Posted:
When it comes to attracting customers, small businesses know that showcasing their products online can help them get in front of more people -- even when their physical store doors are closed. In fact, one-third of small business owners said new or existing clients engaged with them through their e-commerce websites at least once daily.1

But getting started with a website is just the beginning. Google Shopping helps small businesses like you tap into the power of customer intent to reach the right people with relevant products ads, when it matters the most. Here’s how two local businesses, Paper Culture and PUBLIC Bikes, used Google Shopping to gain a competitive edge and spark shoppers’ interest across the country by leveraging their strengths: unique designs and inspired products.

Paper Culture uses Shopping ads to connect with design lovers online
Unique, modern design is a top priority for Paper Culture, an environmentally-conscious stationery company that sells 100% post-consumer recycled cards, coasters, and other personalized products online. To complement their AdWords text ads, Paper Culture turned to Google Shopping to put their product designs front and center, and reach new customers with rich, visual ads that jump off the search page.

“One of the toughest challenges for us as a small business is that we don’t have the brand of our larger competitors,” says Chris Wu, CEO and co-founder of Paper Culture. “Google Shopping helps us tell our story through showing searchers our unique product designs, right on Google search.”

By coupling customer intent with Google Shopping’s image-focused approach, Paper Culture was able to highlight their designs in a cost-effective way -- ensuring that each shopper that clicked on a Google Shopping ad was an already-interested buyer. Through Shopping campaigns, Paper Culture decreased their cost-per-lead (CPL) by 50%, and saw 3x ROI overall when compared to their other online channels.
PUBLIC Bikes reaches more searching cyclists with Google Shopping
Multi-channel retailer PUBLIC Bikes is in the business of selling colorful, trendy city bikes with a mission to help people fall in love with urban biking. But as a small business that designs, manufactures, and sells their own merchandise, the team often found themselves short on time and resources.

“With a small team, it’s challenging to do everything we want to do and get our brand and products out there,” says Dan Nguyen-Tan, founding executive of PUBLIC Bikes. “We need a way to scale our marketing efforts and get in front of potential customers where they can discover and engage us. That’s why Google Shopping is so important: it helps us reach customers looking for our products across the country.”

PUBLIC Bikes used Google Shopping to find new customers beyond their brick-and-mortar stores. Bidding by product allowed them to more easily prioritize those products that were new or on sale, turning once low-converting search terms into profit. For every $1 invested in Shopping campaigns, PUBLIC Bikes was able to see 2x the ROI as compared to their other online channels.
A new hub for retailers, large and small
Whether you’re an ecommerce business or a multi-channel business, the new Google for Retail offers a one-stop hub to learn more about Google’s solutions for retailers of all sizes.

If you’re a small business like Paper Culture or PUBLIC Bikes, we’re introducing a new Shopping Campaigns page as a go-to resource to help you get up and running on Google Shopping and make the world your storefront. Here, you’ll find product overviews, success stories, tutorial videos, and help resources to show how Google’s various retail tools work together to let you find your shoppers, wherever they are.

Posted by Kim Doan, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping
1eMarketer, Do Small Business Websites Drive Client Engagement?, Feb 2015
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Posted:
When it comes to brick and mortar stores, misinformation runs rampant.

For instance, search results only send consumers to e-commerce sites, retailers lose the shopper who checks a phone in store, and buyers only visit stores to transact or showroom. Those are three common myths debunked in Digital’s Impact on In-Store Shopping1, new research conducted by Ipsos MediaCT and Sterling Brands for Google, based upon purchasing behaviors of more than 6,000 smartphone shoppers.

Although 95% of all retail transactions still occur in-store2, smartphones have quickly become consumer’s favorite and most trusted “shopping assistant.” These handy devices reduce buyers’ remorse, raise consumer expectations for getting more accurate and faster information from store associates, and present new challenges for hungry retailers.

For instance:

  • 68% of shoppers surveyed said they were happier with store purchases when they did research online before buying, according to those surveyed 
  • 71% expect clerks to know or find product information more quickly now, due to smartphones 
  • 46% of smartphone shoppers browse the retailer’s own site or app in-store 

But when paired with a consistent shopping experience — specifically mobile optimized, locally relevant, and personalized search results — these same “shopping assistants” can become as powerful to sellers as they are to buyers, the research found.

In fact, they’ve helped double the value of in store visit,3 increase customer satisfaction (69% of consumers are more satisfied with purchases when they get to touch or feel a product in-store), and they’ve given retailers more opportunities to build brand loyalty (51% said they used digital devices to look for additional information after buying).

For instance, Sears Hometown & Outlet Stores saw a 16% higher clickthrough rate and 122% increase in visits to its stores after adopting Local Inventory Ads, which lets retailers display nearby store inventory to online shoppers.4 “Local inventory ads fit perfectly into our strategy of using digital tools to drive store traffic,” says David Buckley, chief marketing officer at Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores. “If people are searching for a product on their phones, there is nothing more targeted than serving that item with a picture, description, and price while letting the customers know exactly how far they are located from the product.” 

The technology also helps Sears extend the reach of its advertising budget, driving $8 of in store sales for each dollar invested online.5 “When we compared our most recent performance of local inventory ads to offline media typically used to drive store sales, such as a recent broadcast television campaign,” Buckley explains, “local inventory ads returned in-store sales at more than 5X the rate of tv advertising for each dollar spent.6” 


Similarly, Staples saw their store visit and ad click thru rates increase by 33% and 29% respectively, after indicating nearby stock in their search listings.

