How to Sell on Google – Right Programs and easy ways to do it

Why do you need to sell on Google?  

Google has been the epitome of diversification. From being just a search engine, it has diversified itself into everyday tools such as Google Maps and too many more complex tools to aid businesses. 

Google is one of the biggest and most distinguished brands, and to understand how Google can benefit your business, it is important to know how it is going to benefit your customers.

When the majority of the product searches start from Google, it only makes sense to sell on Google as well. Customer satisfaction is the holy grail for all businesses. Making your product available to customers and more importantly, available before any other competitor is what will drive your business to success. 

Online presence is important, but how does one stand out from the other products on digital platforms? Selling on Google will help your brand rank higher in search results, display a rating badge that is bound to boost your recognition, credibility, and authority amongst buyers, and more. 

Orders at voice command, free delivery, and universal cart are just the beginning of the benefits to your customers that using Google for selling will provide. Selling on google enables you to widen your customer range and reach millions of customers.

Programs to sell on google

1. Google Express

Just like a virtual mall, Google Express offers products from qualifying retailers at one location. Similar to Amazon, Google Express has products from thousands of retailers, both online-only and brick-and-mortar retailers. Walmart, Target, Walgreens, and Best Buy are some of the well-known retailers on Google Express. 

Earlier known as Shopping Express, it provides sellers a vast marketplace to retail their products more efficiently. The Google Express app allows users to make hassle-free purchases, offers ease of payment and shipping facilities to make the customer experience more satisfactory. 

Google express proves itself as a marketplace having enormous benefits for its sellers. Exposure, commissions, ease of operation, and visibility are just some of the many advantages for sellers on Google Express. 

1. Sellers have an opportunity to sell their products among big-shot brands such as Target, Costco, and Walmart. 
2. Worried about the Central Pay Commission and seller’s fee? With Google Express, you only pay for what you sell. Google sends its sellers a monthly invoice with a seller’s fee which is based on commissions. 
3. Customer Satisfaction- Give more benefits to your customers with Google Express smart features such as one-click checkout, and free shipping on the store’s minimum criteria.
4. Save money with Google Express- Sell your products on a significant marketplace and with millions of buyers already looking for similar products to purchase, sellers dont require to invest more capital into advertising their brand/product and internal resources. 
5. Orders at voice command- Google Express allows its customers to purchase products on it using the voice command feature. All they need to do is say OK Google and simply tell Google about the product they are searching for. 

Grab immense exposure for your products with the enhanced customer shopping experience along with ease of selling your products online. Just download the Google Express app on your android or iOS device. 

Google Express has now been integrated with Google Shopping Actions, as a full-fledged market space. With Googles business expanding over the years, there are great opportunities for you to sell on Google Express. 

2. Google Shopping Actions

Google Shopping Actions allows retailers to establish their visibility by enabling their products to be displayed on multiple google platforms via Google Shopping, Google search, Google Assistant, Google Home devices, and the Google shopping app. 

To simplify it further, Google enables approved merchants/retailers to sell on Google shopping via mobile, desktop, and voice assistant. Google defines it as frictionless shopping owing to features such as a shareable list, universal shopping cart, instant checkout, and saved but also secure payment credentials. 

Allowing sellers to turn merely browsing into buying, Google Shopping Actions is extremely beneficial for its merchants. With such a wide range of advantages, every seller with an online store must use Shopping Actions for their store.

1. It allows your product to reach multiple google platforms at once. Any e-commerce store owner’s aim is to maximize the visibility of their products and reach as many customers as possible. Google Shopping Actions enables retailers to do just that. 
2. Selling on Google Shopping actions means selling on Google.com, Google Shopping, Google Assistant. Google Assistant is revolutionizing the entire shopping trend of internet users as we know it and the sooner sellers embrace this change, the more benefit they will have. 
3. It provides, what google calls a frictionless customer experience while shopping. To understand what makes a good online shopping experience, it is essential to first understand why people have started to prefer online shopping. 
4. Online shopping is easy; just add things into your cart and check out at once. Google Shopping Actions provides a shareable list, universal cart, instant checkout, saved payment credentials apart from the features of regular online stores.
5. It helps in building customer loyalty. Google Shopping Actions cultivates customer loyalty by providing customers with personalized product recommendations, and also the option of reordering with a single click. It also benefits e-commerce store owners by driving repeated sales as well as enabling customers to purchase products quickly and efficiently 
6. Dont worry about pay per click costs. At Google, sellers pay per sale. The best part of all, you dont need to pay a dime to get your product listed on the program. For smaller scale ecommerce stores that are working on a tight budget, this feature helps in reducing the huge cost involved in the pay per click model.
7. Google Shopping Actions enables sellers to build an email list. Unlike other E-commerce giants like Amazon, Google Shopping Actions lets you build an email list. An email list can be extremely useful to a seller. Promotional emails, flyers, inserts, etc. that redirect customers to your website can help boost further sales. 
8. Google will prompt your consumer to sign up for your email list during checkout. This will help in improving your overall customer lifetime value as well as revenue.

To start using Googling Shopping Actions, make sure you are set up with Google Shopping beforehand which is possible at the Merchant Center where you upload product data and verify your URL. Sign up with Google Shopping Actions by filling up the form on their page. Once they approve your application, youre good to go. 

Google Shopping Actions, indeed, is a game-changer for all retailers and merchants making shopping quick and easy.

3. Google Shopping Campaigns

Google Shopping Ads are an advanced form of Google Ads which uses product information from your Google Merchant Center Account to display them at not just Google Shopping but also at the top of the search results when the users search for a product. 

