Case for setting up content for the website OkayCMS - hype.com.ua

We have already talked about the development process of the hype.com.ua online store , what functionality we implemented to improve the visual part, usability and, in part, for SEO. The guys continue to actively promote their online store and use all possible channels. Since one of the most frequent requests of our customers is to show the most successful stores with good ratings, we continue to follow the project created on OkayCMS. And today Stanislav Guslisty, head of the Trust agency, shared his case on setting up contextual advertising for the Hype project with us. How the website and advertising are connected, what trends work better in this direction and what is needed to successfully set up advertising campaigns, read in a detailed interview.

1. Tell us about the trends in contextual advertising that work best today?

At the moment, I am ready to single out one tool in our market, it is intended only for online stores, but this in no way reduces its relevance and efficiency.

It has appeared recently and is only gaining momentum - “Google Shopping” or “Google Shopping Campaigns”.

If I am not mistaken, this tool became available on our market in August 2018, market leaders immediately began to use it, and the rest are gradually moving towards this.

I think today every person who uses Google search began to notice that when searching for any products, pictures of products with the name and price began to appear in the first place of the SERP:

Previously, in order to stand out among competitors in contextual advertising, a word with a capital letter in the ad could be enough. But time passes, and no one stands still, especially Google. Nowadays it is not enough just to be in context, you need to constantly improve all possible parameters and test new tools.

Answer yourself to the question: you walk through the mall looking in the windows, looking for sneakers, in one window there is only a sign with the inscription Nike (there may not even be sneakers there), and in the other there are five different pairs of sneakers with the emblem and price you need ... Which store will you visit?

Nowadays, speed is starting to play a special role, this applies to everything:

• website loading speed;
• the number of steps that a potential client must take to achieve the required goal;
• the amount of information that can be conveyed in one moment.

“Google Shopping” just bursts into the first place here, it removes a lot of steps from the path, because a person immediately sees a picture of the product (the right model, the right color), the name that confirms the correspondence of the picture and the price - but this by itself, taking into account the correct setup of the shopping campaign and feed (since the problem of settings is still relevant; you are looking for a specific product, but you get to the main page of the site).

Nowadays “Google Shopping Campaigns”, based on the data of our customers, I consider the most effective tool for online stores, but this is when taken into account when comparing them separately. In general, I am for an integrated approach.

2. What data do you need to have in order to set up Google Shopping for a site with a large assortment of products?

Let's take a quick look at what is needed for “Google Shopping”:

• Create Gmail mail - useful for logging into all services;
• Create an account in Google Ads - shopping campaigns will be created and configured there;
• Create an account with Google Merchant - to manage your product feed;
• The feed itself with data about the products you want to advertise.

I think everyone can cope with the first 3 points, but 4 should be given special attention.

All information about the products that need to be advertised will be contained in the data feed. Because we are talking about online stores with a large number of products, I would immediately recommend automating the process of creating a feed file, its further uploading and updating.

You can find out what specific fields should be or can be contained in the feed in the Google Merchant Center help (https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7052112?hl=en ). An example of what a feed looks like in xml:

If your CMS already allows you to create such a feed, that's great. If not, then I advise you to order such a revision from your programmers. This will not only greatly facilitate your further work with Shopping campaigns, but will also save you time and money.

Also, if you have a small online store and products are not updated often, and you have a lot of free time or a person who can be entrusted with creating content and maintaining a feed, you can do all this manually and upload the feed to “Google Merchant” as needed.

3. What were your requirements for the site, for the technical implementation for the successful launch of advertising?

Wow, there are many requirements! But let's take three main points, without which it is better to close right away.

First of all, I think that no one has any doubts about the adaptability of the online store, the availability of a mobile version. Now about 60-70% of traffic is mobile traffic.

Further, the site should be very fast, because speed plays a very important role both from a buyer's point of view and from a technical point of view for Google.

The possibility of losing a potential client after he clicks on your ad increases many times with every second of loading your site.

We can observe a similar situation from a technical point of view. "Google Merchant" gets all the product data from your site, and if your site is slow, this will affect the speed of the moderation and approval of the products. This can negatively affect sales, especially on those days when you need to quickly make adjustments to the availability and price of goods: holidays, blackfriday, cybermonday ...

