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Ads and Listing on Google Channel
Enabling BigCommerce merchants to sell and grow through Google Surfaces
UI + UX, Product Strategy
Project Brief
The Google channel allows merchants to easily list products already in their BigCommerce catalog onto Google Shopping. The channel launched in a true MVP state in October 2021, and had basic functionality like onboarding steps, syncing controls between BigCommerce and Google and high-level analytics about product performance.
The problem
Some of the largest hurdles of listing to third-party channels is the ability to maintain and update product data across different management platforms. The Google integration simplifies this process by using a merchant’s product catalog in BigCommerce as their single source of truth.Having product data sync from a merchant’s BigCommerce catalog to Google Merchant Center removes the complexity of having to update or add product information in both places.
The process
After the launch of the MVP in early October 2021 we spent around five months learning and improving basic channel functions. In April 2022 we started releasing larger scale features into the channel at a regular cadence. During this time is when we researches, validated, designed and launch In-App Account Reviews and Free Listings Reporting
At the end of the session, we conducted a moderated card sorting activity with the developers to better understand what grouping of content for the Dev Center best matches their mental model.
Feature: Free listings reportings
September 2021
Free Listings Reporting (FLR) set out to solve a larger problem of merchant’s hesitation to put money towards targeted ads. Merchants who were listing their products for free expressed that not being able to see their ROI within the channel discouraged them from investing more time into the channel. Some key details of this feature launch:
- Visualizing main metrics like impressions, clicks and click-through-rate, without having to leave the BigCommerce platform.
- Merchants who have limited budgets expressed not wanting to list their entire catalog -- only products that would give them a high ROI. The “Top performing products” section gave merchants the ability to focus on high-value products and adjust their listings accordingly.
Feature: In-App Account Reviews
December 2021
One of the biggest pain points merchants experienced when first using our channel was account disapprovals. Disapprovals can be triggered from something as small as an invalid phone number and can result in your products being ineligible for listing to Google.
Conclusions
The Google channel was an ongoing process of learning and iteration. Free Listings Reporting and In-App Account Reviews were two of the more robust features we launched in the channel, while the majority of work was done incrementally as we learned more about merchant needs.