Such ads also appear in Google image searches. For merchants, Google Shopping Ads means a lot of exposure resulting in more growth. These ads have proven themselves to be much more efficient than the traditional PPC Google text ads. Hence, Google Shopping Ads have slowly become an essential tool for todays ecommerce stores.

1. Google Shopping Ads enables merchants to put their product and brand in the spotlight. Google Shopping Ads ensures that your product appears above all the organic search results, this will help you to increase your brands online visibility. 
2. Your products are shown on the basis of the keywords used by the user for the search which means your product is shown to people who are already interested in what youre selling. The best part about Google Shopping Ads is that customers dont require to be familiar with your brand to find you through Google.
3. Google Shopping Ads are much better than text ads. Google Shopping Ads are characterized by high conversion rates and better targeting. Formats such as product images, star ratings, pricing, and brand are shown along with special offers like shipping which make such ads more attractive for the customers to click on. 
4. If a user isnt looking for your product, your ad simply wont be shown which means Google Shopping Ads also provide a higher return on investment as your money is targeted on the right customers.
5. Google Shopping Ads shows customers information about the product using the visually rich ads. So, once a customer lands on your website through Google Shopping Ads, they are usually familiar with your product and have a high intent to purchase which means they are less likely to bounce. Google Shopping Ads hence provide quality leads.
6. Google Shopping Ads eliminates the use of keywords entirely, which is not the case with text ads. Google decides what keywords are best suited for your product based on the product data you provide to Google. For better results, one can also strategically craft the product data provided to Google to rank higher.
7. Google also provides the feature of connecting your online store through Google Shoppings API. This app will collect product data and send it to your Google Merchant Center account to correctly structure your product to include product images, ratings, pricing, and more. 
8. This app will keep updating regularly to ensure your Google Shopping Ads remain accurate when displayed to users.
9. Google Shopping Ads have a broader reach as your ads have the potential to appear more than once for a single query.

4. Surfaces Across Google

Surfaces Across Google is a free merchant center program allowing your product to be displayed in places like Google image search, Google Shopping, Google Search, and Google Lens. 

Just be an approved Merchant Center user and upload relevant product data, this will enable your product to appear in unpaid product results. To simplify the usage of Surfaces Across Google further, it is free Google Shopping product listings on the organic search engine result page. 

Whenever a person searches for a product, these free product listings ads appear before the search results. The search results on the Google Shopping tab consist mainly of such free listings which are beneficial to sellers in order to get noticed quickly and effectively. 

Surfaces Across Google is especially advantageous for small retailers who have never made use of paid ads by utilizing this opportunity of free traffic source to the maximum. 

Googles treatment for each product type on such free listings is different, this is done to catch the attention of users better. Google also provides the option of comparing product pricing with others. 

If there are similar products, a link for the same will be provided by Google on the product listing itself. Once customers click on that link, Google will bring up a list of the other stores with information such as seller rating, return policy, pricing, discounts, offers, taxes, and shipping on each of those stores. 

These free product listings enable customers to compare products side by side, to make a well-informed purchase decision faster. The Surfaces Across Google program generates high-quality traffic for its sellers, is completely free of cost, and also has high conversion rates. 

The takeaway being absolutely clear that enrolling your business into the Surfaces Across Google program is a no brainer and is a great program to add to your digital advertising arsenal.

Eligibility requirements to sell on Google

1. Your product feed must be submitted through your Google Merchant Center account or your website should have structured data markup. If you have the latter, you wouldnt need to participate in this feature directly.
2. Eligibility also depends on your account status, whether approved and qualified and the data you provide.
3. To be eligible to showcase your products on content-rich listings, you must follow Google policies specific to each program.
4. All products must follow Google Shopping Policies, policies for free listings, and shopping ads.
5. Your merchant center account must include your Business & Tax Information for legal compliance.
6. Your website must contain your store’s Privacy policy & Return Policy. The Return Policy must be in compliance with the return policy set by Google.

How to sell on Google?

To start selling on Google Shopping, follow the steps below-

1. The first and foremost task is to set up a Google Merchant Centre Account Google for your brand. Setting up your Google Merchant Account involves three steps-
   1. The seller needs to have a Google account, make one if you dont already have it.
   2. Sign up on Google Merchant Center using your basic information, contact information, business information, and location.
   3. Verify and Claim your business website URL.
2. Fill up the product details
   1. In this step, you have to add your products to Shopping actions which must be in compliance with the Shopping Ads Product Data Specification and Shopping Actions Product Data Specification.
3. Set up Business Policies pertaining to tax options, shipping, return settings and policy, banking details, setting up customer service accounts, marketing settings, and more.
4. Read and Accept the Terms and Conditions.
5. Review the information entered and click on the Request Final Validation button.
6. Activate the account using the Publish Storefront option. This option will be available after a couple of days when your store has been approved.
7. Create your Product Feed, use good images, optimized and crisp data for better keyword results.
8. Submit your Product feed for approval and once your product feed is approved you will be all set to start selling on Google.

Sell on Google FAQ

Conclusion

Google’s motive is to capture the attention of internet users and motivate them to buy something. It aims to convert mere users browsing the internet into buyers of your product. 

All Google for Retail programs gives you control over what you’re paying for in terms of traffic and leads, which is bound to reflect positively on your sales numbers. If you’re looking to stay on trend with your competitors, take advantage of the millions of users of Google’s platforms sooner than later!