This guide helps you prepare your business for a smooth and efficient onboarding process on Google Merchant Center. By focusing on these key areas, you can demonstrate the legitimacy and quality of your online business, build trust with customers, and help expedite your access to Google Merchant Center.
The ultimate goal is to create a positive shopping experience for consumers. We want to help you understand the core principles we use to evaluate your business and ensure that your website and products align with our policies. Learn more about Merchant Center guidelines to keep your account approved.
On this page
Build trust and transparency
Building trust is crucial for a successful onboarding and long-term success on Google Merchant Center. A consistent and trustworthy online presence helps prevent issues that can confuse or disappoint shoppers. Learn more about building trust with your customers.
Think about how you can create an online experience that is clear, professional, and reliable for your customers. Use the checklist to ensure your business and website proactively addresses areas that will help Google better understand your business.
Principles for a safe and thriving ecosystem
Google’s safety measures are designed to create a trusted shopping environment. These protections focus on preventing merchant or advertiser practices that might confuse or disappoint consumers, even if they are unintentional.
To align with these principles, you should focus on building a consistent and transparent online presence. For example, having multiple websites specializing in one product under different temporary brand names and prices, and inconsistent quality, can be perceived negatively by consumers. Instead, consider if your business manages multiple websites, showcasing a clear purpose and a consistent brand identity for each is key.
We encourage you to consider the long-term investment you’re making in each brand and how that is reflected to consumers. By showcasing a clear and consistent brand, you can enhance the consumer shopping experience and increase your chances of long-term success on Google's platforms.
Checklist
Use this checklist to ensure your business and website meet our standards. Proactively addressing these areas can lead to a faster review and a smoother onboarding process.
Website qualityTo build consumer confidence ensure the website is professional and presents a high-quality shopping experience. This means focusing on creating a site that’s well-designed, functional, and trustworthy. This includes using original, authentic images and avoiding content that appears to be copied from other sources.
- Offer a unique and engaging experience. Customers value websites that are distinctive and provide a clear sense of brand. To achieve this, prioritize:
- Original, authentic content: Use high-quality visuals that genuinely showcase your products and brand.
- Unique, compelling content: Avoid copied material and develop unique product descriptions and website copy that highlight the value you offer.
- Customized design: Tailor design elements such as color scheme, fonts, and layout to reflect your brand.
- Avoid using common, uncustomized templates and duplicated content, as it can make a site appear less credible and trustworthy to customers.
- If you need guidance on high-quality website templates and design best practices, you can refer to the landing page requirements and how to check if your online store is fully functional.
A clear and focused shopping experience is highly valued by consumers. We recommend businesses maintain websites that have a distinct purpose and transparently disclose any affiliations.
- Distinguish your website and brand: If your business operates and maintains multiple websites, it’s helpful to ensure each has a distinct purpose and value. This understanding and transparency builds trust and helps shoppers distinguish between products and brands, as well as improve the shopping experience.
- Disclose affiliations: If your websites are affiliated (such as subsidiaries of the same brand owner), be transparent. Consider explicitly stating this relationship on each website, for instance, on an "About Us" page.
Example
This website is a subsidiary of [Parent company name]. - Manage agency accounts: If agencies create and manage accounts on your behalf, ensure clear and transparent communication with your account manager regarding the agency's role and your ultimate responsibility. Remember that your business is ultimately responsible for ensuring all policies are followed.
For a smooth and reliable shopping experience, ensure all Google accounts linked to your business, including those used by partner agencies, are active and in good standing.
- Verify accounts are active and in good standing: Review and resolve all Google accounts linked to your business, including those used by any partner agencies, active and have no outstanding issues.
- Prevent disruptions: Address any current problems to simplify the onboarding process and prevent disruptions that could negatively impact consumers.
- Associated accounts: Be aware that issues with your accounts can affect the status of other related accounts.
Customers often look to third-party sources to validate the trustworthiness of a business. Building and maintaining a strong, positive presence on these platforms is important for establishing credibility and enhancing customer confidence.
- Build your reputation: Maintain a strong, active presence on third-party platforms like business listings, review sites, industry directories, and social media.
- Link payment platforms: To further enhance trust and streamline transactions for your customers, you may explore options for securely linking your payment processing accounts with other payment platforms you offer.
- Showcase feedback: Focus on building a positive reputation by actively seeking and responding to reviews. While past negative feedback shouldn’t be altered, focusing on building a strong reputation elsewhere can be beneficial.
An active and professional social media presence can be a powerful tool for building trust and connecting with customers.
- Boost credibility: Maintaining an up-to-date profile demonstrates that your business is active and engaged with its community.
- Enhance engagement: Use social media to interact with customers, answer questions, and showcase your brand’s personality, which can lead to higher customer loyalty.
- Provide a contact point: A well-maintained social media profile offers another way for customers to connect with your brand and feel confident in their purchases.
Customers need to feel confident in their purchases. By providing clear and easily understandable terms, conditions, and policies, especially regarding returns and refunds, you build trust and create a positive shopping experience.
- Be transparent: Clearly communicate all your terms and policies on your website.
- Build confidence: Ensure that your policies on returns and refunds are easy to understand and consistently met.
- Provide clarity: When customers know what to expect and those expectations are fulfilled, it builds trust and encourages future purchases.
To ensure every international purchase feels secure and fair, it’s crucial to provide a transparent and positive customer experience. The length of international shipping can often create confusion around return windows, so being proactive and clear about what to expect is essential.
- Be clear about the origin: Explicitly state where products will ship from to set accurate expectations.
- Identify fulfillment partners: Clearly identify any partners involved in the fulfillment process.
- Provide realistic estimates: Offer realistic and upfront estimates of shipping times on the product and checkout pages.
- Offer worry-free returns: Recommend return windows that begin after the expected delivery date, accounting for potential delays. This ensures customers have enough time to make a return.
- Proactive communication: For longer shipping times, provide advance notice and highlight the extended return windows to help customers purchase products without pressure.
Being upfront and transparent about product quality, sourcing, and branding is essential for building customer trust and maintaining a safe and thriving shopping ecosystem. We highly encourage you to prioritize these practices to ensure customers receive what they expect.
- Vet your partners: Know your third-party partners and ensure they adhere to the clear quality standards.
- Implement quality control: Establish robust quality control processes to guarantee products meet advertised and listed expectations.
- Combat counterfeits: Proactively ensure that none of your partners are supplying counterfeit goods, which is critical for maintaining trust and protecting customers.
- Be direct about branding: Be direct and upfront about each product’s branding.
- Clearly identify alternatives: If you offer products that are similar to well-known brands, you must clearly state that they’re not from the official brand and always identify the actual manufacturer.
Focusing on these areas will help you prepare for the Merchant Center onboarding process, potentially leading to smoother reviews.