If you’re an e-commerce website looking to run Google Ads, having a Merchant Centre set up and ready to run is necessary. In this blog, we’ll give you a quick overview of the following:
- What Merchant Centre Is
- How it works
- The advantages and disadvantages of Merchant Centre
- How to set up your Merchant Centre
- Best practices for Merchant Centre
What is Merchant Centre?
Merchant Centre (GMC) is the hub for your online catalogue. It allows you to upload and maintain your product information from pictures to pricing and titles to ensure you are showing in the Google Shopping reel when your customers are searching for products.
It is an essential platform for online retailers looking to advertise their products to a larger audience.
How does Merchant Centre work?
After you’ve uploaded your product feed, Merchant Centre will utilise the information you provide to reach as many relevant shoppers as possible. This can be done through their free listings, the shopping page or through Google Ads if you link your accounts. Once linked, you’ll have the opportunity to show your products to customers through shopping, dynamic remarketing and performance max campaigns.
If your store has a physical location, you can create a business profile to list and manage your local store and provide stock numbers to increase product awareness. By using local inventory ads you can promote your in-shop inventory, highlight click-and-collect options if you offer them and also measure the impact that your online store has on your physical store.
The Advantages and Disadvantages of Google Merchant Centre
The Advantages
GMC is the first step in advertising your products on Google Shopping, which will allow you to increase the reach of your brand, products, and services. You can submit comprehensive information about your products, and Google will find customers who are searching for your products and put you in front of them at that moment.
There are multiple feed options that you can use, including content API, file upload, website scrape and Excel sheets so it doesn’t matter which provider is hosting your website. Plugins are available for different websites, so you’re not limited in getting those products set up.
The main advantage of GMC is that you can edit products in real time and present the most accurate information to people searching for your products. This limits the chance of people clicking through to your website from the shopping reel and then bouncing away because the website says something that doesn’t match your product listing.
With 90% of the worldwide requests, Google is one of the most used search engines in the world, which means hundreds of millions of people have the opportunity to see your products and services, you just have to show them.
The Disadvantages
Increasing the reach of your business and the number of sales you get sounds amazing, and it makes complete sense to sign up for a GMC. That being said, Merchant Centre has very specific technical specifications that you will need to meet to get the most out of your products. If you aren’t using Content API as a feed type, you must use an XML, CSV or TXT file type so that Google can read your products.
Your products can also become easily limited if you are missing information about your products. If you’re selling branded products, you must have the brand, the MPN and the GTIN (barcode) included in the product data; otherwise you run the risk of being flagged by Google’s bots which will limit the performance of those products. As much as you can customise your titles and descriptions, Google can be very specific on what is necessary for you to run shopping ads with no limitations.
How to set up Merchant Centre
Setting up a GMC account is relatively straightforward, and Google does hold your hand throughout the process but we’re going to break the process down so you have a step-by-step guide.
Ensure you have a Google Account
It’s pretty self-explanatory, but make sure you’re logged into the right Google account before you start this process. If you don’t have a Google account, then you can set one up.
Create a Google Merchant Centre Account
Go to the Merchant Centre website and press sign up for free. Google will ask you to fill in details, including your name and contact details. They will also ask you whether your business is solely online, brick and mortar or both.
Add Business details
The information that Google will ask you to provide will depend on what type of business you are setting up. Google will give you various prompts to follow to ensure you provide all the necessary information. This can include things such as your business name, address, website, and contact details. You will also need to provide a phone number for verification.
Verify Website
Google will ask you to verify your website to ensure you’re not trying to sway the auction or falsely represent yourself. This will include adding HTML to your website through either code or uploading an HTML file. You may also be able to verify through Google Analytics if the code is already being used on your site.
Set up Shipping and Sale Tax
When setting up your shipping information, make sure it matches exactly what is on your website, as Google can get flag-happy with shipping information. You can choose which countries you want to deliver to, as well as the currency and shipping rates.
Google will suggest sales tax to you based on the countries that you have chosen in your shipping information and the base of your business. You can choose to allow Google to determine the sales tax amount. Alternatively, you can also choose to set this manually.
Add Products
As previously mentioned, Google gives you several ways to add your products to the website. There are a few different feeds that you can use:
Content API
Content API feeds allow the merchant Centre platform to interact directly with your website. They typically update products within an hour of any changes being made. They are incredibly efficient and recommended if you have a large product catalogue.
Scheduled Fetch Feeds
These feeds are hosted on the backend of your website and contain all the required data that Google needs. A scheduled time can be set up for Google to refetch the product information and update products. Unlike content API feeds, Scheduled Fetch feeds will only update products at the fetch time. They can be refetched whenever necessary but will only automatically update once per day.
Website Crawl
Does exactly what it says on the tin. Google’s bots will crawl your website to collect product information using your website's data and form a feed for you. If your website code is incorrectly structured, this may pull through incorrect information.
Google Sheets
Google Sheets feeds are an entirely manual process. You provide all of your information and then upload it to the Merchant Centre. This can be fetched regularly in the same way as a scheduled fetch works.
Review Google’s Policies
Google will run you through product policies such as refunds, returns, and everything else that cannot be shown on product listings. Take the time to read through these before submitting your product for review.
Submit Your Products
With all of the above checked off and done, you will see a prompt telling you to submit your account for review. Choose this option, and once your account has been reviewed, you’ll be able to start showing on the shopping reel.
Best Practises for Shopping Products
Product Titles
Product titles and descriptions won’t be enough to get the most out of your merchant centre listings. Optimising your product data is as important as managing budgets, your CPCs and your ad text. With shopping, your title is your keyword, and you need to include as much information as possible. Make sure that the brand, product type and any additional information, such as colour or size, is there to reach as many customers as you can.
Product Images
Images make you stand out in the shopping reel. Well-lit images against clean, white backgrounds will make your products stand out more as opposed to competitors with busy lifestyle images.
Data Attributes
Certain attributes are needed for GMC to fully review your products. Ensure everything that you upload to Merchant Center includes the following:
- ID
- Title
- Description
- Link
- Image Link
- Price
- Availability
Not including these attributes will make it impossible for your products to show. The goal is always to provide as much relevant and accurate information as possible to get in front of customers looking for your product.
With this guide, you should be good to get started on setting up your merchant centre! If you need a bit of extra help, don’t hesitate to get in touch with the experts at Breakout Media, and we’ll talk you through the process and get your products served online.