The third, but not the last point, I would highlight the functionality, simplicity and information content of the online store in general, product categories, product pages and order pages. Everything should be quick and clear no matter what page of the site the visitor is on, good filters on categories with the maximum possible parameters, good pictures in large quantities if possible with zoom, price / price with a discount, advantages, description, order on one page with a minimum possible fields.

This is the site in a nutshell.

Regarding the technical implementation related to “Google Shopping”. The main tasks that we set for the OkayCMS programmers were:

1. automation of the process of creating, adding new products and updating the data of old products in the feed;
2. output of those data fields and in such a format that we need specifically for this project;
3. the ability in the admin panel of the online store, if necessary, to easily and easily change the values of these feed fields;
4. the ability to create template descriptions for products that would not be taken from meta-data, but created from scratch specifically for “Google Shopping”.

All this allows you to simplify and make the most of the opportunities obtained when creating Shopping campaigns in Google Ads. Flexibly and quickly implement edits and conduct experiments to achieve the set goals.

4. What advertising campaigns did you set up on hype.com.ua, which ones worked most effectively?

The Hype project - initially set goals focused only on orders and the ability to use a very limited budget. For this, it was decided to use 3 tools:

• search advertising (standard text ads with max extensions for commercial queries based on the structure of the online store);
• remarketing (pursuit of visitors who have not achieved their goals);
• Shopping campaigns (based on a product feed).

Taken individually, Google Shopping campaigns performed most effectively. Their advantage is their low cost per click and the ability to show up for very, very low-frequency queries.

5. Which Google Ads campaigns work as efficiently as possible for online stores, and which ones work poorly?

I have never been a supporter of using only one tool, because under circumstances that we cannot influence, a moment may come that will call into question all the efforts spent on launching the project. And if an online store is faced with the task of reaching the maximum, then there is only an integrated approach, since each instrument complements each other.

Some tools require a lot of time and money in order to obtain the necessary data for further optimization, others only time, such as remarketing, which does not start until a certain audience is collected, and then the question immediately arises of the existing traffic in the online store, and if it no, the audience can gather for a very long time.

But still, I will answer the question clearly, how the 3 main tools look to me at the moment that every online store must use:

Of these three, now “Google Shopping” is my favorite, it is young, not fully explored, and the parameters from the table only give it many advantages.

But this is not the final version, I think if I am asked to make a new table in six months, then I have no doubt that the values there will change, and I will not be surprised if I add some new tool there.

6. Are there any tricks that should be taken into account when setting up advertising campaigns for online stores?

To be honest, I don't even want to immediately talk about any tricks when in a large number of accounts you observe the situation in the campaign settings: either ad extensions are not used, there are no negative words, problems with geotargeting or display time. And besides, the problem is not that, for example, the owner of the store, who decided to try it himself, is doing it, but also the agency !!!

Therefore, this is probably the first trick : use the maximum of the functions that Google offers you - you will not regret it. After all, you are not alone in the market, and the competition is growing every day.

The second tip: do not forget to set up adequate goals (goals that capture a useful action in an online store, for example, a placed order, a call). Without them, it makes no sense to launch at all, and then draw conclusions and, on the basis of them, take further steps in the settings of advertising campaigns.

The third tip : experiment and try to stand out somehow, try using emoji in your ads

Google Shopping tip : This tool itself determines to whom and for what requests to show your product based on data from the feed. The main source is title and description, which should contain max information about the product, which allows you to expand the list of queries for which Google will show you. For this, I would like to express my deep gratitude to the OkayCMS team, who made it possible for us to prescribe these fields in a template using product properties, it was cool!

Finally, I will touch on a global point - this is quality, it applies to everything: an online store, the product that is sold in it, advertising campaigns / sources that bring you visitors, your managers who communicate with customers and you as a business owner, in particular. We are all accustomed to complaining and telling how bad it is there, but it is bad and expensive there, but here, what are you doing so long and ugly, you can do better and faster, etc. etc. Therefore, always start with yourself and do everything efficiently, as for yourself 99% who strive for 100!