The Best Google Merchant Center KPIs to Maximize Market Reach & Drive Sales

With 49% of shoppers turning to Google to explore new products, the platform has a lot of potential to set your brand up for success (and sales). However, to truly capitalize on this marketplace, your product needs to have a well-optimized presence, including pricing, pictures, and reviews, to name a few. 

This is where Google Merchant Center comes in, the backend dashboard that helps businesses upload and manage their product information. Consisting of factors like images, description, pricing, availability, and more, this product data is then made available across Google’s platforms, including Google Shopping, Ads, Maps, and Search. 

But here’s the thing: launching a shop on GMC isn’t enough; you need to track its progress over time to see how well your product listings are performing. And the best Google Merchant Center KPIs help you do just that, providing a bunch of traceable metrics to track the performance of your product. So, read on for the finest KPIs sellers need to monitor for maximum growth. 

How Does Google Merchant Center Work?

Google Merchant Center allows sellers to upload and manage their product data to display it across various Google platforms, including Google Shopping, Google Ads, and Google Search. After you create an account on GMC using your Google account credentials, you’re able to create product data feeds. These are basically files containing all the information about your offering, like price, availability, condition, description, and MPN numbers. 

As a bonus, GMC has all the tools to help sellers optimize their product feeds for the maximum spotlight. You can sprinkle all the relevant keywords to boost product rankings, sort your product into categories, and even tweak your titles to pull those audiences. Once the product data feed is created, merchants upload it to the GMC, either manually or through an API integration with the seller’s e-commerce platform (Shopify, Amazon, eBay, etc.). 

The Best Google Merchant Center KPIs: Gain Real-Time Insights into Your Product Listings

After you’ve uploaded an optimized title, competitive pricing, and compelling images for your product, the next step is to monitor how it is performing. The best Google Merchant Center KPIs give sellers the juicy insights behind their product listings, helping them improve their bidding strategies and stack up well against competitors. Here are a few metrics you should track. 

1. Clicks

In the Google Merchant Center, “clicks” refer to the number of times a user interacts with a product listing by tapping on it. When a user clicks on an ad, they are usually directed to a landing page or product detail page where they can learn more about the offering or make a purchase. But why are clicks one of the best Google Merchant Center KPIs to track?

Well, these metrics tell you more about the level of interest and engagement generated by your product listings. For example, let’s say that a shoe retailer notices many clicks on one of their high-sole joggers. This denotes that users are interested in exploring the product further, possibly wanting to check out more colors, materials, size variations, or sole designs. 

Although the number of clicks you get depends upon your campaign, industry, and targeted keywords, an average is 15 clicks per day per ad group. Plus, merchants should aim for at least 300 clicks on their keywords monthly. You should tweak your marketing campaign if you are getting this many clicks.

2. Impressions

Indicating how often your products were displayed on Google, impressions are one of the best digital marketing KPIs to learn about the visibility and reach of your listings. If your products consistently have a high number of impressions, it is a sign of strong visibility and exposure to potential customers. Conversely, low impressions could signal potential issues, including low ad quality, targeting problems, strong competition (in your industry), or limited budget allocation. 

If your Google Shopping campaigns don’t show the desired impressions in your digital marketing report, here are a few tips to optimize them:

• Tweak your product feed to contain detailed and accurate information about your listing, including titles, descriptions, prices, images, and key features. 
• Create separate campaigns or ad groups for different product lines or promotional categories (e.g., an electronic gadgets store could segment by phones, laptops, etc.).
• Set up ad groups based on factors like product type, brand, or performance.
• Use add-on features such as Market Center promotions, custom labels, and product variants. 

3. Click-through Rate (CTR)

As one of the best Google Merchant Center KPIs, the click-through rate is defined as the ratio of clicks on a product listing to the number of times it’s been displayed. This metric provides a numeric representation of how well your listing resonates with the users, indicating whether it is attractive (and valuable) enough to prompt users to click it. 

To calculate the CTR of a product listing, all you need to do is use this formula:

Clicks/impressions = CTR

For example, let’s say a business has a CTR of 3% for a particular product listing. In this case, it indicates that 3 out of every 100 users who view the listing click on it to learn more. For merchants and e-commerce sellers, a good CTR to aim for is between 2%-5%, depending on their industry, targeted keywords, and product categories.

Tips to Improve CTR of Google Product Listings

Here are a few tips to improve your click-through rate:

• Optimize your product listings and keywords to align better with the user intent. For example, a business selling running shoes should add phrases like “lightweight running shoes” or “breathable sneakers” to attract customers looking for specific features. 
• Make use of ad extensions to provide additional information, such as product reviews or promotions, directly within the listing (back to school, black Friday sale, limited time). 
• Refine your targeting campaigns and reduce irrelevant clicks by adding negative keywords. For example, if you sell premium running shoes, add “cheap” or “affordable” as negative keywords to improve CTR by attracting qualified leads. 
• Link product listings to relevant landing pages to help the users learn more about a product. This prompts the users to explore your brand further, boosting CTR. 

4. Conversion Rate

The conversion rate is defined as the ratio of users who, after clicking on a product displayed on Google, proceed to complete a desired action on the merchant’s website. Depending on the specific business, this conversion may range from store visits to app downloads or purchases. To calculate the conversion rate of your product listing, all you need to do is divide the number of conversions by the total number of interactions (clicks) related to those conversions. 

For e-commerce businesses, the conversion rate provides insights into the overall performance of their online storefronts. A high conversion rate, for example, indicates three things: you have a well-optimized product listing, a user-friendly website, and a compelling (value-rich) offer/product. Apart from this, the conversion rate helps you identify which marketing channels are driving the most conversions and which ones require the reallocation of resources. 

5. Conversion Value

Conversion value is a crucial metric within the Google Merchant Center that measures the monetary value derived from conversions. Representing the total value generated by conversions, this metric helps sellers optimize their advertising campaigns and gain the maximum return on investment (ROI). 

Plus, the conversion value aids businesses in measuring the actual revenue generated from their ad campaigns rather than just focusing on the conversion volume. For example, let’s say you have two keywords in your Google Merchant Account, each with a different number of conversions. Keyword 1 has generated 25 conversions, while Keyword 2 only has five conversions — apparently, you’d want to allocate a higher budget to Keyword 1 since it has more conversions. 

However, without conversion values, the company knows nothing about the actual revenue generated by each keyword. It is possible that Keyword 2, despite having a lower volume of conversions, has a higher conversion value per action. For example, if each conversion (through Keyword 1) is worth $10, the total CV would be $250. Conversely, if each conversion (by Keyword 2) is worth $100, the total conversion value would be $500. 

Get Detailed Merchant Insights with Catchr: A Staple for Analyzing Google Merchant Center KPIs

Analyzing the best Google Merchant Center KPIs is a go-to for setting your listing apart from the competition, providing details about the performance of your keywords, ad groups, and product categories. But who has the time to manually extract all of these KPIs from their GMC account and monitor them over time? Not us. 

This is where Catchr comes in, effortlessly analyzing the all-important GMC metrics and presenting them in an understandable format in your digital marketing report. Thanks to the platform’s intuitive interface, you can filter data by any field, build custom fields, and design beautiful dashboards tailored to your needs. So, stop the guessing game and take data-driven measures for your product listing with Catchr!