What is Coronavirus (COVID-19)?
Unless you have slept for the past six months straight, without any access to phone or internet – you are bound to be aware of COVID-19. This is a pandemic that changed the way the world works. Today, more and more people are working from remote locations, and are choosing to buy over the internet with minimal contact with the rest of the world. This is why COVID-19 has turned into a promising time for eCommerce website development services.
Impact on the Ecommerce industry
1. Total e-Commerce sales by industry
The impact of coronavirus on ecommerce businesses is considered positive. On average, the overall increase sums to 52%. Here is a simple breakdown, based on various industries:
- Essential medical supplies: +425%
- Household cleaning goods: +200%
- Baby products: +190%
- Health and wellness industry: +90%
- Food and beverage industry: +60%
- Travel accessories: -60%
2. Revenue changes
The overall revenue seen by businesses has changed drastically. For example, industries and businesses that focus on medical supplies saw an increase in revenue.
Brands like Homesick witnessed a boost in revenue by 127.3%. Likewise, businesses that offered stunning deals and discounts saw a good increase in profits. This proves that e-commerce businesses are not running at a loss because of COVID-19.
3. Spending changes
The percentage of people spending on online brands has increased significantly. Meanwhile, more than 50% of businesses are not changing their spending patterns. It is important for brands to understand that the estimates from the beginning are very different from the present one! Nevertheless, spending has grown considerably with the pandemic.
4. ROAS changes
The ROAS change due to COVID-19 is also positive. Till the month of March, the figures were as high as 14.01 percent. Brands that have used the moment to change their presence and build audience equity have seen a boost in ROAS of 140 percent or more.
5. CPC changes
Next comes the increase in CPC. This is as much as 5.20 percent. So, what happened here? With the pandemic, the prices quoted by auction-based networks like Google and Facebook reduced. This reduced the overall CPC. Though the cost per click came down, factors like CAC remained untouched.
6. CTR changes
Though the pandemic showed improvement in many places, CTR came down by nearly 0.26 percent. CTR represents the click-through rate. It identifies the number of times a customer sees your advertisements and chooses to click on them. Well, the pandemic has reduced the enthusiasm people have in clicking ads. Fortunately, the impact of coronavirus on ecommerce businesses CTRs is not extremely high.
What are Google Shopping ads?
Most of the time, people choose Google for browsing and hunting down products. This is why choosing Google Shopping Ads is a smart move. It helps in targeting audiences in a better place. By utilizing this platform, much of your work will be handled by Google’s powerful algorithms.
Why Should You Use Google Shopping Ads?
You need Google Shopping Ads to top the search engine’s results page. Indeed, this is the only way to find a position in the search engine results. Also, Google Shopping Ads is a good ads strategy that helps you show products. This method proves to be much more effective than “talking” about your products (and services). Indeed, the demand for Google Shopping Ads Strategy during COVID-19 is considerably high. And, there are many reasons behind this.
How Does Google Shopping Work?
When compared against conventional Google searches, the shopping Ads strategy is very different. The shopping algorithm uses a file called “Product Feed”. This has details of all the products on your e-commerce website. Google used the product feed to identify and match customer searches with your business. If your business matches the search, your brand will appear in the ads.
Top 10 Google Shopping Campaign strategies
1. Optimize Your Product Titles
To make the most from your product feed, the titles need to be optimized. Ensure that relevant pieces of information are shared to improve your campaign performance and CTR. Also, you need to include keywords in your product titles.
2. Optimize Your Product Categories and Feed Descriptions
Just like the product titles, you need to optimize the descriptions and categories. Try to group all your products and services within the right categories. Make sure products don’t repeat in multiple categories too. This way, the search engine will find it easier to scan and present items from your business.
3. Optimizing Your Product Images
Images play an integral role in your Google Shopping Ads. In order to enjoy an edge in this technology, build images with mild variations. This may appear like a complicated process. But, small changes like rotating the image would do the trick. Amazon is a great example to understand how images need to be incorporated with your site.
4. Use Google Shopping Ad Extensions
There are two impressive types of Google Shopping Ads extensions. You have the automated and the merchant center program. Both these extensions prove to be useful in text-based advertisements. They have a direct impact on the site’s conversion rates and can even drive CTR.
5. Use Products Rating & Review
There are many reasons why your e-commerce site needs to use google customer reviews and ratings. A study revealed that 88 percent of customers buy products based on existing reviews. Listing products in your store without reviews is a waste of time and effort. To witness the benefits of this feature, you need plenty of reviews from real people.
6. Implement a Negative Keywords strategy
Negative keywords are required to stop your business from being listed under irrelevant searches. Also, if your advertisement is not clicked by a user, the overall ranking of the store will be affected. In such situations, negative keywords are a useful ads strategy. They can be used to stop Google from displaying your page when negative keywords are phrases are used. This SEO method is expensive but highly useful.
7. Adjust Bids based on Device Performance
The performance of e-commerce stores can differ from one device to another. This is why you need to have a good bidding strategy based on how well certain products are in each device type. ROAS needs to be customized based on the device. Bid adjustments are required to modify the CPC of your site.
8. Optimize by Geo Location
Just like device-based bids, you need to make adjustments based on the location of target audiences. For example, some products sell better in suburban destinations than the rest. Hence, your Google Shopping Ads need to be fine-tuned in these locations. Once again, this is an expensive but essential step towards ad optimization.
9. Increase bids for High-Performance Products
Another interesting item that needs to be optimized based on performance would be the products itself. In any business, only a handful of products would generate a major portion of the revenue. The Golden thumb rule is to focus on these items. Hence, engage in product segmentation and identify items that sold the most in recent times.
10. Create a Remarketing Strategy
As suggested by its name, re-marketing is all about revisiting customers who once bought from your store. This is a wonderful marketing strategy, which needs to be used with care. Re-marketing needs to consider the choices and interests of your customers.
1. Dynamic Remarketing
Dynamic remarketing helps in targeting customers and delivering advertisements based on their previous searches. This makes use of the Display Ads Campaign hosted by Google. To accomplish dynamic remarketing, the search engine makes use of product feeds from the Google Merchant Center. And, it generates customized ads which are a highly effective Google Shopping Ads Strategy during COVID-19.
2. Remarketing Lists for Search/Shopping Ads
Remarketing Lists for Search/Shopping Ads is a commonly used strategy for remarketing. When compared to other marketing methods, this one is easy but effective. The entire campaign is not constructed using this method. Instead, details from the ads and merchants are utilized to construct the Google Ads. Also, it assigns Google Analytics to every ad campaign.
Conclusion
On the whole, Google Shopping Ads play an important role in promoting e-commerce stores, especially when the impact of coronavirus on ecommerce businesses is promising. This is a stunning method of advertising your business, with the help of the search engine’s inherent algorithms. If used properly, and if your methods are tested – the chances of you driving more traffic and witnessing better revenue are high.
