Our blog

Google Shopping Ads Explained: A Beginners Guide to Boosting Your E-Commerce Sales

Headshot of Ash B
Written by Ash Beardsall on January 17th, 2025
Share:

With global e-commerce sales projected to reach $6.09 trillion in 2024, it’s no surprise that  Google’s results page (SERP) is becoming increasingly crowded, especially when searching for products online.

So, where did it all begin for Google Shopping? Originally introduced as Froogle in 2002, it started out as a free service where users could compare product prices. In 2012, it evolved into Google Shopping, where businesses began paying for product listings. Today, Google Shopping offers two types of product listings:

  1. Free Listings: Where businesses can promote their products organically at no cost.
  2. Sponsored Listings: Businesses pay when users interact with their shopping listings. 

A product listing traditionally showcases the following features, as a minimum:

  • Product image – typically an image of the product you are selling
  • Product title – the name of your product
  • Website link – the page on your website that users will land on upon clicking your listing
  • Price – the cost of your product. This can also include any sale/offer pricing
  • Delivery information – usually outlining delivery costs and your policy on returns 

You will often also see product reviews assigned to products, giving a user-provided average star rating out of five.

Both listing types:

Paid Listings (the top row)

Free listings (bottom row)

Why Google Shopping listings are essential for e-commerce success

With an estimated 3.5 billion searches conducted daily on Google and over 80% of the UK population making e-commerce purchases (a figure expected to rise to 86% by 2027), Google Shopping has become a valuable tool for e-commerce businesses aiming to reach their target audiences.

Let’s explore some of the key benefits Google Shopping offers compared to traditional search listings:

Increased visibility and reach:

The SERP is becoming increasingly populated with diverse result types, making it harder for products to stand out. Google Shopping listings provide a unique opportunity to ensure your products appear more prominently, grabbing attention amongst your competition.

Free listings

Not all listings require a marketing budget. Google Shopping supports free product listings, allowing businesses to gain organic clicks and impressions even without paid ad spend. This is particularly beneficial for smaller businesses looking to maximise visibility without significant marketing investment.

Drive transactional, bottom-of-the-funnel traffic

Shopping listings are especially effective at capturing high-intent users, those actively searching for specific products with the intent to purchase. By appearing and gaining clicks from such searches, your business can achieve higher conversion rates and attract better-quality leads.

Improved visual appeal

Google Shopping listings are visually engaging, enabling your products to stand out more effectively on the SERP. For instance, you can showcase your products in real-life scenarios. Such imagery can be particularly powerful in sectors where product presentation heavily influences buying decisions.

What you need to get started with Shopping Listings

As you might expect, Shopping listings aren’t available for all businesses. Only certain websites can use structured product data to appear in the Shopping tab in Google Search results. To get started, there are three main components you need:

    1. An eStore
    2. A Google Merchant Center Account
    3. Product feed

(A Google Ads Account is only needed if you want to set up paid shopping listings –  you can run free organic shopping listings without a Google Ads Account.)

First of all, you need to set up a Google Merchant Centre Account. That can be done by using this link here

Once you’ve set up your Merchant Center account, the next step is connecting a product data feed. This can be done in several ways, including:

  • Manual Upload: Manually upload a file with product information.
  • Scheduled Fetch: Host a file on your website that contains the product data and set a regular schedule for Google to fetch updates automatically. If you use a platform such as WooCommerce, you can get the feed URL from inside your WooCommerce plugin

We recommend using Scheduled Fetch, as it saves time and ensures any updates to your eStore are reflected in your Shopping listings.

Required Product Attributes

For your Shopping listings to be eligible, you must populate certain required product attributes:

  • ID [id]: Your product’s unique identifier.
  • Title [title]: Your product’s name.
  • Description [description]: A description of your product.
  • Link [link]: The URL of your product’s landing page.
  • Image Link [image_link]: The URL of your product’s main image.
  • Availability [availability]: Your product’s stock status (e.g. in stock, out of stock).
  • Price [price]: The price of your product.

Additional Product Attributes

There are other product attributes that can enhance your listings. The more detailed you can be with your product attributes, the better! For example, if you’re selling apparel, you will also need to include additional information such as:

  • Material
  • Colour
  • Size

Inside your Merchant Centre Account, you will also need to update your delivery information, such as times and costs, enabling Google to provide more accurate price comparisons for users. 

Google Merchant Center enforces strict policies and guidelines. Products that don’t meet certain requirements may be disapproved, meaning they won’t appear in Shopping ads or free listings until the issues are resolved. Ensuring that your data feed is accurate, comprehensive, and policy-compliant is essential to avoid disruptions in your Account.

Where possible, add as much product information as you can – this can have a positive impact on both User Experience and SEO.

Getting started with your Google Ads Shopping Campaigns

Once you have set up your Merchant Centre account, the next step is to sync it with your Google Ads account. Try using the same email account you used to set up your Merchant Centre Account – this will simplify and speed up the linking of the two platforms. 

Within Google Ads, create a new campaign and select ‘Shopping’ as the campaign type.

From there, you can link your Merchant Centre account to add products to the new Campaign.

You’ll then choose between a Performance Max campaign and a Standard Shopping campaign. The key difference here lies in the level of automation. A Performance Max campaign incorporates multiple ad formats (such as Display, YouTube, and Search) under a single campaign, offering a highly automated approach.

