The coveted Google Trusted Store badge has been around for nearly a decade.In fact, Google says that more than 67% of users Rely on Google ratings, price comparisons, and reviews to help you make purchases this past holiday season.
A good customer experience is critical in every industry, especially in e-commerce. That’s why Google announced the extension of the Trusted Store badge to free shopping lists.
Get the Trusted Store badge
In this welcome change to the online company, the Trusted Store badge will be available to brands based on their shopping experience scorecard.
If your brand consistently offers excellent shipping and returns, a Trusted Store badge might appear on your product listing.
The basis for earning the Trusted Store badge is based on the following performance:
- Shipping speed
- shipping
- return fee
- back to window
These performance metrics are compared to other merchants in the relevant category.
Here is an example of a Trusted Store badge:
Shopping Experience Scorecard Explained
This program is available if you participate in Buy on Google or Free Listings in the US.
This Shopping Experience Scorecard Track the experience you’re delivering to your customers in numerous areas (listed in the Trusted Store Badge section).
On each metric, you’ll get one of the following scores:
- excellent
- comparable
- opportunity
If certain criteria for these metrics are met, Google will highlight your product listings in placements on the Shopping tab and/or display badges on your listings. However, you will need to submit information for all of the above areas in order to be marked on the product listing.
While Google analyzes the information you provide on a daily basis, there is a fixed lookback window to determine the status of your metrics. The metrics above are calculated based on the impression-weighted average of the lookback window.
You can view your performance and shopping experience scorecard by logging into your Google Merchant Center account.
The benefits of badges
Earning the Trusted Store badge is no easy task. It’s all based on a customer experience for your users. If your brand excels in shipping, returns, and reviews, you’ll be able to benefit from it. Some of these benefits include, but are not limited to:
- Increase product listing engagement
- Increase trust in users
- More prominent listings in the shopping tab
- brand awareness
In Google’s early testing of the badge, they said that “merchants that display the Trusted Store badge are more likely to get clicks.” In addition, Google mentioned that lesser-known brands with the Trusted Stores badge are getting more clicks and traffic.
Announcing new reporting tools
In addition to the Trusted Store badge, Google is rolling out an upgraded reporting tool to measure the impact of free listings.
New reporting toolshows merchants insights into their product listings:
- total flow
- Impressions
- exchange rate
In the past, merchants were unable to report free product listings. For example, if you wanted to test a free product listing against a paid listing, you wouldn’t know if the free listing had a positive impact on your business. Now, you can view all the conversion data in the free listing to help you make better business decisions in the future.
An example of a free product listing report from Google is:
Image source: Blog.google.com, March 2022The last tool Google announced was its Price Insights tool. The tool’s goal is to help brands better understand their competitiveness in the marketplace.
The Pricing Insights tool also uses machine learning to provide suggested prices for each product being sold. The biggest benefit may lie in the expected impact of price changes on your income.
Image source: Blog.google.com, March 2022generalize
The purpose of adding these tools is for the benefit of the client and the company. By providing a seamless customer experience, you’ll earn the Trusted Store badge. With new insights and reporting tools, you’ll be able to act faster on product changes and improvements.
resource: Google
Featured Image: B Illustrations/Shutterstock
