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If you run an e-commerce business and sell online through your website in Ireland something exciting happened in the build up to Christmas.  That is Google shopping was finally rolled out to Irish Google AdWords advertisers.  This posts gives you the background to shopping, what it is, whose it for, what it can do for you and what the likely benefits might be.  Read on…

What is Google Shopping?

Google shopping allows advertisers to show their product images, together with a price &  description, next to normal text ads in Google’s search results.  And just like text ads, you only pay when someone clicks on one of the shopping adverts and goes through to the advertisers website.

Image of a Google Shopping ads

A brief history of Google Shopping

Google shopping is new to Ireland having rolled out just last month (that’s December 2016 for those reading this after January 2017!).  Although new to Ireland this feature has been around in other jurisdictions for several years.

Today, Google shopping ads are available in the following countries:

  • United States
  • United Kingdom
  • Germany
  • France
  • Japan
  • Italy
  • Spain
  • Netherlands
  • Brazil
  • Australia
  • Switzerland
  • Austria
  • Belgium
  • Ireland
  • Denmark
  • Mexico
  • Norway
  • Poland
  • Sweden
  • Turkey
  • Czech Republic
  • Canada
  • India
  • Russia

Who is Google Shopping for?

Google shopping is not for every type of business or Google AdWords advertiser.  You must have an e-commerce website capable of taking payments online.  Your products must be available for direct purchase on your website.  Also, the link in the product listing in Google’s search results must go directly through to the same product on your website.  You must provide information on your site in relation to purchase, delivery, cancellation etc (check out this guide for some help on this).  Other terms and conditions must be adhered to in relation to what can and can’t be specifically sold using Google shopping.  Take a look here for a comprehensive list of do’s and don’ts

What are the benefits of Google Shopping?

A number of advantages of Google shopping ads over the more traditional search ads have been reported.  For example:

  • Higher clickthrough rates
  • Reduce cost per click
  • Better return on investment

These benefits are unsurprising.  Ads containing images are likely going to be more engaging than plain text ads.  A picture paints a thousand words after all.  However, it may take a little time for Irish internet users to get use to this new advertising format and the expected results may not be immediate.

If you want to try Google Shopping, what are the next steps?

There are essentially three steps to getting up and running with Google shopping

  1. Set you your merchant account
  2. Upload your products with a data feed
  3. Create a shopping campaign in AdWords and link it your merchant account8

Like other AdWords campaigns, if you have the resources and knowledge in house you can set up and manage these yourself.  If not you might consider engaging a certified Google Partner to help you.

Summary

It will be interesting to see how Ireland adopts Google Shopping.  Anecdotal evidence suggests Irish e-commerce websites are pretty slow off the mark particularly smaller players.  The shopping results thus far are dominated by larger businesses and those from other countries where Google shopping has been around for a while.

Time will tell whether this new campaign type will be embraced by more and whether Irish consumers will engage with these new richer ads as expected.


Do you want to find out more about Google shopping? Or are you looking for another Google AdWords Management Solution? Drop us a line at SWOT Digital and we’d be happy to discuss how we can help you.

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