Google Shopping – table of contents:

1. How do you start advertising on the Internet?
2. What is Google Shopping?
3. How does Google Shopping work?
4. How to get started with Google Shopping?
5. Does Google Shopping pay off?

How do you start advertising on the Internet?

Customers buy with their eyes. This is an old marketing truth that is true in practically every field of advertising.

For some time, photos of products or services performed have played an extremely important role in the promotion of any business. It is noticeable even in the case of online stores, where the exposure of the offer may determine the interest and potential sales.

Until now, the e-commerce industry could only use standard sponsored links, which, while incredibly effective, did not allow for direct comparison of products and their prices. Google Shopping has changed that.

What is Google Shopping?

Google Shopping has been present on the market for quite some time. It is a potential threat to price comparison services, which are already gaining popularity among online store owners.

So, how does Google Shopping work? Currently, when we enter a specific product name or category in which it should be found, in addition to the standard sponsored links and organic results we find one additional box. When taking a closer look, one will notice that it shows selected products from several different stores, with simultaneous presentation of their prices and design.

These ads are called Product Listing Ads and are directly linked to our Google Ads account.

Presenting products together with a photo and their prices is a huge step forward in the way advertising campaigns for online stores function. Google noticed this potential instantly turning it into a mutual benefit.

The E-commerce market in virtually every country is developing very dynamically, at the same time it is one of the most effective ways to appear in the industry of price comparison services. , although the PLA should not hurt, the potential customer receives a much more expanded opportunity to choose the product of interest.

How does Google Shopping work?

Product Listing Ads, unlike Google Ads, do not use a list of keywords, but only a specially prepared file containing a list of all the products we intend to advertise.

This solution has its pros and cons, mainly because the proper matching of products to the phrases entered by the potential customer is left to Google scripts. A proper description of our offer, however, enhances a significant reduction of mismatched or accidental views.

When a potential customer types an interesting phrase concerning a selected product, he/she sees a price comparison with the addresses of particular stores. Advertising with Google Shopping is becoming more and more popular and thus begins to be characterized by increasing effectiveness, mainly due to the graphical presentation of the product – even before the selection of an interesting online store.

How to get started with Google Shopping?

• The first one is a Google Ads account with an available budget for advertising activities.
• The second element is an XML file containing the products we are interested in promoting.

The export of the second type of file is currently provided by the majority of online store scripts available on our market. This information needs to be imported to our Google Merchant Center account, which should not be difficult to set up.

Once we have the prerequisites in place, it remains to connect our Google Ads account with Google Merchant Center and create our first product campaign. As in the case of sponsored links, the quality score and the maximum rate we can pay for one redirect is of the greatest importance for the order of displayed products.

At this point, it becomes very important to properly optimize the online store itself, as Google attaches great importance to the landing page.

Does Google Shopping pay off?

As always, the answer is a bit tricky. Product Listing Ads campaign alone is not able to provide us with the sales increase when our offer is not very competitive and the online store itself does not encourage us to make purchases.

However, in the case of companies with attractive products and their appropriate presentation, conducted campaigns have brought more conversions than any other actions carried out so far.

Google Shopping is not a must in the e-commerce industry. It is still a new method of online store promotion. Nonetheless, remember that the experience gathered at the moment will pay off in the future when our competitors will fully trust the new possibilities.

Now, as you already discovered how does google shopping work, it’s time to discover: How to write an e-commerce product description that drives sales?

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The 6 most common Google Ads mistakes entrepreneurs make

1. Using keywords that are too general

Generic keywords such as “books” and “shoes” tend to have high CPCs, which is the average amount you pay per click. Not only is such a word expensive, but it can also make your ad appear to people who are not interested in shopping at all. After entering “shoes” on Google, we do not always feel like shopping. Sometimes we want to check what is fashionable now, get inspired, or… look for a photo for presentation. The reasons are really different.

Moreover, too general keywords do not accurately describe the advertised product. There are different types of shoes: women’s, men’s, wedge-heeled shoes, trekking shoes, running shoes, black classic stilettos … Will the person who clicks on our advertisement find the goods they are looking for in our store?

For example, the average cost of clicking for the word “women’s shoes” is USD 0.15. If, for example, 500 women who are looking for leather boots click on the advertisement, while only women’s sports sneakers can be bought in the store, not only will none of them make purchases, but we will have to pay over USD 45 for such an advertisement.

How do I know which words to use? In addition to the Google Keyword Planner, we recommend opening Google Analytics and checking what words users most often enter in the search engine on the website.

