Google Merchant Center to Drive Local Sales

Using search engines to find desired products as efficiently as possible is why services like Google Shopping are so compelling. Many savvy Internet marketers are using Google Merchant Center to drive local sales. Google Merchant Center is a free service used by savvy businesses to get their product inventory in the Google Shopping information stream with moderate effort. Impulse buyers can see which merchants have product available locally from within Google Shopping, helping to drive local sales from businesses and consumers with immediate needs.

Search engines are great for shopping. We all use them to find what we’re looking for at the best possible price as quickly as possible. Finding out more information on products and services, seeing reviews from other users, researching the lowest prices available before buying are all solid reasons why businesses and consumers use search engines when shopping. My personal favorite happens to be Google Shopping.

The reason that I like Google Shopping is that it tends to be the largest product index that I’m aware of outside of and Amazon.com or eBay.com, which are paid to play markets where Amazon and eBay get paid a commission on each sale.

With Google Shopping, I’m able to find products that are being listed through Google Merchant Center for free, therefore reducing the overall price to the consumer who does not have to pay for Amazon or eBay listing fees which are factored into the retail pricing.

But even more than that, what I love about Google Shopping is that I’m able to find all the product information and then quickly see where I can buy it both online and nearby locally if needed. I can sort by price (low to high or high to low) or relevancy (default).

Incidentally, buying local relative to buying online generally has both literal and figurative taxes associated with it. The literal tax is that businesses and consumers have to pay sales tax which in the Greater Capital District in Albany, NY is either 7% or 8% depending on which county one shops in. Online purchases from business that have no in state point of presence are tax-free, for now at least. The second tax is more of a figurative tax in that the local pricing is often higher than online as you will see in the example below, which is typical in my experience.

However, in spite of often times having to pay additional for buying local, these local purchases are sometimes necessary due to business or personal needs, not to mention the benefit of buying local to the local economy which has been proven to have an overwhelmingly positive effect. This postive effect on local economies can translate into lower property and school taxes. In the cases where the business or consumer needs to satisfy an immediate need, finding a local option where the merchandise can be purchased and picked up in person same day is often of HUGE value.

From a Google Shopping user’s perspective, the number of businesses using free Google Merchant Center to list their products on the Internet seems to be somewhat limited. This is probably due to lack of awareness from businesses that they can list their products to show up in Google Shopping search results for free to drive not only online sales but local sales in traditional, physical brick-and-mortar stores.

The inspiration for this post came for a search that I was performing for 32 GB SDHC card to be used in a video shoot this Monday. Today is Saturday, so the business need in this case dictates that local shopping options are the only option to get product in time to support the shoot scheduled for Monday.

A quick search on Google Shopping turned up a number of options making it easy to compare prices and brands. What was interesting is that for each brand of memory chip, although several search results are returned in Google, many for online stores, very few nearby stores showed up in the search results. The following Google Shopping search results show only one brand of memory chip with local (nearby) options to purchase.

Google Shopping with Local Results example

Clicking on the 10 nearby stores – In stock yields the following additional information including who has listed product, availability (in stock) and location information.

While it’s possible that this could be due to limited product availability for more niche brands, my local shopping experience and familiarity with memory chip inventory at various local retailers, I know for a fact that most of the inventory in the Great Capital Region (Albany New York) are not represented in Google shopping. This may be due in part to a misconception that Google Shopping is limited to benefiting e-commerce websites only.

This could also be due to the complexity or perceived complexity those businesses feel as they often don’t know where to start in terms of integrating their product inventory with Google Merchant Center. In either case, for businesses with fierce local competition, Google Merchant Center provides a free way to deliver increased visibility of a businesses inventory.

If you are interested in learning more about Google Merchant Center and how it can be used to increase your online product visibility, contact eBiz ROI at sales@eBizROI.com. If interested in following this thread, click the Like button in the upper right hand corner of this page to become a fan of eBiz ROI, Inc. and follow the Google Merchant Center thread from Facebook or submit your email address to follow by email. Now is off to the store to get my SDHC card!