fbpx

A level playing field: Google Shopping’s lower ad prices help Kiwis get ahead

Google Shopping has recently launched into New Zealand and the significantly lower price to advertise may put smaller Kiwi businesses ahead.

The Google Shopping platform has changed the way businesses advertise and now offers e-commerce sites of any kind the opportunity to be seen by online shoppers.

Google Shopping’s ability to present items from a range of sites after just a standard search is one of the reasons it has become popular among New Zealand consumers who have a habit of comparing online prices before buying.

Pure SEO, which is already using the Google Shopping platform, says that the manual process of clicking through sites is now been simplified by this ‘carousel’ of images.*

“What used to be a manual process of opening each site and checking for the correct product and lowest price will now take a fraction of the time,” says Pure SEO managing director Richard Conway.

“Most consumers don’t search past the first page of search engine results but this ‘prime real estate’ is often dominated by those businesses with the largest marketing budgets – not necessarily the lowest prices,” he says.

Conway says recent research into New Zealand shopping habits found that more than half (53 percent) of shoppers compared products and pricing online before purchasing.

The introduction of Google Shopping has benefited New Zealand retailers who can now advertise based more on what they can afford rather than flat rates levelling the playing field between dominant larger companies.

New Zealand company featured before an Australian brand

“The introduction of new technology like Google Shopping will help improve the online shopping experience for Kiwi consumers and we expect it to open up new markets for Kiwi retailers almost overnight,” says Conway.*

Conway says that Google Shopping will not replace the traditional text adverts and will help anyone with an e-commerce presence in their ability to compete, including helping with the bricks and mortar for those with a smaller e-commerce presence.

Conway says Pure SEO has already seen the new Google service deliver some impressive results for its clients.  

Conway cites the example of one business which was able to reduce their marketing spend with Google by 45 percent in a recent trial of the Shopping platform.
 

A searched item and a related sponsored ad

The advancement of this new product advertising is key for businesses to get an online presence without spending more than they can afford, he says.

“Because of this, we expect to see businesses incorporating the new technology rather than replacing an existing one.”

*Correction: Previous versions of this story incorrectly described Pure SEO as the company behind Google Shopping and as a website. These errors have been removed and the text has been updated. We apologise for the confusion.

About Author

Comments are closed.