2. Focusing on the number of clicks

Some entrepreneurs advertising online with Google Ads choose short, generic phrases because they want their ad to be shown to as many people as possible. “Maybe then more people will click on the ad,” they tell us, hoping that one of these people will accidentally be tempted to shop. And maybe some person will be tempted. But what about the 499 others who clicked on the ad and did not leave a single USD in the store?

Instead of the number of clicks, focus on conversion. Perhaps the phrase “French language school Madrid” will be entered in Google by fewer people than the phrase “Madrid language school”, but we will be sure that our ad will be clicked by people who are determined to learn French (which we offer), and not, for example, Norwegian language (which we do not offer). Statistically, the most conversions are made by users who enter less popular keywords in Google – because they have a clearly defined search target from the very beginning.

Speaking of conversion, it is worth ensuring that the advertisement directs the user directly to the catalog or a special contact form – but more on that in a moment.

3. Directing traffic to the home page

Each ad on Google should direct the user to a specific page where they can convert: buy a specific item or leave their contact details. However, we have noticed that entrepreneurs like to drive traffic to the home page – most often they do it so that users can see their full offer.

Unfortunately, ads that encourage you to buy a specific item and then redirect a potential customer to your homepage tend to have a high bounce rate. This is because users who have clicked on your ad want a quick fix. If an advertisement encouraged them to buy a book, they want to watch the book (check description, availability) and then buy it as soon as possible. If they are looking for quick IT help, they are not interested in the fact that a given IT specialist also deals with website positioning. They don’t want to waste time on extra activities. So if they don’t see what they’re looking for when they click on the ad, they’ll probably just shut down the page and go somewhere else.

Again, you will have to pay for clicks that did not generate profit.

4. Not using negative keywords

One of the elements of proper Google Ads campaigns is the use of negative words.

Suppose you run a website where you sell expensive, exclusive women’s jewellery: rings and earrings. It’s a good idea to prevent ads from showing to people looking for bracelets or jewellery that are cheap, that is, to people looking for products that you don’t offer. All you have to do is add “bracelets”, ” jewellery ” and other similar keywords to your campaign or ad group. Thanks to this, your ads will reach people who will be most interested in purchasing, and you will reduce costs and increase conversion on the website.

5. No geolocation

The most common mistake in Google Ads committed by small local businesses, such as florists, car mechanics, or brick-and-mortar stores, is that they do not sell by mail order. How many times after entering the phrase “plumbing services” in Google and clicking on an advertisement, the website of a plumber, located on the other side of your country, opened? The average cost per click for the word “plumber” is $ 3.52. If 150 people from Seattle click on an ad for a plumber from San Diego, the ad will cost over USD 500.

Location targeting enables you to show your ads to customers who are interested in shopping and, above all, have a real opportunity to make that purchase.

For large cities, it is worth additionally advertise using districts or regions. You can also apply an area around a location, that is, show your ad to customers who are within a certain distance of a certain location.

6. Don’t consider ROI when planning your ads

Entrepreneurs who build Google Ads campaigns often focus on driving traffic, but they don’t pay attention to which type of ad generates the most sales. This is a mistake because it can save you a lot of money.

How to calculate the return on investment? Suppose you sell insurance. Your costs are advertising costs and your profit is the sale of each insurance. If 10 clicks on a given ad translate into 1 sale, and 1 sale guarantees you 100 Euro, then 1 click generates on average 10 Euro of income. Now check how much 1 click costs you and think if this amount is profitable for you. Check out the other ads to see which one guarantees the best ROI. Disable ads that generate too much cost and increase your budget for those that generate the most profit.

ROI analysis allows you to avoid investing money in ineffective marketing activities, as well as to get to know your customers’ behavior better (what they buy most often, what they are interested in, etc.), which is very helpful when planning the next ads.

By analyzing your ROI, you can easily see which ads are performing best and which are not profitable.

Incompetent campaigns in Google Ads can generate high costs, and thus discourage entrepreneurs from using this type of advertising. Meanwhile, advertising in the search engine – if conducted well – is one of the most effective methods of reaching customers.

Excellent, now you’re aware of the most common mistakes you can make using Google Ads. This is a wonderful tool, which potential shouldn’t be overlooked. Be sure to understand Google Ads advertising opportunities.

Especially the latter may be problematic for Google. Because – although the search advertising market undoubtedly belongs to Google – Amazon is the only one that has the potential to shake this status quo. EMarketer analysts predict that over the next two years, Google’s share of search advertising revenue will decline, while Amazon’s share – on the contrary. Why? Google knows almost everything about us, but Amazon knows what we want to buy, and it is the purchase intentions that are easiest to monetize.

