If transit time varies for different groups of products, use transit time label [transit_time_label] and apply this attribute to the corresponding products in your feed. Transit time labels help give your customers a more accurate estimated delivery date, which can help influence their purchase decision.
If you’re using the classic version of Merchant Center, you can use the transit time label in your "Shipping settings" to define a specific transit time for each of the previously defined groups.
In this article
When to use
Optional for each product
Format
Follow these formatting guidelines to make sure that Google understands the data that you're submitting.
Learn when and how to submit your product data in English
| Type | Unicode characters (Recommended: ASCII only) |
|---|---|
| Repeated field | No |
| File format | Example entry |
|---|---|
| Text | Dog food |
| XML feeds | <g: transit_time_label>Dog food</g: transit_time_label> |
To format your data for Content API, see the Content API for Shopping resource.
Minimum requirements
These are the requirements that you'll need to meet to show your product. If you don't follow these requirements, we'll disapprove your product and let you know in your Merchant Center account.
- Submit valid Unicode characters. These characters are generally added during your file's encoding process. To avoid using invalid characters, use UTF-8 encoding. To help prevent encoding issues, submit files in a compressed format. Examples of invalid Unicode characters include:
- Control characters (e.g.
U+200D) - Function characters
- Private area characters
- Surrogate pairs
- Unassigned code points
- Control characters (e.g.
- A product can only have one transit time label. A transit time label should be created for each possible warehouse or warehouse combination. Example: If there are three warehouses, the following labels should be created:
- Warehouse 1
- Warehouse 2
- Warehouse 3
- Warehouses 1 and 2
- Warehouses 1 and 3
- Warehouses 2 and 3
- Warehouses 1, 2 and 3
Best practices
These best practices can help you to go beyond the basic requirements to optimise your product data for performance.
- This feature works best when your products aren't always delivered in the same amount of time. You might deliver products via different carriers, from different origin warehouses or using different delivery services (ground, two-day, etc.).
- Products using transit time labels should have consistent delivery times that don't change frequently. Transit time labels can take up to 24 hours to be updated in the catalogue, so this isn't a good solution if transit times or inventory change throughout the business day.
- If transit time labels don't work for all of your products, consider using them for select products that benefit the most from accurate delivery estimates (e.g. top sellers that consistently arrive in two days).
Examples
- Most of your products arrive quickly by air, but you offer some electronics with lithium batteries that need to be delivered overland. Use a transit time label like 'electronics' and assign it a longer transit time so that customers know that these products will take a bit longer.
- You have multiple warehouses. The assortment differs in all of them, but you make sure that they all have popular products like toilet paper, so that you can offer two-day ground delivery for free. Use a transit time label like '2day' and assign it a transit time of 0–2; that way, customers know that you offer quick delivery on the essentials that they care about.
- Your assortment is split across three warehouses in California, Texas and Pennsylvania. Depending on what a customer orders, they may get it quickly because they live near the California warehouse, or it may take longer because it's coming from Pennsylvania. Use transit time labels like 'CA', 'TX' and 'PA' to designate which warehouse a product will be in. Then assign transit times based on how long it will take for products to get across the country. For example, 'CA' products may take 0–3 days to be delivered to the West Coast, 4–6 days to the Midwest and 7–10 days to the East Coast.