“Local Inventory Ads are another way Staples helps customers shop whenever and however they want through our omnichannel,” said Ellen Comley, vice president, integrated media, Staples, Inc. “We know that more and more customers are doing research online before buying, and local inventory ads make it easier for us to reach small businesses and ensure we’re providing the most relevant offers.” 

Of course, those are just a few examples. In addition to identifying other ways smartphones are changing modern shopping, Digital’s Impact on In-Store Shopping outlines several steps retailers can take to optimize their online presence for smartphones:

5 things brick and mortar stores should do now 

  1. Use Local Inventory Ads to promote nearby stock to interested buyers, including availability of complementary and recommended products 
  2. Be sure to list store locations, hours, and phone numbers in online search ads 
  3. Optimize online presence for mobile viewing and buying, including search results, website, app, and mobile ads to engage consumers while in store 
  4. Localize and integrate custom offers and product recommendations to smartphone shoppers that disclose their location 
  5. Take an omni-channel approach to marketing and measurement by combining your online and physical efforts into one (see also: Macy’s Inc) 
There’s no denying that smartphone shoppers are looking at competing offers while in store, the research concludes. But a greater percentage of shoppers look to search engine results and a retailer’s own sites and apps first. To take advantage, retailers must acknowledge, react to, and consolidate their multi-channel approach into a “mobile first” omni-channel one.

Learn more about how top retailers are using digital to connect people with their stores here.

Posted by Emily Eberhard Pereira, Head of Shopping Solutions Marketing 

-----------------------------------------------------------------------

 1Google/Ipsos MediaCT/Sterling Brands, Digital Impact on In-Store Shopping, October 2014 
2 eMarketer: Total US Retail Sales Top $4.5 Trillion in 2013, Outpace GDP Growth, April 2014 
3 Shoppertrak 2014 foot traffic and Mastercard SpendPulse transaction Data 2010 thru 2014 
4 AdWords Store Visits Data. 2015 
5 Sears Hometown and Outlet Stores Data. 2015 
6 Sear’s Hometown and Outlet Stores Data. 2015
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Posted:
With more and more retailers offering holiday deals earlier in the season, the excitement about Black Friday is no longer confined to a single day. Now it’s more like a month-long event. As a result, one in five shoppers plan to head to stores on Thanksgiving Day to capitalize on Black Friday deals.1

To get a read on the trends heading into Black Friday, we took the temperature of holiday shopping online. We looked at search trends on Google, insights from Google Consumer Surveys and top trending purchases on our same-day delivery service, Google Express.

Mobile shoppers are out in force
As smartphone shoppers hunt for deals during snackable moments throughout their day, this holiday season will likely be the most mobile ever. Shopping searches on Google coming from smartphones have increased 3.5x year over year and continue to grow.2 And we’re currently sending more mobile traffic to retailers per week from Google Shopping than we did during the peak of last holiday season.3

The smartphone has become the most powerful shopping assistant while consumers are out and about, helping us read customer reviews, watch product demos and find other retailers with product in stock nearby. So it’s no surprise that the top spending days in 2013 for in-store sales are also the days we saw the biggest spikes in shopping searches on mobile devices.4

This coming weekend, expect to see many of your fellow shoppers checking for deals on their smartphone while braving the lines and crowds at the mall. Nearly 50% of 25–34- year-olds use their phone to shop online while standing in line at a store.5 To help these shoppers research products more easily this holiday weekend, we rolled out new mobile features to Google Shopping such as 360-degree imagery and more detailed product information.

Top trending gifts of the season
To get a sense of the hottest gifts likely to sell out this season, we used Google Trends to identify the top trending toys, devices and apparel searches on Google Shopping.
  • Game consoles and tablets continue to be the top gifts trending on Google Shopping, but wearable technology such as the “fitbit” is also on the rise this month. 
  • Certain retro toys are making a comeback this season. Thanks to the new movie “Ouija,” searches for “Ouija boards” are up 300% since October. And queries for “Barbie Dream House” and “My Little Pony” are up as well compared to last month. 6
  • Cold-weather staples, such as “Hunter boots” and “Canada Goose jackets,” are among the most popular apparel searches, up 46% and 140%, respectively, since October. But “jogger pants” are the newcomer gift this season, up 39% from October. 7



Hunting for deals online
Shoppers are already prepping for Black Friday shopping by researching purchases and deals online. We found that 27% of shoppers have already begun hunting for Black Friday deals online.8



The top questions people are asking about Black Friday on Google Search are:
  • What time do stores open on Black Friday
  • What time does Black Friday start
  • When does Black Friday end
  • What to buy on Black Friday
Source: Google data, November 2014.

Beating the holiday rush with same-day delivery
We wanted to take the pulse of the people making purchases this weekend as they prepare for the Thanksgiving festivities. Here’s an overview of the top trending purchases on Google Express across locations.9

San Francisco: No gingerbread cookies here. San Franciscans are seeking a nutritious holiday with lots of bananas, avocado, coconut water and quinoa. And talk about eating clean: Disinfecting wipes are also among top shoppers’ searches.
  • West LA: The City of Angels is ready to party. Disposable silverware, plastic cups, paper plates, tortilla chips and garbage bags are all they need for hassle-free entertaining. 
  • Manhattan: New Yorkers start off the day right with cereal, almond milk and—why not?—butter croissants. After a long day, residents relax with snacks such as mini pretzels and almonds. 
  • Boston: Bring your appetite to Boston parties. Salty treats such as maple bacon chips, green pea crisps and peanuts top shopping lists. The city also buys more ketchup and popcorn than any other city. 
  • Chicago: Baby boom. Chicago households are stocking up for tots this winter with lots of baby wipes and goodies such as chocolate and sparkling juice. To ward off sniffles, Chicago is loading up on vitamin C and orange juice!
  • Washington, D.C.: The capital is stocking up on healthy bites such as whole wheat crackers, fruit snacks and diet soda to wash it down. 
To learn more about digital trends and how they’re affecting holiday shopping, visit ThinkwithGoogle.