Google is aware of the threat and does not intend to give up the field without a fight. Recently, we could observe the intensified Google Shopping offensive, which is slowly becoming a fully-fledged marketplace, as well as Google Image, which supports the still fledgling but promising trend of visual search.

However, there is still a long way ahead. What advertising opportunities does Google Ads give here and now to small and medium-sized businesses?

What is Google Ads and how to use it?

Google Ads (formerly: AdWords) is a Google advertising platform launched on October 20, 2000, under the name Adwords. In 2018, it changed its name to Ads to indicate that text advertising is no longer the dominant form at a time when users are increasingly using the Internet on mobile devices. People quickly move from searching for products to watching videos, browsing content, playing games, and many more Google has translated in press releases.

Google Ads allows you to display ads in:

Thanks to advertising on Google, we can reach – on the one hand, a very wide range of recipients, and on the other – segment them by gender, age, or online behavior. This allows you to target your ads to the audience that may potentially be most interested in purchasing a given product.

How to use Google Ads advertising opportunities?

The entire system, while it may seem overwhelming at first, is very democratically designed. First of all – we pay only for the effect, i.e. per click or impression, so campaigns can be run even with minimal budgets.

Secondly, for some time now Google has been pushing hard for automatic solutions to help optimize the campaign so that it brings the best results. Thanks to this, the entry threshold in Google Ads is really very low, because many elements (e.g. rates for clicks) are regulated automatically based on information that is entered into the system.

This saves a lot of time and, according to Google, also money. According to the giant’s internal data, thanks to the use of intelligent solutions, advertisers record an average increase in the number of conversions of 30%.

Advertising in search results (Google Search Network – GSN)

Search results advertising is the most basic advertising format in Google Search. It includes the so-called paid (or sponsored) search results that appear above the organic ones, i.e. those that have naturally earned their position.

Sponsored results appear in response to given keyword phrases entered by users, but with targeting, you can specify who is to see them. You can narrow down the audience to users with specific interests and needs, as well as select devices on which to display it.

Ads on the search network (Google Display Network – GDN)

Google Ads advertising opportunities appear not only in search results. It can be displayed also in the so-called search network (Google Display Network – GDN). Hundreds of blogs, websites, forums, and information services are associated with this network.

Search network ads differ from text ads mainly in form. These can be text, graphic, or multimedia ads, targeted by, for example, age, gender, interests, but also the place of emission. Therefore, the network allows us to increase the reach of our advertisements, which makes this advertising form suitable primarily for building brand awareness on the Internet.

Gmail ads

Gmail ads appear in your inbox on the “Offers” and “Social” tabs. They are marked, but when clicked, they open in the same way as e-mails. They may contain graphics, videos, or forms.

YouTube ads

YouTube is the second – largest internet search platform (right after Google) and offers more and more advertising opportunities.

Depending on your goals, you can use:

• Skippable in-stream ads
• In-stream ads that cannot be skipped
• Bumper Ads
• Discovery ads
• Masthead Ads

YouTube ads can be targeted using keywords, use demographics such as age, gender, or create audience segments based on your own guidelines. YouTube also allows you to reach viewers based on their past interactions with selected videos, TrueView ads, or a YouTube channel.

Google Shopping

Google Shopping is a sales platform that – once treated in a neglected way – today is gaining momentum and is becoming an increasingly important channel for e-commerce. Why? It responds to the needs of the most determined users who already know what they want and want to pay for it. In Google Shopping, they can immediately see how much they will need, which shortens their path to conversion.

Be careful and don’t commit any of the 6 most frequent mistakes entrepreneurs make in Google Ads!

Google Analytics in e-commerce. How to use it?

On the one hand, it presents every necessary information almost at its fingertips, on the other – it is easy to get drowned in the sea of unnecessary ones, without drawing any binding conclusions from them. It must also be said at the outset – data analysis that does not translate into business improvement is worth little more than mindless scrolling through Facebook. So how not to waste your time on it? The answer is simple: before logging into the tool, you need to ask yourself some of the most important questions that you want to know the answer to. And so – e-shop owners – will pay attention to completely different metrics than, for example, bloggers. For what? Details are presented below.

Which statistics in Google Analytics will help increase sales?

Google Analytics provides us with detailed knowledge about the source we “deliver” to our website, but in the case of e-commerce, when we earn money by generating sales, this is just an introduction to our analytics. E-shop owners need to go deeper to know what activities affect sales, what revenues are generated, how many transactions are closed, and… more.

