Google Merchant Centre Overview
For anyone with an Ecommerce website and a Google Analytics account you may have started to receive notifications from Google about recommendations for Google Merchant Centre.
What in simple terms is Google Merchant Centre?
Google Merchant Center is a platform provided by Google that allows businesses to upload and manage information about their products, making it easier for those products to appear in Google’s shopping-related services, such as Google Shopping and Google Ads. In simple terms, it’s a tool that helps businesses showcase and sell their products on Google’s platforms by providing details like product images, prices, and descriptions.
Why do I need to use it?
It allows your products to appear in Google’s shopping search results and ads making it easier for potential customers to find and buy what you’re selling. It’s a valuable tool for increasing the online visibility of your products and driving more sales as your listings can appear across Google Shopping, Google Images, YouTube and Gmail for FREE. The paid (ads) option allows you to run adverts which appear as “Sponsored Listings”.
What kind of difference can it make to my online business?
It really depends on the number of products you are selling, the sector your in and the quality of the content (product description, images, pricing, shipping info etc) but we have some some clients who’s website traffic and conversions has gone up but 20%-30% with free listings alone.
How do I connect GMC to my website?
The following steps are required :-
- Create a feed from the website shop usually by using a plugin.
- Tweak the feed so that it is compatible with Google.
- Setup a GMC account and add in the feed.
- The feed runs every 24 hours and pulls all the product data into GMC
- Google then review all of the products to check the data is complete to show on their listings. (take 3 days)
- Then your products will start to appear in Google Shopping, Search, Images, Gmail etc
- Tweak via recommendations in the Performance Tab
- Consider running Google Ads using Google Shopping adverts to maximise sales opportunities.
Is there any downside to using GMC?
Not that we can see. But the setup is sometimes difficult if your business …
- Uses complex shipping rates eg weight based/free/zones
- Ships to lots of different countries with different rules eg GTIN
- Sells products which may be restricted in some countries eg Alcohol
WATCH – CASE STUDY – MIRO SHOES
If you want to get your online shop connected to Google Merchant Centre then – GET IN TOUCH