Posted by Jenny Fernandez, Analytical Insights Marketing, Google
Sources:
1 Google Consumer Survey, November 2014, n=1100.
2 Google Data, November 2014.
3 Global Google Shopping Data, Week of 12/2-12/8 ‘13 compared to 11/1-11/7 ‘14.
4 MasterCard, SpendingPulse report, 2013 and Google Search data, November–December 2013.
5 Google Consumer Survey, November 2014, n=1100.
6 Google Trends, November 2014.
7 Google Trends, November 2014.
8 Google Consumer Survey, November 2014, n=1100.
9 Google Express data, last 90 days (only delivered orders counted).
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(Cross-posted from the Google Inside AdWords Blog)

Earlier this month, we introduced an upgrade tool for advertisers to upgrade to Shopping campaigns quickly and easily. If you’ve already upgraded, then you’re all set. If you haven’t upgraded yet and don’t do it by the end of this month, the following is what will happen to your regular Product Listing Ads (PLA) campaigns come September.
  • Phase 1: Limited functionality of all regular PLA campaigns - Starting September 2nd, you will not be able to edit your product targeting, max. CPC bids, promotional text and destination URLs anymore. Campaign statuses and budgets will remain editable so you can manage your spend until your regular PLA campaigns are auto-upgraded to Shopping campaigns.
  • Phase 2: Auto-upgrade to Shopping campaigns - Throughout September, regular PLA campaigns that received impressions in the preceding few weeks will be auto-upgraded to a new Shopping campaign with a similar campaign structure. Some regular PLA campaigns, settings and bids might not carry over to your new Shopping campaign due to technical limitations. Once your regular PLA campaigns are auto-upgraded, you’ll receive an email notification and your regular PLA campaigns will stop serving PLAs. Further details on the auto-upgrade are in the AdWords Help Center.

 Don’t wait to upgrade
As a final reminder, upgrade your campaigns before September to ensure they are set up as you’d like. We recommend using the upgrade tool as it walks you through the upgrade process step by step.

For more information, visit this help center article on the retirement of regular PLA campaigns and the automatic upgrade to Shopping campaigns. If you have any questions, reach out to the AdWords Community Forum or contact us.

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping

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Posted:
(Cross-posted from the Inside AdWords Blog)

This is the final stretch. At the end of August, regular Product Listing Ad (PLA) campaigns will retire and be replaced by Shopping campaigns. A majority of you have started upgrading to Shopping campaigns, but if you’re one of the few who haven’t yet, we’re introducing a new upgrade tool that’ll help you upgrade in a matter of clicks.

This tool creates a Shopping campaign from your regular PLA campaign, with a campaign structure and bids based on your regular PLA campaign and historical performance data.
If you haven’t started your upgrade, we encourage you to use this tool as a jumping off point for your Shopping campaigns. Be sure to check your campaign budgets, settings and bids so they’re customized to your business needs.

Note that not all campaigns are compatible with this upgrade tool. If, for example, you use AdWords labels or groupings in your product targeting or inventory filters, you must update your data feed with custom labels before you use the upgrade tool, unless you’re happy to use another attribute to subdivide your inventory in AdWords directly.

You can access the upgrade tool, and check which of your campaigns are eligible, in the Settings tab of your existing Product Listing Ads campaigns. Learn more in the help center.

We’re here to help
We want to make sure you’ve thoughtfully upgraded and are ready for the holidays. Join us for a Learn With Google Hangout on Air on August 12 at 10:00am PST to walk through the new upgrade tool. If you have any questions, reach out to the AdWords Community Forum or contact us.

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping
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Posted:
We introduced Shopping campaigns in February to make it easier for you to manage your Product Listing Ads (PLAs). In late August, Shopping campaigns will be the default campaign type for all PLA advertisers.

To help retailers make the most of their Shopping campaigns, we’re excited to introduce a new best practices guide, “Shape Up Your Shopping Campaigns.” It addresses important questions like:
  • How should you structure your campaigns: by product line, performance, or both? 
  • Which feed attributes have the best chance of improving CTR?
  • Are you adjusting bids quickly enough during peak seasons?

Download the “Shape Up Your Shopping Campaigns” guide now to ensure you’re making the most of your PLAs and data feeds.

 For additional help, here are a few resources:
Posted by Matt Lawson, Director, Performance Ads Marketing
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Posted:
(cross-posted from the Google Inside AdWords Blog)

Earlier this month, we shared a few success stories on Shopping campaigns, our new campaign type for Product Listing Ads (PLAs), and that the regular PLA campaign type will retire in late August 2014.

To upgrade to Shopping campaigns, we encourage you to create a Shopping campaign from scratch and then customize your product groups and bids from there. That way, you can choose how granular you’d like to get and ensure all your inventory is included in your Shopping campaign.

