Shopping online is certainly not a new trend. We’ve been doing online shopping for a very long time, but especially more this past year, be it the weekly grocery shopping or shopping for clothes and home décor.
In 2020, 87 percent of UK households made online purchases, with clothing and sports goods among the most popular online purchases. Undoubtedly, there are many benefits from shopping online, it’s convenient and quick but also safer when given the current situation with the covid-19 and lockdown measures. As we talk about in a previous blog post, in March 2020, in-store clothing sales dropped by 34% and the UK retail sales dropped by 5.1% after many stores closed during lockdown.
Shopping directly from the comfort of your home has its perks, but at the same time, some consumers still crave the in-store experience. They want to try clothes on to find the perfect fit, sample beauty products, get the feel of materials or even seek advice from experts in-store.
To help shoppers get a similar experience while shopping online, Google is launching new features (currently available exclusively in the US) that specifically offer that ‘try it’ experience directly from your mobile phone.
It can be hard to decide on beauty products without trying on different shades, textures, consistency and pigments in-person.
For instance, when shopping for foundation in-store, you normally get to sample different brands and shades to specifically match your skin tone. And as most consumers would agree, a slightly lighter or darker shade of the same product can make a huge difference for every shopper.
For this reason, Google has been studying ways to make the online shopping experience as closer to an in-store one as possible. The goal is to make consumers capable of making a decision while shopping from their sofa at home.
Google has been working with data partners ModiFace and Perfect Corp to help shoppers better visualise and ‘try’ thousands of beauty products like lipsticks and eyeshadow shades from a diverse range of brands including L’Oreal, MAC Cosmetics, Black Opal and Charlotte Tilbury. Directly from the Google app, consumers can now virtually try makeup and other beauty products as they would in-store.
This is a huge step ahead for the google shopping experience, especially with the rise in online shopping.
As mentioned earlier, one of the great benefits of in-store shopping is the possibility of expert advice. Now, while browsing the google shopping app on your phone or while scrolling through the Discover feed in the Google app, Google now provides recommendations from beauty, apparel and home and garden enthusiasts and experts about their favourite products.
With these new features and advancements on the google shopping app, consumers can search for their beauty products of interest and try them in different shades straight from the app. For example, let’s say you were looking to purchase a nude-everyday lipstick and wanted to browse a few different shades to match your skin tone and your preference. You could search for MAC Powder Kiss Lipstick in google shopping and the new advanced features will enable you to ‘try it on’ straight from your mobile device.
This is when feed optimisation becomes crucial for your google shopping ads to perform well. To ensure a good performance for your google shopping campaigns, we suggest focusing on the optimisation of Product titles, Product types, Product categories, Images and Product attributes. Optimising these elements will enhance your chances of your product appearing in consumer searches like the MAC lipstick example above.
These new google shopping tools are coming in to make shopping from home easier and Shoptimised is here to make product feed optimisation even easier for your e-commerce business.
Get in touch today for a free demo and more tips to see excellent shopping performance.
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