How Free & Fast Fulfillment Can Power Up Your Google Shopping Performance

2020 was a whirlwind of a year for E-commerce to say the least. The coronavirus pandemic hyper-accelerated the industry several years into the future and forced merchants to be far more agile than ever before. New programs and products launched by channels such as Google, Microsoft Advertising, and Facebook have only further fueled the stark need for E-commerce merchants to focus more heavily on improving the shopper experience throughout the entire funnel.

Where are merchants to start though? Powering up one’s fulfillment chops should be at the top of the list. It is an essential ingredient for both the top-of-funnel and down funnel experiences.

It was something you saw from just about every source - including Shopify's Tobi Lutke himself. Some reports showed that the e-commerce industry had taken a 4-6 year leap into the future. The growth itself had seemingly occurred virtually overnight. Although the earliest days of the pandemic saw many merchants shut down completely (or at least pull back on their marketing), it was by April that a strong recovery emerged and things began to normalize a bit.

More evidence of the recovery was found with how Shopping Ads on Google saw tremendous growth YoY against Search Ads (ie Text Ads) in comparison:

Truth be told, that was merely the beginning. 2020 gave rise to new ways for merchants to connect with shoppers. Google, Microsoft Advertising (Bing), and Facebook (including Instagram) each accelerated their plans to help merchants grow.

Google launched Free Product Listings on Google Shopping, Microsoft Advertising followed suit with the same not too long after, and Facebook and Instagram Shops gave store owners a native shopping experience on business pages. Yet, with all the change and all the growth, e-commerce merchants today are now under even more pressure to give consumers what they are looking for and to be able to compete in an overwhelmingly saturated market.

More channels, more opportunities — these making it so that merchants also needed to do more to support the growing demands of consumers.

Based on a study performed by Walker Sands, 79% of US consumers had said that free shipping would make them more likely to shop online. Add this perspective: a similar study issued by Narvar saw that 53% of those consumers won't even purchase a product if they don't know when it will arrive.

In being only 1 of 2 Premier Google implementation partners for free and fast annotations, we were able to help several qualifying merchants onboard to the new program.
Merchants who participated in this program saw strong growth performance in their Shopping Ads including averaging 7% increases in conversions, a 9% increase in CVR, and a 10% increase in conversions per dollar conditioned on impressions.
Eligible merchants can apply to be part of this program which has very few requirements to entry including:

1. An active Google Merchant Center account with products opted into Shopping ads in the United States
2. Active web conversion tracking in your Google Ads account
3. Active products in your Merchant Center account which you can identify as free and fast
4. Account-level shipping settings configured for free and fast
5. Product feed attributes shipping_label and Transit_time_label
6. Product landing or detail pages and checkout pages to message free and fast shipping

What's more, there are no limitations on providers (ie you can ship with FedEx, UPS, USPS, etc.), you can limit your own free and fast annotations by region (ie by State), and you can have free and fast annotations apply only to specific SKUs in your product feed.

Not all merchants are going to be eligible for free and fast annotations, especially seeing as they were only released in the US. However, these annotations are not the only way to surface relevant fulfillment information at the very beginning of the shopper journey. 
Past reports have suggested that nearly half or more of all consumer purchase behavior starts on Google - making Shopping Ads the bread and butter of many an e-commerce business’ advertising efforts.
By ensuring that “free and fast” type messaging appears at that very beginning stage e-commerce merchants stand a far better chance of earning the trust of potential shoppers.

Yet another incredible opportunity that arose from the pits of the COVID-19 pandemic - Google released Free Product Listings on Shopping first in the US but this has since expanded to a global scale. With the very same product feed that one would use for Shopping Ads, merchants can now enable their products to appear on the Shopping tab of Google and even the main search results pages without having to pay for advertising space.
In fact, the vast majority of product listings now found on the Shopping tab specifically are 100% free of cost (ie CPC):

Accompanying Free Product Listings, as you can see, are those familiar callouts Free Shipping and even Estimated Delivery Times.

Reports dating back to mid-2020 (courtesy of Google by way of Search Engine Land) suggest that these Free Product Listings have had a tremendous impact. In July alone:

• 70% lift in clicks on the Shopping tab
• 130% lift in impressions on the Shopping tab

So, not only can e-commerce store owners list their products for free on Google surfaces, they can also drive more engagement and build trust with shoppers with free and fast fulfillment messaging. A true win-win that benefits both consumers and merchants.

Formerly known as Shopping Actions, Buy on Google is essentially a “marketplace" built directly into the Google stack of search and productivity assets.

Yet again, merchants looking to participate in Buy on Google need to submit a product feed to Google Merchant Center and enable the program which currently starts with being put on a waitlist at first.
Spurred on by COVID Google dropped commission fees it was originally charging merchants for purchases made on what was then called Shopping Actions.

Now, it costs nothing to list products in the program and merchants can still have control over customer service - namely fulfillment. Buy on Google provides a native checkout experience so shoppers start and end their journey's directly on Google. Consumers happen to also be backed by the Google Guarantee so if anything goes wrong, Google has them covered.

Though the pressure is on for merchants to provide consistency in customer service, order management solutions integrated fully with Buy on Google make it so that merchants can focus more intently on fulfillment versus painstakingly tracking orders between their e-commerce platform and Google Merchant Center. What's especially nice for merchants is that they can have separate Shipping rules designated purely for Buy on Google products as compared to Shopping Ads - not necessary but certainly an added bonus. In the end, Buy on Google presents merchants with yet another opportunity to surface free and fast shipping and delivery messaging to worthy buyers.

That is the question, isn't it? Again, 2020 changed e-commerce forever, but for the better in so many ways. The time is nigh to really start thinking about how to up your game for the near and late future. Consumer behavior has been altered dramatically and as people continue to stay at home and spend more online than ever before, e-commerce merchants need to get serious about future-proofing their growth. Fulfillment optimization will always be one of the more challenging endeavors for store owners, but with the right solutions in place it also happens to be one of the fundamental ways to attract more shoppers, earn their trust, and improve both top-line revenue and LTV. In Google alone, the possibilities are virtually endless — and that is just one channel.