19 February 2016

Google

Google Merchant Centre – Perfect for E-Commerce Solutions Part 2

What is it about Google Merchant Centre that makes it so useful in helping your products sell?

The last blog explained various aspects of Google Merchant Centre and the process. But to really glean how useful Google Merchant Centre is, it’s important to know the features and advantages of Google Merchant Centre.

Google Merchant Centre has a whole host of features that help you manage your ads once they are live.

Dashboard: The Dashboard is the first page you see when you log into the Google Merchant Centre. Here, you can find a summary of all the most important information, such as the amount of products that are live and those that are disapproved, expiring or awaiting review from Google before they are activated. You can also see the amount of paid clicks you are receiving and the errors in your product listings if there are any. Seeing all of this in graph form makes it easy for you to actually check what a difference your campaign is making and gives you the opportunity to correct all the errors. After all, checking all the products just to go through the errors is extremely time-consuming.

Content API: This tab is really only applicable If you have programmatically uploaded your product information so as to make them easy to access via Google Shopping. If this is something you have done, this page can give you the lowdown on the amount of failed and successful API calls in a graph form. Again, this makes the information easier to understand.

Products: The products tab allows you to see, delete and edit the entire list of products you have. Having all of the products in the same place, along with the statistical aspect of it, means you can view and change any aspect of your product listing depending on the results you are receiving quickly and easily.

Assortment: Although perhaps the information is not always available, this tab can be quite useful as it tells you what the most popular products are on Google at that time that you may not already be advertising. This not only enables you to see the competition, but gives you a good hint as to which products could fare well by being a part of the campaign. You can even use the search box on the page in order to see the reports for different product categories on Google.

Having all of this information in one place means once you see an error, it is easier for you to fix as you don’t need to keep flitting back and forth between tools and screens. The best thing is that Google Merchant Centre, not unlike many other Google tools out there, collates all the information on what is right and what is wrong with your products, meaning you save time and effort having to go through all of them yourself. In addition, having a graphical representation of how your campaign is doing is an easily digestible way to discern whether or not your campaign is having the desired effect, and, if it isn’t why isn’t it? Is it because there are errors on your product listings that you can easily fix but didn’t know were there? Is it because your chosen products are not as popular on Google as you once might have thought they would be? Google Merchant Centre also answers these questions and more, making it a truly invaluable tool.

If you have or want an E-Commerce Website, as well as providing the web design process, FDC can help you set up and manage your PLA Campaign setup from start to finish, and provide you with complimentary full training to ensure that you are really comfortable with using the tools. To book a consultation, please visit the FDC Website, where you can also find a portfolio with the work we have already done for some of our clients.