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What is Google Merchant Center?

At a time when e-commerce is expanding on a massive scale, Google Merchant Center has become essential for growing your sales ✨

what-google-merchant-center

In addition to your store visitors, the GMC extends the visibility of your products to millions of users. 

Thanks to this ultra-intuitive interface, you can launch a free campaign by importing your product data sheets.

If you have a site on an e-commerce platform such as Woo Commerce, Magento, Wix, Squarespace, Prestashop or Shopify, creating a Google Merchant Center account has several advantages.

To find out more about how Google Merchant Center can benefit your business, read this complete guide to Google Merchant Center.

Getting started with Google Merchant Center

The first crucial step is to open an account on accounts.google.com 🔐

Once you've created an account, activate Merchant Center via your Google Account. You will then be asked to describe your company, its physical address and contact details.

Google Merchant Center also lets you link your customer service department to your GMC account

To do this, enter the URL of your customer support service.

And don't forget to describe your company, including its logo and name. 

Once this is done, link your account with Google ads Merchant Center. Connect the two accounts by adding your Google Ads customer number.

How do I send my products to Google Merchant Center?

Google Sheets lets youimport your product data sheets in .xml, .csv or .xls format into Google Merchant Center ⬆️

Make sure you fill in all the necessary information, since the algorithm takes all this data into account. 

You can alsoimport product feeds if you have a Google Merchant Center Prestashop or Shopify account.

Although creating a Google Shopping feed can be a time-consuming process, it's a one-time event. 

With the Google Merchant Center Feed extension, you can create a real-time feed and list all the products you want to promote.

Why use GMC?

At first glance, Google Merchant Center has a number of practical features that will make your Google Shopping campaigns easier 🛍️

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Centralizing your product data, it allows you to quickly place an ad

What's more, product listings are free of charge. In addition to posting ads, you can also create product status reports.

Do you have a physical store? 🤩

Online shoppers can also view available items in real time and place their orders. 

When you post an ad, Google Merchant Center displays the nearest point of sale according to the buyer's location. 

This interface also facilitates the implementation of your sales actions, such as discounts or free delivery.

👉 See also: How to optimize conversion of Google Local Inventory Ads?

Optimizing product listings on the GMC

First of all, you have a dashboard fortracking your campaigns on Google Merchant Center. 

It remains accessible when you use the Google Merchant Center connection. 

This will give you an exact idea of the performance of your campaigns, including the number of clicks or impressions. 

It also displays the number of orders placed and the items ordered. 

This information already enables you totake action to optimize your Google Merchant Centerads.

Your optimization efforts can pay off if you want to generate more sales from Google's search platform. 

In addition to basic settings, there are a number of other points to check. 

In addition, an item must have a Gtin code code, without which Google will have difficulty identifying it. 

Also take care with the description of each product, specifying for example the sizes or colors available. 

Stay up to date by identifying out-of-stock items and updating those available in stock.

Thealgorithm also retains keywords that correspond to the queries of Internet users. 

That's why it's highly recommended to work on this aspect to reach your core target. 

Finally, take advantage of Google Merchant Center to offer your visitors the best possible user experience

Set up your account to simplify transactions and optimize customer service.

Make sure theshopping experience is optimized for your paid campaigns. We recommend you read our 10 valuable tips for quickly optimizing an e-commerce landing page

With a platform like Dataïads, it's possible to deploy optimized shopping experiences.

The Google Merchant Center interface

Once you've created your Google Merchant Center account, you'll access several sections. 

They contain all the information you need to manage your ads effectively.

The Google Merchant Center dashboard

The dashboard provides an overview of important account data. It informs you about theimport of product feeds, as well as any necessary revisions to product sheets. 

catalogue-products-ecommerce-google-merchant-center

It also presents all the statistical indicators or KPIs that enable you to estimate the performance of your ads. 

In fact, the dashboard produces a detailed report where you can review orders placed, clicks and impressions.

The Products section of Google Merchant Center

This section enables you tointegrate your products directly into Google Merchant Center, making them available from searches on the world's #1 search engine.

It has three sub-branches, including "Diagnosis", "Products" and "Flows". 

This will enable you to constantly monitor your items and manage product flows. Aggregated data will be presented in graphical form to determine the status of your ads

By consulting it, you'll know exactly which products are active, pending or have expired.

The "All products" section refers to the management of products added to your Google Merchant Center account. 

At any time, you can modify the columns, add information such as expiration date, etc. 

Where this sub-section comes into its own is when you're using filters

It can display items by brand, size or color. You can manage filters according to your search criteria.

Finally, the "Flows" section presents the main and additional information flows relating to your products. 

You can create and import flows from this sub-section.

👉 Also explore: 12 simple tips to improve your Google Shopping ranking

The Performance section of Google Merchant Center

As already mentioned, Google Merchant Center provides quantified reports on the performance of your campaigns

All this is visible in the dashboard. By the way, we recommend that you take careful note of all the performance indicators shown there.

The marketing section of Google Merchant Center

The "Marketing" section appears as soon as you have integrated your first product feed into your GMC account.

marketing-google-merchant-center

This section is designed to manage the sales and marketing operations you deploy on your catalog, which will then be impacted on Google channels.

Now you can set up your first campaign and promote your articles. 

To do this, click on the blue activation button to access the control panel.

Depending on the specifics of your offer, various options can be considered. In addition, you can assign a discount percentage to certain items

You can also set up free delivery or gifts.

The growth section of Google Merchant Center

Google also provides features for receiving suggestions, opinions and insights to improve your product listings. 

However, your account should already have been active for several days for this section to be operational.

Google uses event history to help you with remarketing actions

You can choose the configuration options to activate customer and product reviews

Google Merchant Center reviews give you an overall picture of buyer satisfaction.

👉 See also: Google Local Inventory Ads: how does it work?

Getting started with Google Merchant Center

In order to use the GMC interface effectively, we recommend that you complete all the registration and configuration steps correctly

This includes information about your company, e-commerce site, shipping and tax settings. Take the time to fill in theAbout sections, the "Website" and "Branding" tabs.

Enter the owner's address, country and telephone number. This number will be requested when you place an ad.

Without this number, your account may be may be suspended. From this number, you will receive a validation code by SMS or voice call.

Check your website

In addition to obtaining a validation code, Google also checks your e-commerce site.

In addition, you need to be able toauthenticate that you are the owner of the website. To do this, you have the choice of associating your website with Google Tag Manager or Google Analytics. 

This verification will not take place if you used the same Gmail address when validating your website on Google Ads.

How do I add a delivery service?

Google Merchant Center also makes it easy to set up your delivery service in just a few steps 🚛

In the "Tools" section of the menu, you'll find the "Delivery and Returns" option. 

Activate the blue button to modify the delivery information. Next, add a description to your delivery service. 

For example, you could call it "Free home delivery throughout the city of Nantes."

You can then fill in all the fields concerning delivery time

Define the processing time for each order, the delivery time and the shipping deadline for each item. 

If you offer a free delivery option on Google Merchant Center, specify the minimum amount for this. 

Of course, you can also opt for a fixed price and add shipping costs.

*****

E-commerce is booming, andhas become a highly competitive market where you need to establish a good visibility. 

In many ways, the free Google Merchant Center is a great asset for e-tailers

Used wisely, this tool will have a direct impact on the effectiveness of your future sales.

Written by
Alexandre Oudart

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