Google Shopping and Ongoing Battle With Amazon
General, Price-monitoring, eCommerce ·Google is not a marketplace, yet this tech giant keeps rolling out new features that make other marketplaces take them as their biggest competition. Thus, it’s no surprise that the most competitive battle is happening with Amazon.
Amazon might be the first address for retailers, but over the years, many of them understood that the most likely scenario for them would be to end up in some anonymous row. That’s how numerous retailers have started looking for much-wanted clicks and customers on Google Shopping.
Why is Google Shopping important?
It’s a well-known fact that every purchase starts with collecting information, and there’s no better place to do it than on Google. However, Google has decided to step up its game and get directly involved in the sales process.
Besides earning from the ads, Google introduced a Google Shopping feature that became a serious competitor for all the marketplaces.
Why is that the case?
Well, visitors that click on shopping ads have a stronger buying intent than those who click on regular text ads.
Shopping ads generate 85% of all clicks on Google Ads or Google Shopping campaigns. So, it’s crystal clear what kind of engagement Google Shopping can provide.
That engagement is even more pronounced on mobile devices. By now, every eCommerce store knows that being mobile-friendly is completely essential. To support that fact let’s just say that two-thirds of mobile users are more likely to purchase from mobile-optimized websites. Moreover, around 65% of clicks on Google paid searches are done by mobile phones.
Google Shopping is also supported by additional features such is voice assistance. Google has more than 500-million assistant-enabled devices, and believe it or not, half of those users prefer speaking instead of typing while searching for a product.
So, for businesses that are not on Amazon, Google Shopping seems like a place to be.
Speaking of Amazon
Every four out of five people who are searching to buy a product will start their hunt on Amazon or Google. Thus, it can be very effective to sell products on Amazon, but what’s difficult to achieve there is customer loyalty. Customers are not visiting the vendors’ websites directly, therefore, they don’t develop the usual brand awareness. For small business owners, those connections are vital, so they can easily get overruled by the bigger players.
Thinking about smaller businesses, Google announced in April that everyone will be able to list their products on Google Shopping for free. While not directly mentioning Amazon, Mr. Ready from Google said that the reason behind this decision is enabling everyone to sell online easily and inexpensively.
So far, this battle between the two giants was going one step forward, and one step back. Whatever one enabled, the other quickly followed.
Yet, the latest change might be the game-changer that Google Shopping has been looking for.
What is new?
By now, Google executive Prabhakar Raghavan’s wife roses have become a viral thing.
In case you somehow missed it, his wife had issues with her rose bushes, so she decided to take a photo, upload it on Google, and find the problem source. Google offered her a link for a fungicide and she bought it.
Now you might think well what does has to do with anything?
Mr. Raghavan understood that this could be Google’s turning point. Finding a product without typing and searching but instead having a seamless process such as uploading a photo is just what Raghavan was looking for.
For Amazon, this means that Google Shopping will offer millions of sellers thriving without using a marketplace. Regardless of which platform the retailers decide to proceed with, it would be wise to consider using some of the price monitoring tools that can offer seamless integration with these platforms.
However, both companies are facing a slowdown in eCommerce sales due to people returning to their pre-pandemic habits. But, it remains to be seen whether this trend is just a temporary thing since people missed all the live interactions that the pandemic has imposed, or it’s a real habit change.
Summing it up
Nowadays, almost every business has its online store. But, with so many options, deciding on which platform to use can be a difficult task.
We hope this article managed to shed some light on the novelties around Amazon and Google Shopping and potentially help you to make a decision.
What are your impressions about eCommerce platforms? We would like to know your experience.