If you run an online store, consider your Google Shopping Feed a store shelf. If your products are disorganised, mislabeled, or lacking critical information, customers will ignore them. However, you can optimise your product listing to make your products stand out. Just like a well-organised store shelf attracts more customers, a meticulously managed feed enhances visibility and drives sales.

In this article, we’ll walk you through the essential steps to improve your product listings on Google Shopping Feed. These steps will help you make your products more visible, attract customers, and boost sales.

Here we go!

1. Optimising product titles

The product title is one of the first things people see in any ad listing, so it should include all the essential information about the product. Ensure that your product title corresponds to your product.

Include relevant keywords in the title that people use when searching for your products to increase visibility and click-through rates. This can set you apart from competitors.

You must capture customers’ attention with your product title and description, and the best way to do so is to include the most essential information about your products at the beginning of your title. Make sure you include essential information about your product using the right attributes, and these attributes can vary depending on which category your product falls under.

Below is a guide on how to structure your titles based on category:

• Apparel: Brand + Gender + Product Type + Attributes (colour, size, material)
• Consumables: Brand + Product Type + Attributes + (Weight, count)
• Hard Goods: Brand + Product Type + Attributes
• Electronics: Brand + Attributes + Product Type + Model#
• Seasonal: Seasonal Occasion + Product Type + Attribute
• Books: Title + Type + Format (paperback, hardcover, ebook) + Author

2. Using GTINs

The Global Trade Item Number (GTIN) is a unique code for identifying products in Google Shopping. The manufacturer provides GTINs for their products.

Including a GTIN in your ads can boost the quality and relevance of your ad campaigns. Google uses GTIN information to rank your product ads higher when people search for them.

Ensure that the GTINs listed are accurate and up to date, and update them regularly if anything changes.

3. Optimising colour attributes

It was a common practice for marketers to flatten colours in their campaigns. Instead of using specific shades like olive, they’d call it green; salmon would be labelled as pink, and brick would be called orange.

In this day and age of digital transformations, it’s better to avoid this practice because Google checks your product page, and if the colours don’t match exactly with the product feed details, your ad might not get approved.

Use the full-colour name rather than a number replacement (as with HTML colours). You can use one primary colour and two secondary colours.

Another way to optimise the colour attribute is to combine it with the material of your product—for example, a metal spoon.

4. Choosing The Right Image

Aside from product titles, product images are the first thing shoppers see when your product appears in an ad. You have to optimise them to be enticing.

Here are some key points to make sure your image link is optimised:

• Use high-quality pictures (for mobile responsive devices)
• Ensure the variants match the picture (colour, size, material)
• Look out for text over the picture (watermarks, sales, manufacture parts numbers)
• Test different images to find which works best for your products.

You can use AI to help create high-quality images for your products. AI can quickly create and edit pictures, increasing productivity and allowing you to focus on other aspects of your business.

5. Using Regular Expressions

A regular expression, or RegEx, is a series of characters that create a search pattern. It’s mainly used for finding and replacing specific text elements in strings, helping to match and manipulate text more easily.

Expressions can improve your data feeds by allowing you to handle many characters with a single string. You can use regular expressions in different ways, like in between words to remove spaces or find repeated words, etc.

For example, if your title contains extra spaces between words, a RegEx could be placed between the words. Using RegEx is very useful when working with large data feeds.

6. Use Merchant Promotions

Merchant promotions can be created within the merchant centre. These promotions make people buy, leading to high click-through rates and lower conversion costs.

Assume you are a shoe retailer holding a Christmas sale where you give 10% off any shoes you purchase. You have posted the promo code SAVE10 for this discount on your website. Now, you want to promote these discounted shoes online. The shoes included in the sale will have an attribute named promotion_id. This way, when people see your ads, they will know about the special offer.

Here are some picks for Google Product Listing Ad Merchant Promotions:

• Free Shipping
• Buy One, Get One or Buy One, Get One 10% Off
• Specific percentage discounts (Example: 5% Off Orders of $50, 10% Off Orders of $100 or more)

7. Creating Custom Labels

For every product, Google lets you create five custom labels. These labels add unique information to a product that differentiates it from others. This makes it easier to categorise your products according to qualities such as best-selling, profit margin, seasonality, or product number.

Another way you can create custom labels for your products is by dividing them into categories based on their prices compared to those of your competitors. For example, poor, suitable, and excellent.

To follow up, create a campaign for each of these categories. If you have products that do not fit these categories, you can make a separate label.

By following these optimization steps, you can transform your Google Shopping Feed into a powerful tool for attracting customers and driving sales. 

• Category: Descriptomizer Library