping was steadily continuing to grow and gain market share from Amazon.

Appeal to the Mobile User

Smart companies know how important it is to keep their mobile customers in mind and this is still true for a Google Shopping Campaign. The beauty of Google’s PLAs is that they offer a mobile user the ability to shop locally and online simultaneously.

With the Google Shopping filter, users can not only filter by prices and brand names, but also by nearby locations allowing them to only see merchants selling these items in their vicinity.

Consider the last-minute shopper, someone who needs a product immediately. This person doesn’t have the time to wait for something to arrive in the mail, so they need to know what is available to them, within a local proximity. Google Shopping provides a solution for shoppers who are in the micro-moment, that instant when they need a product right then and there. As Google Shopping continues to refine itself and provide

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a more relevant user experience, JXT Group will be there to adapt to its state-of- the art capabilities.

For more information on how to successfully build an AdWords or Google Shopping Campaign, contact us at [email protected]!

Menachem Ani ()

Online Advertising and eCommerce Expert with over a decade of success developing high-impact marketing strategies for online retailers and lead-generation clients.