Google Shopping Checklist: 2021

Exclude Display Network: If you want to run a Display Network campaign create on separately 

Create Remarketing Audiences: Retarget and adjust the CPC for more engaged audiences  

Promotions: If you are running special offers whether as a one-off or on an ongoing basis make sure you set these up to show on your ads. Common promotions are Free Delivery or discounts on products

Seller ratings: If you are collecting reviews either via Google or an independent review platform make sure seller ratings (like Trustpilot for example) are attached to your campaign. Ads with seller ratings tend to get a better CTR

Chose an appropriate budget: You want to start with a healthy budget to ensure you are competitive and reaching your audience, but leave room to scale your campaign(s) over time

Negative keywords: Adding negative keywords will prevent your product listings showing up for irrelevant searches

Bidding strategy: Chose the most appropriate bidding strategy for your campaign. It’s always worth testing this if you’re not sure 

Split up Shopping Campaigns: Break up your Shopping Campaigns into a number of separate campaigns. This will allow you to better match user intent and give yourself more control and flexibility over your campaigns 

Multiple ad groups: Creating multiple ad groups can give you much more control of your Google Shopping campaigns, by managing which products show up for which search terms when you add negative keywords

Bid adjustments: Google Shopping allows you to adjust your CPCs based on user location, device, or time of the day/week. Consider increasing your bids for the areas where you see good results or better quality traffic. 

Custom labels: These can allow you to add an extra attribute to your product feeds to manage extra product information data – often these are categories unique to your business for example: ‘Christmas Gifts under £20’

Set up conversion tracking: eCommerce tracking on your campaigns will help you to understand the performance of your campaigns, how to what extent they are driving sales on your website

Review goals & funnels: By setting up goals and funnels in Google Analytics you are able to better understand user behaviour on your website. This will allow you to make improvements to your campaigns

Import Google Analytics conversions into Google Ads

Set up Merchant Centre feed: Set up a feed of all of your products linked directly from your website via Google Merchant Centre. This will serve as a base for your products

Fix any product errors and disapprovals

Setup feed rules if necessary: Feed rules are a great way to tweak product feed information in an automated way. Potentially saving lots of time and reducing product disapprovals 

Good quality product pages: When users reach your website, optimising your landing pages, product pages and the checkout process is a great way to get more sales via your website.

Ensure your website is optimised for mobile

Optimise product titles: Optimising your product titles in the preferred format is an effective way to increase the visibility of your products within Google Shopping 

Optimise images: Just like your titles, your products images are a very important part your Google Shopping ads. Using good quality images to showcase your products tend to increase the CTR of your ads and conversions rate when users visit your website. Try and use multiple images where possible  

What are Smart Shopping campaigns?
Smart shopping campaigns are a heavily automated Google Shopping campaign type.

Should I test Smart Shopping campaigns? 
We would typically advise against using Smart Shopping, especially if you have little or no historic Google conversion data. Smart Shopping campaigns give you much less control over your Google Shopping campaigns compared to well-structured Shopping campaigns managed in Google Ads. If you do not have time or the resources available to set up Google Shopping campaigns then Smart Shopping campaigns might be the best solution for you to test Google Shopping a select group of products from your site, but generally, you’ll see better results from full Google Shopping campaigns, set up using the checklist above.