The Shopping Experience Scorecard programme can help you to deliver a great shopping experience for your customers.
By meeting certain criteria, you may receive:
- The 'Trusted store' badge that displays on your listings and improves user confidence in buying from you
- Prominence in placements on the Shopping tab
How it works
This programme will monitor the experience that you provide in several areas (see table below) and you'll be given a rating of 'Excellent', 'Comparable' or 'Opportunity' on each metric. There's nothing that you need to do to sign up. Your progress will be monitored automatically and benefits will be applied to your offers once you've met a certain performance threshold.
Google may make your offers more prominent on the Shopping tab or in promotional modules if you provide information for some customer experience areas below. However, you must submit information for all areas to receive badging on your listings. The programme metric values aren't displayed directly to customers on an individual offer level. Instead, the programme metrics are impression-weighted averages and are only displayed in your Merchant Center account.
Google will evaluate the information that you provide each day. Even though all metrics are calculated based on an impression-weighted average, there's a fixed look-back period. So, if your rating has been in 'Opportunity' or 'Comparable' for a while, it may take a few weeks for your improvements to be reflected in Google's evaluation. All merchants on the platform are eligible to receive benefits from the programme and your performance is evaluated against all other merchants.
Bear in mind: If you don't have any ratings or if you're missing specific ratings, this could either be because you're not currently providing the required information or because your offers haven't received sufficient impressions in the look-back period.
Also, if you're providing offer-level delivery data, make sure to include both delivery cost and transit time for each offer. Your offer-level data will override your account-level data, so the Shopping Experience Scorecard will use these values when determining your performance level.
Go to the Shopping Experience Scorecard tab to view the areas for which you're providing information and to learn how you can update missing information.
Example
Barbara's Buckles has a blank rating for delivery speed. After a quick check, they realise that they're providing delivery costs without providing delivery speed. So, they create a delivery service for their products that includes both delivery costs and delivery speed. After the look-back window passes, their rating updates with a new value to reflect their delivery speed, which may boost their visibility and performance on the Shopping tab.
Instructions
How to view your performance
To see your performance for each metric and your overall score:
- Sign in to your Merchant Center account.
- From the navigation menu, click Growth.
- Click Shopping Experience Scorecard.
To earn a badge, you must perform well relative to other merchants in all the required metrics. All metrics are calculated daily and have a look-back period to ensure continuous performance.
How to improve your performance
|
Metric |
Description |
Set up links |
Set up links |
| Average delivery time | Information that you've shared about how many days it should take customers to receive their orders | ||
| Average delivery cost | Information that you've shared about the cost for customers to receive orders (excluding item cost) | ||
| Average return window | Information that you've shared about the number of days that customers have to return an item | ||
| Average return cost | Information that you've shared about costs for customers to return and restock an item | ||
| Seller rating | A rating calibrated by Google based on multiple sources including Google Customer Reviews, reviews from various independent rating websites and performance metrics from Google-led shopping research |
Work with a supported partner to submit your seller ratings and/or set up Google Customer Reviews |
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In addition to the metrics above, Google measures your performance in other areas relevant to determining the level of customer experience that you provide, for example, website quality.
How is the Shopping Experience Scorecard programme different from Retailer Standards?
Retailer Standards applies only to Buy on Google merchants, whilst the Shopping Experience Scorecard programme applies to all merchants. The goal of Retailer Standards is to ensure that Buy on Google merchants are adhering to certain service standards, whilst the Shopping Experience Scorecard programme is focused on rewarding any merchant who provides a great customer experience. Not meeting Retailer Standards criteria may cause penalties up to and including account suspension, whilst the Shopping Experience Scorecard programme has no such penalties.
To opt out of the Shopping Experience Scorecard programme, contact support via the 'Contact us' button below. Bear in mind that there are no programme penalties for not meeting a certain performance standard. This programme is only meant to reward retailers who provide an excellent customer experience.