However, if you would like to base your Shopping campaign on a regular PLA campaign, we’re introducing an option today to help you upgrade.
After setting up your Shopping campaign, you’ll be taken to a new page to create ad groups. Here, you’ll see two options: the ability to start fresh with one ad group or create one or many ad groups based on a regular PLA campaign.

Note that some parts of a regular PLA campaigns aren’t transferable to a Shopping campaign, like product targets that use AdWords labels or groupings. If none of your PLA campaigns are transferrable, you might not see this option.

Keep in mind
With Shopping campaigns, you no longer need to create separate ad groups or product targets to track your impressions, clicks and cost. You can analyze and report on your PLA performance by product attribute or by individual items in the Dimensions tab, regardless of your campaign structure.

As a reminder, all PLA advertisers will need to upgrade to Shopping campaigns by late August 2014, at which time all remaining regular PLA campaigns will be automatically upgraded. Over the next few months, we’ll continue to share more information and tools to help you upgrade your campaigns and manage them at scale.

To learn more about Shopping campaigns and how to upgrade, here are a few resources:


Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping
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Posted:
(cross-posted from the Inside Adwords Blog)

In February, we made Shopping campaigns available to all Product Listing Ad (PLA) advertisers and, in March, we released AdWords API support to help you manage your campaigns at scale. Shopping campaigns offer the ability to browse your inventory directly in AdWords, report on your performance down to the product-level, and bid competitively with new metrics like benchmark data and impression share. We’ve received great feedback from you so far and are excited to share what’s next:
  • Size your opportunity with Bid Simulator - To provide more actionable insight into your PLAs, we’ve been rolling out a Bid Simulator that’s now available in all Shopping campaigns. With a Bid Simulator, you can now estimate how bid changes could impact your impressions, clicks or costs.
  • Options to create a Shopping campaign - In the coming days, we’ll be adding some options to help you get started. You would be able to create a Shopping campaign from scratch or, for many of you, use one of your regular PLA campaigns to create similar product targets, negative keywords or promotional text.
  • Multiple ad groups for advanced retailers - While many of you will be happy with your Shopping campaign as is, we’ve heard from advanced retailers that they’d like to create multiple ad groups. It’s now possible to do this within a Shopping campaign.

 Continued Retailer Success
Since we made Shopping campaigns available to all PLA advertisers, we continue to hear many examples of how it helps you manage PLAs and effectively grow your business. Here are a few:
“The benefits of Shopping campaigns can’t be overstated – the ease of setup, the transparency of data, the ability to group products into logical categories and manage to the product level make it a must. All of these contribute to our clients’ ROI almost tripling, and there’s still room to improve.” -JumpFly
“The new Shopping campaigns allowed us to achieve a much higher-level of profitability, cutting costs by 13% and increasing return on ad spend by about 22% on average. Not only that, the new campaign type trims about 2 hours of setup time.” -Exclusive Concepts 
“We used the product-level data from our Shopping campaign to fine-tune our bidding strategy, focusing on the products that acquired the most traffic & lowered the ones that are less important. This helped us increase visits 25% & ROI by 16%.” -Wiggle 
“Shopping campaigns effectively reduced the time spent setting up product-specific bids and optimizing in half. We can now invest even more time into each client, and the results we’ve seen have been no less than amazing. A client selling home accessories saw a 301% increase in revenue after only one month. As a result, we are now changing our agency standards within PLAs to only use Shopping campaigns.” -White Shark Media

 Future of Shopping campaigns and retirement of regular PLA campaign type
Shopping campaigns offer a truly retail-centric and seamless approach to PLAs. We're very excited by the positive feedback we've heard so far and will continue to build tools and features into this new campaign type to help you manage your PLAs. Thus, we'll be retiring the regular PLA campaign type and asking all PLA advertisers to upgrade to Shopping campaigns by late August 2014, at which time all remaining PLA campaigns will be automatically upgraded. Over the next few months, we’ll share more information and release more tools to help you upgrade your campaigns and manage them at scale. We encourage you to start planning your upgrade to Shopping campaigns today to take full advantage of the new features as soon as possible.

For additional help, here are a few resources:

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping
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Posted:
(Cross-posted from the Google Inside Adwords Blog)

Last year, we introduced Shopping campaigns to a limited number of advertisers as a new, retail-centric way to manage and promote your products on Google. It allows you to browse your inventory directly in AdWords, streamlining how you organize, bid and report on your Product Listing Ads.

We received great feedback from advertisers so far, who say that Shopping campaigns help them save time organizing their inventory and discovering new opportunities to optimize and grow their traffic online. Here are just a few things we’re hearing from retailers.

  • "We're very excited about the opportunities that come with Shopping campaigns. It makes life easier for retailers who want to get more granular with their targeting, solving many problems that exist today. Its features help clients manage, exclude and prioritize their products and can help clients continue to see increased ROI on PLAs in the future." - Todd Bowman, Product Manager, RKG

  • "Thanks to Shopping campaigns, our 8000+ product catalog is manageable now. The advanced competitive metrics, such as impression share and benchmark max. CPC, really help us manage bids efficiently." - Nick Carter, Director of Marketing & Sales, ValuePetSupplies

  • "The transition was very easy. We quickly created product groups for the top 25 brands and a ‘top sellers’ strategy and saw a 6% reduction in CPC and a 13% increase in conversion rate. The combined benefit of these two improvements alone has meant our CPA has reduced by 20% since we launched Shopping campaigns." - Rich Brown, Head of PPC, Farfetch

  • “Transitioning our customer AllesRahmen.de to the new Shopping campaigns was the best decision. They not only saved us time, but the additional information on benchmark CTRs and max CPCs also helped us to optimize the campaign efficiently, lowering our CPA by 88%.” - Melanie Lang, Head of SEA, Beyond Media

  • "Shopping campaigns definitely gave us more control over our bidding, helping us quadruple our click-through rate, reduce our cost-per-order by two-thirds, and increase our conversion rate by 88% year on year." - Shira Reineking, Head of Campaign Management Online Business, real, - 

Starting today, Shopping campaigns are now available to all advertisers around the world.