In Google Analytics, e-commerce and transaction data are available in the navigation bar on the left (” Conversions”> “E-commerce”).

From the “e-commerce” tab in Google Analytics you can learn a lot about:

• transaction rates and coupons used,
• new and returning users,
• a user behaviour “at the checkout” (which will help determine the cause of abandoned shopping carts),
• revenues generated by individual products,
• individual product orders,
• the popularity of individual products.

So we can learn a lot with Google Analytics for e-commerce, but first, we need to configure the report to support transaction tracking.

How do I set up e-commerce tracking?

First, you need to install Google Analytics.

After implementing the tracking code, go to the bottom of the navigation bar, to the “E-commerce Settings ” tab in the “All Website Data” section. Then you just need to set it to “On” to enable e-commerce tracking.

After enabling this module in Google Analytics, you need to add a code snippet to the pixel already installed on your website. After you’ve set up tracking, check that everything is working by performing a test transaction.

If you are familiar with the basics, you may also be tempted to incorporate more advanced analytics such as “Related Products” or “Enhanced Ecommerce Reporting“. A great advantage of the extended reports is the possibility of dividing user groups into particular segments, which enables the analysis of the behaviour of users who, for example, came to the website only thanks to one specific campaign.

If you need basic information on GA our article will explain what Google Analytics is and how to start using it

What is Google Analytics?

Here are just a few of the questions you’ll find answered with Google Analytics.

1. How many people visit my website?
2. Where do the users live and what devices do they use?
3. Which sites are the most common redirects from?
4. Which subpages are the most popular?
5. How many users sign up for the newsletter or make a purchase?

How to start using Google Analytics

To create a Google Analytics account, you need a basic Google account that you use for services such as Gmail, Google Drive, Google Calendar, and YouTube. Importantly, it should be an account that only you – as the website owner – will have access to. Of course, you can share your Google Analytics account with other people as well, but you should be in full control of it. This rule applies especially to website owners who entrust SEM activities to external specialists.

After creating an account, you need to configure it. What does it mean? The point is to properly organize monitored sites. If you have one – no problem. However, if you want to monitor all your company websites, which you have, for example, 20, you need to think about the proper organization and clear nomenclature. This is important because once a configuration is established, it cannot be simply transferred to another account, keeping all historical data.

How to install the tracking code?

After completing the configuration, just click the ” Get Tracking ID button ” to – after accepting the terms of Google Analytics – receive the Google Analytics code, which should be embedded on the website in the section.

For sites built on the WordPress engine, you can use appropriate plugins, such as Google Analytics by Yoast. In that way, you can easily install the code, no matter what theme is used.

However, the installation of Google Analytics will vary depending on the platform used (i.e. a content management system such as WordPress, a website builder such as Wix.com, or e-commerce software such as Shopify). In the case of the most popular programs, however, you can easily find the appropriate instructions on the web.

After installing the tracking code, GA will be able to collect and monitor all user behavior on your pages.

How to set the right goals

Once you’ve set up your specific goals, Google Analytics will be able to track conversions and provide you with key information to help you determine your site’s performance. To put it simply, Google Analytics will know when your actions bring the desired effect, and when you need to change something to make it happen.

You can profit out of the purposes:

• standard
• non-standard
• intelligent

There can be a maximum of 20 targets that cannot be deleted but can disable them so that reports are generated.

Templates can help you set up goals that will align with your business goals. However, if they don’t reflect your organization’s goals, there’s nothing to prevent you from setting up your own custom goals that better describe the behaviors you care about the most.

When you select Smart Goals, Google Analytics will evaluate the result of each visit to your website to help you determine which visits could lead to conversion.

How to read data from Google Analytics?

There are five main categories, each with its own dashboard.

1. “Audience” dashboard shows how your users are interacting with your content and who they are. You’ll know how many users and sessions your site has had, how long users stay on your site, and how many pages they typically visit.
2. “Demographics” section will contain information on their age and gender.
3. “Acquisition” dashboard tells you where your users are coming from.
4. “Behaviour” dashboard will let you find out what I’m doing on it.
5. “Conversions” – will show how users from different channels convert.

Summary:

The reports that you will receive thanks to Google Analytics will allow you to improve not only the functioning of the website but also optimize it so that it translates into the achievement of your business goals. In addition, answers to questions about users will help you better adapt your marketing activities to them, for example, select channels worth investing in and those that should be withdrawn.

Read the article on how to use Google Analytics capabilities in your e-commerce business