Ensuring Shopping Feeds are structured for optimal performance using Merchant Center Feed Rules delivers proven sales results. Revenue uplifts were measured in MOST MARKETS and notably the Apparel Market.
Put yourself in the position of the online shopper - if you are searching for shoes - you know exactly what brand, size and colour you need and you only want to see relevant results.
It makes sense to include all of this relevant information in the product title submitted to Google. ”Adidas gazelle black size 10”
A large part of this can be achieved using Google Merchant Center Feed Rules.
Checking your Current Google Shopping Set Up
Use the IRP Trading Terminal to view your most viewed product in the last 30 days in your primary selling territory. It is highly likely that if the product is at the top of the most viewed list then clicks/traffic are being driven by Google.
Analysing your list, highlight a product that you know has multiple sizes/colours.
Copy and paste the model name into Google and see if your product appears in the Shopping Results.
If it does, how does your Shopping Ad stack up against your competitors? Does the product title include relevant colours, sizes or variants? If product reviews have been collected on site are the star ratings being displayed correctly in the Shopping Ads? When using Google Shopping (or any Shopping platform for that matter) you want to see the most relevant results immediately.
Combining IRP attributes and Merchant Center Feed Rules should help give an added level of relevance to your product titles. Check with your Account Manager/PPC Service Provider that all relevant information is being included in Product Titles.
Example of Splitting
Taking the above information - you sell Adidas Gazelle trainers in colours Black/Red/Blue/Green and each colour contains multiple different sizes. You are intent on buying Black Adidas Gazelle trainers in size 10 and only want to see the most relevant results. Your resulting search would be something like the below:
‘adidas gazelle black size 10’
If your product title contains the relevant model, colour and size it is unlikely that Google would serve your Ad for an alternative product.
Viewing available products/attributes in IRP
It is good to get an overview of what’s available or could be included in your product titles. You can export this data following the steps below:
- Navigate to IRP Admin > Data Imports / Exports
- Create Template File
- Download
Column I in the resulting download includes your Model Names as they appear on your site. If no rules have been added in Google Merchant Center your product titles will appear exactly as they are in column I. The remaining columns in the file (K onwards) are all fields that can be appended to your product titles. Column’s K (Size) and L (Colour) are particularly relevant additions in most cases.
Merchant Center Feed Rules
After you’ve identified what fields, if any, you'd like to append to your product titles the relevant rules must be set up within Google Merchant Center. Your Account Manager should be able to help identify what appended information is most relevant for specific products and your Service Provider should be able to set up the rules within Google Merchant Center.
You can access Merchant Center Feed Rules following the below:
- Products > Feeds > Click on relevant feed name you’d like to apply rules > Feed Rules
In the above example we see that this particular merchant has appended both ‘size’ and ‘color’ attributes to the product title.
The Results - a 47.74% uplift in PPC sales
After analysing the figures for the merchant in question the results were positive. It’s important to remember other external factors may have also come into play such as price changes and ROAS adjustments in the time frame analysed*.
Firstly we analysed the 2022 Positions page found in IRP Trading Terminal > Mission Control to gain an insight into Year on Year Trends with regards to selling.
You can see that seasonally this merchant would typically experience a dip from August to September finishing off the year with lower monthly sales in Q4. September is the first month in 2022 where growth was achieved.
PPC Sales
Within Trader we specifically identified the time period where changes were made and did an analysis vs the previous period. The time frame in question was 19th August - 11th October and we compared against the immediate previous period (27th June - 18th August).
When in Sales Analysis we set the Traffic Source to ‘Google PPC’.
Results show an increase of 47.74% PPC Sales vs the previous period.
The inclusion of more relevant information in the product title should also aid towards wasted budget particularly where product variants/sizes are out of stock. Adding relevant options/sizes/colours to the product title will also deter browsers from needlessly clicking in your Ads and wasting Ad spend.
International Trading
When populating the size attribute consider sizing values outside your primary selling jurisdiction i.e. Size UK 10, EU 44, US 10.5. You can also translate attribute (size) values where feeds have been set up that aren’t English speaking. We will come back to say more on this topic.
Conclusion
We recommend all IRP Merchants with multiple colour and sized products talk to their Account Manager and involve their PPC Service Provider to implement these changes.