On the other hand, a Standard Shopping campaign provides greater control, allowing for more detailed optimisation. The choice of campaign will vary from business to business and can depend on various factors, such as your advertising goals and overall budgets. 

Optimising Google Ads Shopping Campaign performance by Campaign types

As discussed in our previous blogs on campaign structures, Shopping campaigns alike can benefit greatly from segmentation. To maximise performance, consider organising your campaigns into specific Campaigns/Ad Groups. Here are a few segmentation strategies to keep in mind when setting up your campaigns:

Product profit:

Focus on profitability over revenue. A high-selling price doesn’t always equal a high profit. For example, low-value items such as inexpensive accessories might generate minimal returns, so consider excluding these from your ads.

Categories:

Group your products by type or brand. For instance, if you sell jewellery, you might categorise your campaigns by the product brands (e.g., Pandora or Cartier) or by product type (e.g. earrings, necklaces, rings). 

Sales/clearance:

If you’re promoting sale or clearance items, creating separate campaigns and budgets specifically for these products can ensure they receive sufficient budget, not to be exhausted by other products.

Seasonality:

Consider seasonal trends. For instance, an outdoor walking brand might have more of a selling focus on items such as coats, umbrellas and snow boots in the winter, and then focus on certain products in the summer period, such as sunglasses or shorts. Grouping products by seasonality can help optimise performance during peak periods.

High-performing products:

Segmenting products that are proven to sell well. This can help ensure your budget is allocated to items that consistently deliver strong conversion results.

If you’re struggling with how to segment your products, consider using your website’s main navigation menu product grouping as a framework 

To refine your campaigns and ad groups, you can edit your products within each Ad Group. Locate the product group you want to adjust, click the pencil icon, and you will see the option to subdivide products using specific criteria. Simply select the products you want to include in that specific Ad Group. 

Unlike Search campaigns, Shopping campaigns don’t require you to add keywords. Instead, they rely on your product feed to crawl the data to match your products to relevant search queries. This makes it critical to optimise your product feed for terms your audience is likely searching for. However, as with search campaigns, you can use negative keywords to prevent your ads from appearing for irrelevant search terms, ensuring your budget is spent effectively.

What bidding strategy should you apply for Shopping Campaigns?

Shopping campaigns often yield lower cost-per-clicks (CPCs) compared to that of standard search campaigns, making them a cost-effective choice for many businesses. However, selecting the right bidding strategy is crucial.

We suggest starting out with manual bidding. Initially, using a manual bidding strategy allows Google to gather data on your conversions. Once you’ve generated sufficient conversion data, consider moving the campaigns over to a smart bidding strategy, such as Maximise Conversion Value with a Target CPA. This automated bidding approach utilises signals from previous conversions to optimise your bids effectively. Find out more about picking the right bidding strategy for your campaigns

For even more precise optimisation, you can use tools such as Profit Metrics, which focuses on Profit on Ad Spend (POAS), rather than just Return on Ad Spend (ROAS). This strategy ensures your campaigns prioritise profitability. 

For example, if you have a product that sells for £50, with a profit margin of £25, the break-even point would be a £25 cost per acquisition – a 200% ROAS. So although you are in theory gaining £1 for every £2 spent, in this case, because you are considering actual profit margins on the product, a 200% ROAS is just breaking even, not making a profit. 

Other key points to consider when setting up shopping Ad Campaigns

Optimise your product feed:

Ensure your product attributes are fully optimised and accurately populated. The better the data, the better your products will perform in Shopping campaigns.

Use high-quality, engaging images:

Shopping ads are highly visual. Stand out on the search engine results page (SERP) by using professional, clear, and engaging product images.

Set up accurate conversion tracking:

Ensure you are tracking every sale from your e-commerce site. This not only ensures that Google is optimising and bidding for the correct conversion signals provided, but it can help you make more data-driven decisions from your campaign data.

 

Utilise negative keywords:

Regularly review your search terms report to identify and exclude irrelevant keywords. This prevents wasted spend on non-converting or irrelevant traffic.

Keep your Merchant Centre account up to date:

Stay on top of any errors or warnings in your Merchant Centre account. Accruing too many issues can result in account deactivation, which can affect both paid and organic Shopping listings.

Optimise your landing pages:

Driving traffic is only half the battle. Ensure your landing pages are user-friendly, fast-loading, and designed for conversions. A poor user experience (UX) can deter potential customers, no matter how well-targeted your ads are.

Exclude low-performing and low-value products:

Don’t waste ad spend on products that don’t deliver a strong return on investment (ROI). Focus your budget on high-performing, profitable products!

We hope you found this article useful and are now ready to get your Shopping Campaigns off the ground and running.

Need help getting started? Feel free to drop us a message at hello@splitpixel.co.uk or fill out our contact form with any questions – we’d be more than happy to assist!

Headshot of Ash B
Written by Ash Beardsall on January 17th, 2025
Share:

Continue reading...

Sign up to our newsletter

E-shot image of the Splitpixel team at the company allotment

Lets work together

We love working working on Google Ads Campaigns with organisations across Yorkshire – from our head office in Huddersfield, to the de facto West Yorkshire capital Leeds, as well as Bradford, Harrogate, Halifax, Doncaster, Wakefield and beyond.

If you want digital marketing and PPC management from a small digital agency that understands your location and community, all while putting Yorkshire values of integrity, hard work and honest pricing at the heart of what they do, we want to hear from you! So why not contact our experts today?

Contact us