Based on feedback from early adopters, Shopping campaigns also now allow you to bulk edit your product groups at scale. API support and a bid simulator are coming soon. We’ll continue to build out support for Shopping campaigns, working closely with external agencies and search management platforms as well.

Learn how to get started with the help of a few resources:



Need additional assistance? We’re happy to help. Feel free to visit our Help Center or contact us.

Posted by Eric Tholomé, Director of Product Management, Google Shopping
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Posted:
Cross-posted from the Google Inside AdWords Blog

The holiday season is a time of the year when many of us spend hours finding the perfect gifts. It’s also a time when knowing that an online retailer is trustworthy is more important than ever. That’s where Google Trusted Stores comes in - we’re spreading holiday cheer by helping people find the best online stores and shop with confidence.

Google Trusted Stores is a free certification program to highlight retailers that offer a consistently great shopping experience. Qualifying merchants display a badge on their website, and Google stands behind these stores by offering $1,000 of free purchase protection. Since we introduced the program last year, we’ve been working hard to expand it, including launching a new integration with seller ratings on AdWords, updating the badge with more helpful information for shoppers, and broadening store participation around the world.

Shopper feedback powering seller ratings

Google Trusted Stores now helps to power seller ratings, which show on AdWords text ads as well as Product Listing Ads on Google Shopping. This integration provides shoppers with valuable information, while giving participating retailers a free and easy way to earn the ratings they deserve. Advertisers who display seller ratings on their ads typically see a boost in AdWords click-through rates, with higher ratings generally resulting in higher click-through rates.

Providing helpful information at shoppers’ fingertips

In the US, Google Trusted Stores now provides shoppers with an upgraded store performance summary that appears when they hover over the badge on a merchant’s website. The summary includes helpful returns, delivery, and customer support responsiveness metrics provided by StellaService, a company that objectively measures the customer service experience by shopping anonymously at online stores.

More confident shoppers fueling global expansion
Millions of people now see the Google Trusted Stores badge on retailer sites and in Google ads every day. In fact, we’ve more than tripled US store participation in the last year. Because shoppers value the badge, many of these stores are seeing sales growth. For instance, OnlineShoes measured a 4.2% sales increase from the Google Trusted Stores badge, and AutoAnything saw an increase of 5.2%.

Given the great shopper and retailer response in the US, we’ve started to expand Google Trusted Stores around the world. We recently introduced pilot programs in the UK, France, Germany, and Australia, each with a collection of excellent merchants such as Schuh (UK), Spartoo.com (France), PEARL (Germany), and Kogan (Australia). (Note - only shoppers located in a particular country will see the badge for that country.)

Learn more 
To learn more about the program, please visit our website. If you’re a US retailer, you can apply to become a Google Trusted Store. If you are a retailer outside the US, please let us know you’re interested here: UK, France, Germany, Australia.

Happy Holidays and Happy Shopping!

Posted by Brian Marquardt, Group Product Manager, Google Shopping 
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Posted:
Cross-posted from the Official Google Blog

Thanksgiving is just a few days away, and if you’re like us, you still have loads of stuff to buy on your expanding holiday gift list. If you can’t imagine braving the crowds to get everything picked and purchased, don’t worry: our elves have made some improvements to Google Shopping in time for the holidays.

Find the hottest toys and get inspired with our holiday shortlists
We’ve curated holiday shortlists for top gift categories including Hot Toys, Electronics, Google & Android Gadgets, Gifts for the Home, Gifts for Her and Gifts for Him. For those of you looking for something to delight the kids in your life, here are some of the top trending toy searches on Google Shopping this month:

And for those of us wanting to relive our childhoods, we’re also seeing many nostalgic toys making a comeback this year:

Browse more quickly and easily
A new shopping experience on desktop, tablet and mobile makes it easier than ever to browse and hone in on items you want to buy, whether it’s a camera, a ski jacket or an ice cream maker. Click on a product to preview details like sizes, colors and description, and find out if it’s available at a nearby local store. If you see an item that’s almost perfect but not quite, click to view “visually similar” items.

Make your shortlist and check it twice
Shortlists help you keep track of products that catch your eye, compare them at a glance, and share ideas with friends and family. Your shortlist now also stays with you at the top of each page while you browse Google Shopping, so you can keep track of items as you go.

Check out the product from all angles
Sometimes it’s hard to imagine what an item actually looks like from the online picture. Now, for many items on Google Shopping, you can see a 360° view of the products. These interactive images bring you the in-store feeling of holding and touching a product.
Once you’ve got something for everyone on your shopping list, we encourage you to buy something for yourself. You’ve earned it.

Posted by Karen Corby, Senior Product Manager, Google Shopping
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Posted:
Recently the Google Shopping team introduced Shopping Campaigns, to better utilize Product Listing Ads (PLA). These campaigns allow you to streamline how you manage and bid on your products, report your performance, and find opportunities to grow your traffic from Google. Learn how to put this new campaign type to work for you in this week's Learn with Google webinar. We'll walk through campaign how-to's, best practices, and optimizing your PLAs.

