Google Shopping

Google shopping is on the rise. Although it is far from the big ecommerce players like Amazon or eBay, it is giving online shoppers around the world another option on where to look for the products they want to buy. In this article, let’s see what Google Shopping is up to and how websites can start preparing for it.

What’s with Google Shopping?

Google Shopping is now Google’s way of keeping users within their search engine. It’s already been a while now that Google has been using ads in Google Shopping search results. Recently, they also began testing Showcase Shopping ads. In this, the product exposure in a search result is increasing.

What happens now, however, is that Google doesn’t really make it clear if the results are actually paid ads or organic results. There is only a small notification displaying on the top right corner that it is an ad. The thing now is, are the consumers aware that the products and brands appearing in the results are paying to show up there? But maybe for an ordinary customer, it doesn’t really matter. The important thing is they get to find the bag they like and buy it. Imagine that, without ever leaving Google; you get to purchase the products you are looking for. That’s convenience for any consumer.

What can the websites do about it?

There is this prediction that the long-term plan for the websites would be to use the layout of Google Shopping. Why? Because consumers are familiar with it. It has an excellent overall user experience than most sites, it is familiar, and it loads quickly. If a website can have these characteristics alone, that’s already a great thing for the visitors.

The next thing to consider is to get a range of products from multiple suppliers and make it available in one place, and that is your site. Another feature to offer is price comparison from multiple suppliers without the visitors having to load numerous domains. One last feature to consider is that it should be mobile-friendly. People spend more time on their phones than they do on their desktop computers or laptops. Being-mobile friendly is a must nowadays.

How can businesses prepare?

How can a business prepare for something as big as Google Shopping? There are two things to consider that can lead us to some answers. One is that, do you own the physical products? And the other is if you don’t, what should you do? An example of this is if you are an affiliate site.

So if you own the physical products, you ought to be giving Google as much information as possible about your products. It will ensure that you will have the optimal opportunity to appear in the search engine results. Do not forget to optimize the product pages so that Google will understand the product that you will display.

In addition to that, in order to get more immediate benefits, you can get more rich snippets within search results. It can give you more opportunity to get featured in answer boxes and help you future-proof your site.

If you are an affiliate, and you don’t own the products, the reality is that it can be difficult to rank for both transactional and information search queries. It could be even more impossible to get ranking for very specific long-tail search terms. But don’t despair, the recommendations are not very different from those if you own the products. Structured data can still be in place to reap the rewards, and for you to start producing greater content that can sit higher up the results.

Takeaway

With the ever changing landscape in the business world both online and offline, the only thing business can do to prepare is to not stop learning about the new trends and how the company can adapt to it. Adaptation is always the way to survive, failure to do so has led many businesses to become obsolete and irrelevant. It is something real and is happening to business all around the world. So do not be afraid to try new things and to face new competitions, always take it as a challenge which you and your company can and will overcome.