Increase the conversion in Google Shopping by monitoring competitor’s prices

Google Shopping now a day is the main display of online shopping. We only have to write the name of a product in this popular search engine and we are shown instantly hundreds of results on where to buy it.

The benefit of Google Shopping for consumers is very clear, find a product at the best price. The question is though; do we have an adequate pricing strategy to achieve profit from using Google Shopping? One of the main errors that retailers make when using comparison sites is to bid for products without knowing their market price. If we are certain that the main buy factor for these users is price, what sense does it make to bid on products where we aren´t competitive? Let’s see how we can optimise our investment in Google Shopping by using Minderest:

If we are able to know the prices of each competitor in Google shopping, we can determine our position within the comparison site and therefor bid with intelligence. Three easy techniques that we can use to noticeably increase our inversion return in Google Shopping are as follows:

1. Coverage analysis: by analysing the assortment in Google Shopping we can get to know the products that are being advertised by other competitors and which aren´t. It would be very profitable to bid on those products that are still not available in our competitors as nobody will be competing with us and we can therefor obtain a large profit margin.

2. Increase bids where we are competitive: if our retail price is in a good position and we have an acceptable margin, it would be a very good idea to increase the investment in these products to exploit our privileged position.

3. Increase bids where we are out of the market: investing in clicks where our retail price is far from the cheapest would have a very low conversion rate. If our margin does not allow us to be near the market price we should not bid for these products and instead use this investment for those products that are better positioned.

By applying these three techniques and analysing our impact in sales, we can boost our investment in Google Shopping so that with a minimal cost we are gaining are larger return. This information would also have a double use for us, as well as helping us with price comparison site strategies, it will also be useful to design our global price strategy, and we will also have a market price for each product that will act as an important reference.