This webinar will feature a live question and answer session with Nicole Premo, a Google Shopping partner manager. Be sure to register and have your questions answered. We'll kick things off on November 20, 2013 at 10am PT / 1pm ET and the webinar will run for about an hour. Click here to register.

Posted by Matt Ludwig, The Learn With Google Team
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Posted:
Last year, we introduced Google Trusted Stores in the US to help consumers shop online with confidence while creating new opportunities for businesses to build trust and loyalty with their customers. Since then, we’ve been working hard to bring the program to more countries around the world. Last week, we launched Google Trusted Stores pilot programs in the UK (Google Certified Shops) and France (Google Marchands de confiance). And today, we’re introducing a pilot of Google Trusted Stores in Australia.

Google Trusted Stores is a program that helps shoppers identify online stores that offer a great shopping experience. For retailers, it creates an opportunity to differentiate their business, attract new customers, and increase sales by displaying a Trusted Stores badge, awarded to merchants that demonstrate a strong track record of on-time shipping and excellent customer service. When a shopper hovers over the badge on the merchant’s site, they’ll see helpful performance metrics, plus information about free purchase protection from Google. Here’s what the badge looks like in Australia:


Our goal with Google Trusted Stores is to give shoppers the reassurance they need to shop confidently online at a broad set of stores. And we also aim to help excellent merchants expand their e-commerce businesses. Based on the success stories that we’ve seen in the US, we expect that participating in Google Trusted Stores will drive meaningful increases in online sales in other countries as well.

For the international pilot programs, we’re proud to be working with a great set of retailers in each country (please note - you’ll only see the badge for a particular country if you are located in that country):

Australia:

UK:

France:

Google Trusted Stores is entirely free, both for shoppers and merchants. If you’re an international retailer and interested in the program, please let us know here: AU, UK, FR. US retailers can apply here.

Posted by Brian Marquardt, Group Product Manager, Google Shopping
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Posted:
(cross-posted from the Inside AdWords blog)

In a couple of days, it will be November and the holiday rush will be in full swing. With six fewer days between Thanksgiving and Christmas compared to last year, retailers must make the condensed holiday shopping period count. Here are our top tips for using Product Listing Ads (PLAs) to your advantage this holiday.

Sway undecided shoppers with timely promotions. Gift givers are often in the market for things they don’t normally buy, and according to our recent research, price is the main reason they decide to shop somewhere new. We saw this in action last year, as one in four holiday shoppers purchased from a retailer they had never shopped with before. Including promotional text like free shipping, price discounts, coupons, and purchase incentives in your PLA campaign can help close the deal with shoppers still trying to make up their minds. In fact, one in five say free shipping will be the deciding factor on purchases this year, so make sure your shipping settings in Merchant Center accurately reflect free shipping if you offer it.

Fill in the gaps in your data feed. Great product data powers the most effective PLAs. It helps you win the trust and confidence of active shoppers by letting them know you have exactly what they’re looking for. One of the most worthwhile things you can do is to take a close look at your data feeds and make sure you’re including all the key information that would draw the attention of a potential customer.

Here’s an example of filling in the gaps in your data feed:

Attribute
Before
After
Title
Short Sleeve Solid Dress
NY Collection Short Sleeve Solid Green Dress
Description
Short sleeve solid dress…
The NY Collection short sleeve knee length dress…
Google Product Category
Clothing > Sales
Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Dresses > Cocktail Dresses
Color
Lime
Green
Brand

NY Collection
Gender

Female
Size

6

Keep your data feeds fresh. The holidays are a time for high inventory turnover and price changes, so don’t disappoint potential customers with stale and inaccurate information. Keep your data feed content up-to-date and upload your feed as frequently as needed (up to 4 times per day) to ensure your products have accurate stock statuses, prices, and promotional information. Remember to account a few hours for data feed processing and approvals. 

Build a campaign structure you can maintain through the holiday hustle. Create product targets and bid more aggressively on products with good performance and high demand during the holiday season, such as seasonal items, best sellers, or products with high margins. You should also ensure there is only one All products target with the lowest bid of all your product targets to capture consumer interest in your low priority products.

Maximize your exposure to constantly-connected consumers. People will shop at all hours, across devices this holiday. For example, 84% of shoppers with smartphones actively browse the web while in a store, looking for comparable deals online. At minimum, aim to maximize your visibility on product search results by running both text ads and PLAs. Then focus on incremental gains: ensure your PLAs are showing on mobile devices and increase bids when a consumer is in or near your store, or even while they’re browsing nearby competitors’ offerings. Capitalize on recent improvements in mobile PLAs to increase mobile traffic, and point people to your physical stores with local availability for Product Listing Ads. 


Posted by Erica Sievert, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping
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Posted:
(cross-posted from the Google Inside AdWords Blog)


Everyday, people search on Google for the best products from retailers large and small. With Product Listing Ads (PLA) on Google Shopping, people can browse a wide selection of products, finding high-quality imagery and relevant product information like brand and price.

