10 Awesome Tools that Google Provides to Ecommerce Businesses

Google has a lot of eCommerce tools that can help eCommerce businesses to understand their audience, competition and what is happening on their website. From analytics to advertising, google provides tools for e-businesses to take advantage of. This blog post will cover the 14 most useful eCommerce tools that google provides.

Google Analytics

Google Analytics is one of the most useful google e-tools for eCommerce business. Google analytics enables eCommerce businesses to track traffic and sales that occur on their website. It also provides information about users, like what page they landed on from which search engine or how long it took them to complete a transaction, etc. Also with Google Analytics, eCommerce businesses can measure conversions (how many people who land on your site make purchases) by using conversion funnels and goals. Conversion funnel analyses journey through each step in a process leading up to purchase while goal tracks user activities such as form completion, links clicked upon or pages viewed during visit. See “How Google Analytics Helps ECommerce Businesses”

eCommerce businesses have to deal with a lot of problems while running their business. Google Analytics is the best tool that eCommerce businesses can use in order to solve these issues, by tracking and analysing web traffic data on-site. This is helpful for eCommerce websites because it allows them to measure how many people visit their website, what pages they land on first, which time of year brings most visitors etc., all this information helps eCommerce businesses create better strategies inside the company as well as informing potential customers about “what makes your online store special?”

You can easily add Google Analytics to your Shopify store in the preferences section of the dashboard. Create a new Analytics account and add the ID number to your Shopify Store. Analytics will then start to collate all the information about visits to your store. Don’t forget to turn on eCommerce tracking so you can see where purchases come from. Get in touch if you want a quick run-through of analytics and learn how to pull out the important information.

Search Console

Google’s Search Console (previously known as Webmaster Tools) is another useful e-marketing service provided by Google which provides valuable SEO insights into keyword rankings & linking websites, internal links, mobile performance and other security-related issues. Google stopped showing keyword ranking in Analytics around 10 years ago (according to tot his old goat) but you can still keep a fairly reliable track on where you rank and how many clicks that keyword gets by using Google Search Console. There are lots of tools inside Google Search Console that will help you to identify issues with your website including what is missing from products, errors in code and the ability to up0load your site map to Google.

Merchant Centre

Another fantastic eCommerce tool from Google is Merchant Center which allows business owners to create and manage product listings across Google Shopping and other partner sites. This can be extremely beneficial for larger eCommerce stores that want to increase visibility and sales through multiple channels. The merchant centre can be tricky to use when you first upload your products. We have been through it multiple times and have come across the dreaded misrepresentation error. This means Google has found something it doesn’t like on your website and won’t let you advertise.

You then have to go through a process unique to Google that means they won’t tell you what is wrong, you have to find out yourself. It is one of the biggest faults with Google, they don’t really care about customer service because they own the internet. If you need help then you can talk to us but as with all agencies, we can’t guarantee results but can guide you along the way.

Google Ads

Google Ads, formerly known as Google Adwords is where you control the advertising that you undertake through Google. We would recommend either using Smart Shopping campaigns that you can set up through your Shopify Google Ap or contacting an Adwords certified partner who can help you run the campaigns or get you set up ready to run it yourself.

Google Ads is a complicated tool that throws up a lot of useful information, but if you haven’t got the time to learn your way around either ask for help or take a Google certified course to qualify as an Adwords expert.

In Adwords you can decide how to run your campaigns and monitor their success or failure. You have the ability to measure success by conversion rate or conversion value. Adjust the budget according to the time of day or year and focus on different target audiences. Google has got very clever and allows you to automate a lot of the advertising. Google will create and manage your adverts for you, which include shopping and text ads.

Adwords Express

For those of you in a hurry there is AdWords Express which provides small businesses with an easy-to-use platform in order to create and manage their AdWords campaigns. It’s perfect for those who are new to digital marketing or don’t have the time to learn how to use AdWords. AdWords Express includes all the same features as regular AdWords, but it’s much simpler to use.

Google Trends

Google Trends is a useful tool to understand who is searching for what when. You can put in terms related to your business and will show you how many searches there are for this term or related queries and will show you results, month by month.

Google For Retail

A new tool that we recently stumbled across is Google For Retail. This is a comprehensive tool to help you improve your eCommerce performance and understand how you stack up against the competition. It will generate a report on your website performance showing how you stack up against your opposition and recommend improvements. Once you have completed the report you can then follow the guides which allow you to understand audiences better. This includes what your type of customer might engage with on YouTube and who to follow and advertise on.

Google for Retail also shows you the way to other really useful Google tools like Lighthouse where you can test the speed of your website.

Page Speed Insights

Probably the most important tool for website owners, particularly in the eCommerce sector is website speed. You need to keep a constant eye on the speed of your website. You can do this by using Google Speed Insights which will give you a detailed report about the speed of your website both on mobile and desktop. Find out which images are slowing your site down, or if there is too much code on the back end and which widget might be stopping a smooth load of your website.

Google Smart Shopping

Smart Shopping is one of the best tools for start-up businesses if you don’t have the budget to employ an agency or the time to learn the system. All you need is a product feed on the merchant Centre and a budget. Google will do the rest. You can control a few variables like which products to show, your expected ROAS and build multiple campaigns based on margins.

Shopify helps you to build this for free and creates both the product feed and campaign from within the Google app on your dashboard. Just follow the setup guide and Shopify and Google will handle the rest. You need to allow it to learn for a month or two, but once Google has identified who buys your products and when it can get cracking.

Be warned though Goole s we know is a money-making machine and will constantly barrage you with notifications to up your budget. There is no account management to help you out other than tell you to spend more. So keep an eye on your performance and use Google trends to help identify when you should be spending more budget.

Think With Google

Google’s mantra is to organise the world’s information in one place which it does pretty well, to be honest. What it also does quite well is to share the relevant information with you concerning what is happening on the eCommerce front. You can sign up for their newsletter and find out the latest trends in any industry, read stories of success on Google and find out what might be coming down the tracks in terms of technology. If you do one thing, it would be worth signing up to Think with Google and spending a few minutes each month keeping up to date with the latest Google news.

If you want to find out more about any of the Google Tools covered in this blog then please get in touch. you never know, we might be able to identify an issue with your site that could speed it up or identify some dubious links to your site that are pulling down the rankings. The one thing you can be sure of is that we will share our experience with you and do our best to improve your website performance.