Fall 2022 - 100

RETAIL OPERATIONS
E-COMMERCE OPTIONS
FOR RETAILERS
Platforms provide avenues for selling products and reaching customers
BY KEITH LORIA
Contributing Writer
R
etailers care about boosting sales, pricing their
items right and understanding what their
customers want. That's why e-commerce
platforms are relentlessly rolling out new tools for
merchants to help them be a success.
After all, during the pandemic, studies show that a
whopping 81 percent of consumers shopped for items
online and many merchants were forced to close up
brick-and-mortar shops and concentrate their efforts
on e-commerce.
GOING WITH GOOGLE
The Google shopping platform, now called Google
Merchant Center, is a platform for retailers to list their
products for sale and is one of the most successful
e-commerce options for retailers.
The difference between the old Google shopping
platform and Google Merchant Center is that the latter
offers retailers the ability to create product listings that
include more information, such as product images,
prices, and descriptions. Additionally, Google Merchant
Center allows retailers to target their product listings
to specific audiences, such as consumers in a certain
geographic area or consumers who have expressed an
interest in a particular type of product.
" Google Merchant Center
is
a
one-stop-shop
for retailers looking to grow their business and get
discovered, " says Matt Madrigal, VP and GM of Merchant
Shopping at Google. " It allows you to list your products
for free across Google Search, YouTube, Maps and Image
Search, in just a few clicks-even if you use a platform
like Shopify. "
Merchant Center can also help a retailer more easily
connect with local shoppers and measure and analyze
how people are interacting with listings on Google.
" No one wants to live in a world where there's
only one place to buy things, which is why we're
working every day to help connect merchants with
more shoppers, " Madrigal said.
In recent years, Google has rolled out a few major
100 FALL 2022 GIFT SHOP® PLUS
updates that have made it easier for merchants-
especially small- and medium-sized merchants-
to get discovered on Google for free thanks to free
listings, integrations with third-party platforms and
free insights and analytics tools. These are all accessed
within the Merchant Center, a merchant's one-stopshop
for managing their presence on Google.
Any merchant who has a Merchant Center account
can list their products on Google, which means a small,
local business can have their products show up right
alongside the world's biggest retailers to shoppers who
are seeking them out.
" Before we rolled out free listings, merchants were
required to pay for listings on Google Shopping, "
Madrigal says. " Our goal is that this change will help
level the playing field, remove barriers and ultimately
support an open and free commerce ecosystem where
any merchant can get discovered at no cost to them. "
Another way Google is supporting small- and midsized
merchants is through expanded partnerships with
Shopify, GoDaddy, WooCommerce and other platforms
that make it easy for merchants on those platforms to
list their products with Google in just a few clicks.
This means that in just a few simple steps, Shopify
merchants can connect to Google one time and become
discoverable across Google Search, Shopping, Image
Search and YouTube.
This is great for merchants for two primary reasons-
people shop on Google more than a billion times a day, a
point that underscores the opportunities for merchants
on third-party platforms that now have access to an
even bigger audience through Google; and there is a
huge amount of intent across these surfaces, whether
you're watching an unboxing video on YouTube, image
searching for furniture, or reading publisher reviews,
people are shopping and looking for new ideas on what
to buy.
MORE WAYS TO SELL
But while Google may have the lion's share of business,
Fall 2022

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