To make it easier for you to connect with these consumers and promote your products on Google, we’re introducing Shopping campaigns, a new campaign type for PLAs. Shopping campaigns streamline how you manage and bid on your products, report on your performance, and find opportunities to grow your traffic from Google.
Key benefits

1. Retail-centric way to manage your products

Shopping campaigns allow you to browse your product inventory directly in AdWords and create product groups for the items you want to bid on. For example, if you’re a fashion retailer, you’ll see what types of shoes are in your data feed and how many boots you can promote. You use the product attributes derived from your data feed such as Google product category, product type, brand, condition, item id and custom labels to organize your inventory into product groups. Custom labels are a new, structured way to tag your products in your data feed with attributes that matter to you, such as ‘margin’ to separate your high- and low-margin products. To see all the items you can bid on, the Products tab will show you a full list of your approved products and their product attributes.
2. Advanced reporting to measure product performance

Regardless of how you choose to structure your product groups, Shopping campaigns offer the unprecedented ability to view your performance data by product or product attribute. Since performance metrics are associated with the item and not the product group, you can filter and segment data by your product attributes. This includes Google product category, product type, brand, condition, item id and custom labels. For example, you’ll see which Apparel & Accessories categories drive the most clicks, without having to break out your clothing category into a separate product group.
3. Competitive data to size your opportunity

To help you optimize and scale your PLAs, Shopping campaigns provide insights into your competitive landscape. In the Product Groups tab, you can add benchmark columns to see the estimated average CTR and Max CPC for other advertisers with similar products. The competitive performance data you see is aggregated and averaged, so all performance data is anonymous. Coming soon, you’ll have impression share columns to help you understand the opportunity lost due to insufficient bids and budgets, and a bid simulator will help you estimate the amount of impressions you’ll receive as you adjust your bids.
How to get started

Shopping campaigns are currently available to a limited number of advertisers. It will be rolling out gradually in the US, with full global availability by early next year. API support will come in 2014 as well.

You can learn more about Shopping campaigns at some upcoming events. Join us at our Learn With Google webinar for Shopping campaigns on November 20, 2013, and find us at Search Engine Strategies in Chicago on November 6, 2013.

We've built Shopping campaigns with retailers in mind, and if you'd like to be an early adopter to share your feedback, you can express your interest here. We'd love to hear from you!

Posted by Sameer Samat, Vice President of Product Management, Google Shopping
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Posted:
With Google Shopping, people can easily research products, compare items, and connect with merchants online to make their purchase. We've been going global to bring a quality online shopping experience to users around the world. But sometimes the most helpful information about a product is whether you can find it at a local store nearby.

Recently, we began rolling out two new local features for Google Shopping. The first is local availability for Product Listing Ads on desktop and smartphones. When someone searches for a product on Google, she may see a Product Listing Ad for a local store. When she clicks on the ad, she’ll arrive at a local storefront where she can browse a large selection of the store’s inventory before she visits in person.

For example, someone searching for a new fragrance may see an ad letting her know it’s available at a nearby store. After clicking the ad, she’ll see product and availability information for that fragrance, along with similar items in stock at the store. She can search other available products, find store hours, and get directions. If she still needs more information, she can call the store or visit the website directly from the local storefront. Below are examples of how these features appear on mobile and desktop devices.
Both local availability for Product Listing Ads and the local storefront are based on a local product feed managed through Google Merchant Center, which allows retailers to provide users with up-to-date, item-level price and availability information for each physical store. Participating retailers pay for clicks on the Product Listing Ad to the local storefront on a cost-per-click (CPC) basis. All clicks and interactions on the local storefront are free. Retailers can also see separate local click performance.

These local features help retailers leverage the scale of Google Shopping to market items sold in their physical stores. They’re currently available to a limited set of US retailers, and we look forward to making them more widely available in the coming months. Please fill out this interest form if you are a US merchant and would like to participate in the future.

Paul Bankhead, Senior Product Manager, Google Shopping
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Posted:
With less than three months to Black Friday, the holiday shopping season is quickly approaching. We know that advertisers with Product Listing Ads campaigns are in search of new ways to optimize their product data and drive more traffic to their stores.

Two weeks ago, we hosted Google Shopping Office Hours via Hangouts on Air to share general advice on data feeds and unique product identifiers. We saw great engagement and will be broadcasting additional sessions, deep-diving into topics that will help prepare your data feeds for the holidays. Below is a calendar of Google Shopping Office Hours for the upcoming months. We encourage you to attend sessions of interest. We’ll discuss the topic for the first 20 minutes then open up the forum to live Q&A. If you already know what you’d like to ask or want to request a topic, feel free to submit your responses here. Questions on the event pages below will also answered in the Q&A.

Troubleshooting Disapprovals 
Tuesday, September 24, 2013 @ 10:00 AM PT 
What do I do if my feed is disapproved? 
What are the common data feed and data quality pitfalls?
How do I ensure all my products are approved? 
Registration Link 

Scaling Inventory Updates 
Tuesday, October 8, 2013 @ 10:00 AM PT 
What are the best practices for updating and editing my feed? 
What are the various data feed upload methods? 
What are the pros and cons of each method? 
Registration Link

Optimizing Product Attributes 
Tuesday, October 22, 2013 @ 10:00 AM PT 
How do I improve my data quality? 
What should I optimize? 
Registration Link

Posted by Chris Azalde, Product Specialist, Google Shopping
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Posted:
(Cross-posted from the Google Inside Adwords Blog)

A few weeks ago, we announced that we’ll soon be enforcing the new unique product identifier requirements to continue improving data quality on Google Shopping. These new specifications help us serve better results to users while creating more opportunities for merchants. We highly recommend making the necessary changes to comply with data quality requirements, as better data quality is a key lever to improve the performance of your Product Listing Ads campaigns.

