It’s all about Google Shopping right now. Quickly overtaking regular text ads, Google Shopping is highly visible and easier for consumers to find exactly what they’re looking to buy. However, if you haven’t optimised your product feed in-line with best practice, your brand won’t be visible and you could be missing out on potential sales. Here are our three best tips to maximise the performance of your Google Shopping ads and generate more online sales.

1. Make your product titles work harder for you

Optimise your product titles so they perform better in Google search results by reaching the right users. Some factors to consider include:

Attributes:

• Hone in on your target audience by including brand, colour, gender, age group, size and any other relevant attributes. This improves the relevancy of your product to a consumer’s search and improves the performance of your Google Shopping ads.
• Put key details up the front of your product title – such as your brand name, as product titles are truncated in most ad formats
• Don’t get fancy with colours – use common phrases that people search for. For example: blue, dark blue, navy blue and not Cerulean or Azure.

Keep it consistent:

• Apply a consistent style to your Google Shopping product titles for both attributes and capitalisation (title case)
• Ideally, you would offer a consistent experience when clicking from Google Shopping through to your website. Apply the same product title and description on your Google Shopping ad to your website product landing page. However, we’re aware that sometimes there are product merchandising factors to consider. We recommend that the product feed reflects Google’s best practice even if it does mean the product titles differ between the feed and your site.

Here are Google’s tips to optimise your product data.

This example shows how to display product title attribute values in your Google Shopping product feed.

2. Use images that sell on your Google Shopping Product Feed

Customers won’t buy a product with a lacklustre image. Only use high resolution, professional product imagery as these are more likely to appear for relevant search queries and will capture eyeballs, generating stronger ad performance. They’re also less likely to be disapproved by Google. Here are Google’s product image requirements and best practices.

This image shows why Google won’t accept Google Shopping Product Feed images that don't meet their image size requirements.

3. Get bigger bang for your buck

Profitability:

• Focus on optimising your best-selling or highest margin driving products first in your Google Shopping product feed. This will have the biggest impact on your bottom line.
• Consider removing low margin driving products (e.g. Sale items) from your Google Shopping feed to improve profitability. This is an advanced optimisation, always test and monitor the performance of all products on Google Shopping to begin with.

__Where possible, always include GTINs (Global Trade Item Numbers) in your Google Shopping product feed: __

• Google states that, “Retailers who've added correct GTINs to their product data have seen a 20% increase in clicks on average.” Not having GTINs can make it tricky to get Google’s approval on your product feed.

__Testing: __ Try different variations of your Google Shopping ads to see which are most effective for your audience and optimise based on this. Some testing ideas include:

• Attributes – test which attributes are included in the product title or the order in which they appear
• Images – ensure your feed contains an alternative image link, this allows Google to show different product images and test which images drive the strongest engagement

Stand out from the crowd:

• Include product ratings. If you don’t have ratings, it’s recommended to start generating online reviews (e.g. Google Reviews or Trustpilot)
• Be competitive. The reality is, Google Shopping is a competitive marketplace. Know your competitors and where possible, offer competitive pricing, shipping policies and promotions
• Apply to Google for permission to display merchant promotions on your Google Shopping ads.

This image shows an example of Google’s seller ratings ads extensions.

How can Pattern’s digital marketing experts can help?

Pattern is a leading retail ecommerce digital marketing agency. We’ve seen Smart Shopping become an increasingly effective and dominant campaign type for many of our retail clients. For more information on how we can grow your business through Google Shopping and other digital marketing channels, please get in touch here.