Understanding Buy on Google — Open and Commission-Free

Buy On Google: The Basics

What is Buy on Google? To answer that question, you need to first understand the current state of internet shopping. Online, it seems like there are a million ways to find and purchase products. Not only do people shop directly from their favorite retailers’ websites, but online marketplaces like Alibaba, Amazon, and eBay have become the powerhouses of e-commerce, with Amazon alone having over 150 million Prime subscribers.

The popularity of shopping online is no surprise, and it’s also unsurprising that fellow tech giant Google has a goal to stake out their own share of the e-commerce market. Google has tried several attempts over the years with programs like Google Express and the Purchases On Google program commonly referred to at the time as the Google Buy Button.

This program is not an attempt to create a Google Marketplace. Buy On Google is a little different as it removes the need for consumers to go to a specific website to buy a product. Instead, a buy option will come up when users search for products in Google’s Shopping category. Unlike the typical marketplace model, Google does not currently take any commission fees.

Not only will Buy On Google eliminate the need for Google users to visit individual sites and sort through a website’s offerings, but it could also allow product distributors to reach customers more easily. Time will tell how the specifics play out, or whether people will even use Buy On Google, but it definitely signifies that Google is trying to involve themselves more actively in the ever-growing field of e-commerce.

How Do You Use Buy On Google?

It’s easy to tell Google wanted their new marketplace to feel like a natural addition to the Shopping side of their search engine, and they did quite a good job with its design.

Using Buy On Google as a customer is as simple as searching for a product in Google’s shopping section. When the product shows up, customers will see an option to checkout from Google. When this is clicked, it’ll bring the customer to a page where they’ll enter their financial and shipping information – the rest is self-explanatory.

Setting Up Google Merchant Center

For merchants who wish to sell on Google, setting up your business is a similarly easy experience.

1. First, you need to sign up for Google’s Merchant Center, which is a pretty self-explanatory process.
2. Once you’re signed up, you’ll need to detail your business information, which includes what kind of business or site you run, what sort of products you’ll be selling, intended age ranges of your products, your customer service email address, and more.
3. Add your products, including product descriptions.
4. Set up your taxing and shipping policies.
5. Create customer return policies and the like.
6. Include information regarding your payment service provider.

Opt Your Product In To Buy On Google

Once you have completed the setup in Google Merchant Center, you must let Google know you’re interested in participating in the Buy On Google program. Under the Growth > Manage Programs you can find the option to complete an interest form.

The form will inquire about the business, payment solutions, and customer support tools your website uses.  One thing to note is the Buy On Google program only supports PayPal and Shopify Payments at the moment.

This is the gist of getting set up your business with Google’s new marketplace. It’s very simple and accessible, much like every site seems to be nowadays. It will be interesting to see how special additions to the Merchant Center play out. Currently, businesses have the option of setting up a “promotions feed” for specific products, as well as bolstering their brand by highlighting their branding assets with Buy On Google.

Whether these additions will enable merchants to distinguish themselves from similar brands on Buy On Google has yet to be determined, but it’s an important question to ask. As Google further simplifies the online shopping experience, how much benefit will this bring to merchants? Let’s talk about it.

What Are the Benefits of Buy On Google?

Customer Benefits

For customers, the benefits of Buy On Google are pretty self-explanatory. More and more third-party, counterfeit sellers are making their way into Amazon and Alibaba, effectively flooding the search results users have to sort through to find legitimate products. Language barriers lead to product confusion, inane product names, and product descriptions filled with awkward language and rudimentary grammatical mistakes.

With Buy On Google, it seems Google is trying to streamline the shopping experience for customers as much as possible by eliminating the need for consumers to visit websites and compare benefits and prices through extensive (and sometimes excessive) research – but whether this will help consumers deal with the problems plaguing the e-commerce marketplace remains to be seen.

Merchant Benefits

For merchants, the benefits of Buy On Google are a little more cut and dry. Integrating Buy On Google with the search engine’s other business tools can help companies establish their audiences and build online marketing campaigns based on the results. Merchants will presumably be on an even playing field with Buy On Google, which will likely highlight results that are deemed to be the most relevant — and as Google has demonstrated over the years, it’s very difficult for scammers and snake oil salesmen to trick Google’s algorithm for determining which search results are displayed first. Hopefully, the same can be said for business on Buy On Google.

Commission Free For Sellers

One of the big benefits, and more recent developments, is the removal of commission fees for sellers that make use of Buy On Google’s checkout process, which means sellers will be able to utilize this quick and simple checkout tool without having to shell out any of their profits to Google. Another benefit worth mentioning is the fact that it’s free for businesses to list their products on Google Shopping. Admittedly, this has existed for some time, but it’s still a major benefit for sellers eyeing Google as their next market.

So far, it’s hard to tell how much of an effect Google’s addition to the e-commerce market will have on things. One key thing to focus on over the next few months is Buy On Google’s performance for mobile users. Mobile shopping is one of the most-utilized ways consumers buy their products these days, and it would seem that it’s essential for Google’s project to function smoothly on mobile devices to rival Amazon’s 150 million mobile users.

Getting Assistance with Buy On Google

If setting up a product feed for Google Merchant Center and managing your Google Shopping advertising strategies sounds too overwhelming, don’t worry. The experts at OperationROI have been submitting product feeds to Google since back in the days of Froogle. Our Google PPC experts have years of experience marketing products on Google. To learn more about our Google Shopping Management or have us review your account please contact us today!