Beginning on September 16th, all previously exempt accounts in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom as well as all accounts in Australia, Brazil, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Spain, Italy, Japan, and the Netherlands will begin to be subject to these new requirements. By November, all violating offers will be rejected and will not be served through Product Listing Ads. These new feed specifications are already being enforced for all accounts in the United States and non-exempt accounts in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

In September, we’ll also begin enforcing correct use of the ‘identifier exists’ attribute. To avoid disruption to your traffic, please ensure that you’re only submitting ‘identifier exists’ with a value of FALSE in categories where unique product identifiers are required but no such identifier exists for an item (for example, custom goods). Please review the latest product feed specification to learn more.

To help merchants with this transition, we’ll be broadcasting Google Shopping Office Hours via a Hangout on Air on Tuesday, August 27, 2013 at 9:30 am Pacific Time. We encourage you to join us to get advice about data feeds and unique product identifiers. If you already know what you’d like to ask, feel free to post it in the comments now. You’ll be able to submit questions during the Hangout on Air as well.

 Posted by Angelika Rohrer, Program Manager, Google Shopping
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Posted:
(cross-posted from the Inside AdWords Blog)

As we previously announced, we began enforcement of the new unique product identifier feed specification as part of an ongoing effort to improve product data quality on Google Shopping. These new specifications help us serve better results to our users while creating more opportunities for merchants.

Enforcement of these new specifications has begun and will continue to ramp up over the coming weeks. By September, all violating offers will be rejected and will not be served through Product Listing Ads.

These new feed specifications will affect all accounts in the United States and non-exempt accounts in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom. Beginning September 16th, all previously exempt accounts in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom as well as all other targeted countries will be subject to these new requirements.

For more information, please review the unique product identifier requirements and the latest product feed specifications to make the appropriate changes to your data. To help merchants with this transition, we’ll be hosting a Hangout on Air this Friday, July 19th (9am PT/12pm ET) to walk through the changes and answer any questions you may have about your feeds. You’ll be able to view the session video on the link above if you miss the live broadcast.

Posted by Angelika Rohrer, Program Manager, Google Shopping
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Posted:
(cross-posted on the Inside AdWords Blog)

On June 11th, Google Shopping will complete the transition to a commercial model in the United Kingdom, Germany, France, Japan, Italy, Spain, the Netherlands, Brazil, Australia, Switzerland and the Czech Republic. When the transition is complete, free product listings will no longer appear on Google Shopping. We believe this new model, built on Product Listing Ads, will help retailers of all sizes connect the right products with customers around the world, increase clicks to their sites, and convert more shoppers into buyers.

Onward and upward

We've been pleased with the rapid adoption of Google Shopping by the global retail community. Over 1 billion products are now being promoted globally on Google Shopping, largely driven by a 300% year-on-year growth in participating sellers (including many aggregators and marketplaces). And we’ve seen 20% growth in traffic to retailers over the past year.

Global merchant success stories

We’ve heard from a variety of retailers around the world who have embraced Google Shopping and are seeing great results. Check out the highlights below:

France
eSearchVision helped Vertbaudet, a retailer specializing in children’s apparel and decor, launch a Product Listing Ads campaign that accounted for 7% of sales from their website in the Autumn-Winter 2012 season.
JapanEnigmo runs a social shopping site offering domestic customers brand items from sellers outside of Japan. After they optimized their data on Google Shopping and created a Product Listing Ads campaign, Enigmo succeeded in increasing the number of new customer sign-ups.
NetherlandsTuinFlora.com is a family-owned business that exports flower bulbs, seeds and plants across Europe and the US. They promoted their products on Google Shopping for their top export markets and saw their conversion rates increase by 20%.
United Kingdom
Forward3D helped New Look, a leading fashion retailer for men, women and teens in the UK, experiment with Product Listing Ads to increase reach and improve engagement beyond standard text ads. They used Merchant Center labels to categorize the catalogue by price bracket, balancing CPAs and ROI more effectively. As a result, New Look saw a 24% increase in revenue week over week, 68% overall revenue growth and 40% improved ROI. 

Equimedia helped WHSmith.co.uk, a retailer of books, stationery, and more, promote their products on Google Shopping. Product Listing Ads represent 6% of total PPC spend but generate 10% of the revenue, producing a total ROI that is 59% better than standard text ads.
GermanyHurra.com helped bonprix, a leading fashion retailer, complement standard text ads with Product Listing Ads, achieving a 50% higher click-through-rate and 30% higher conversion rate at the same cost-per-click.

 Make the most of Google Shopping

Whether you’re just getting started with Product Listing Ads or are looking for more advanced optimization strategies, we’ve compiled our top recommendations to succeed with Google Shopping below. Read on for these quick tips and sign up for one of our upcoming Hangouts on Air in your country to learn how you can prepare for the global commercial transition.

If you’re new to Product Listing Ads
If  you’re already using Product Listing Ads
For agencies
  • Join Google Engage to get the latest agency news, trainings and support from the Google Shopping team
Need additional assistance? We’re happy to help. Feel free to visit our Help Center or call one of our Shopping specialists in your country below:
  • Australia - 1800 087 124
  • Brazil - 0800 727 8947
  • Czech Republic - 800 500 353
  • France - 805 540 727
  • Germany - 0800 5894933
  • Italy - 800930819
  • Japan - 0120-984-684
  • Netherlands - 0800 2500026
  • Spain - 900 814 539
  • Switzerland - 0800 002539
  • United Kingdom - 0800 169 0711

Posted by: Sameer Samat, Vice President of Product Management, Google Shopping


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