About shipping policies for Shopping Actions

Using Shopping Actions, you can ship directly from your warehouse or central shipping hub. Shopping Actions shipping policies are intended to ensure timely updates and positive customer experiences. This article outlines the policies to be followed when shipping products to your customers. Learn more about Shopping Actions

For more information on how to set up shipping, skip to how to set up your shipping and taxes.

Requirements

Choose shipping services with short transit times

10 days is the maximum transit time allowed in the settings.

However, we strongly recommend aiming for a lower transit time in accordance with your carrier contract as this can be a decisive purchase factor for users. Learn more about estimated delivery time

Handling time

4 days is the maximum handling time allowed in the settings.

We however strongly recommend having a shorter handling time. This time will be added to your overall shipping time and may represent a serious brake on your customers’ purchase decision.

Tracking numbers

When you mark your items as shipped you must provide a valid tracking number to the customer within 1 day of shipment. This number must provide end-to-end tracking, from the original handoff to the carrier until delivery to the customer.

Second line in shipping addresses

Your shipping settings will need to support a second addressee line - for information such as company names, building names, or hotel names. This is to prevent order cancellation due to too many characters in the recipient field.

Packaging recommendations (US only)

Follow these recommendations when packaging your orders:

• If the customer is not on your marketing list, don't provide marketing inserts in packages.

Packing slips

To ensure a positive customer experience, all packing slip information should include:

• Google order ID
• URL to access order details and initiate returns: shopping.google.com/orders
• Google Customer Service contact: support.google.com/googleshopping/contactflow

To avoid customer confusion or misinformation, less comprehensive packing slips should not include:

• Price information
• Return instructions that direct customers to contact the merchant
• Merchant customer support information

Note: If you are unable to update the above information on your packing slips, you can send shipments without including any packing slip at all, but this is not recommended.

Shipping books in France

When an order shipping in France contains books, Google will make sure that at least 0.01EUR is charged for each order.

Unsupported shipping options

The following shipping options are not supported with Shopping Actions purchases:

• Additional shipping information or freight deliveries: Google can't collect information from customers regarding the need for scheduled deliveries, liftgates, white glove service, or other recipient-specific differentiation. Items that need to be shipped by freight are not supported.
• Dynamic shipping costs: Google can't support shipping costs that change dynamically based on the origin of the shipment, or costs that differ based on residential or commercial delivery addresses. Likewise, membership-based shipping pricing (for example, ShopRunner) is not supported.
• Curbside delivery (US only): Google does not currently support the curbside delivery of items purchased through Shopping Actions.
• Unsupported delivery destinations:
  • US: Google does not currently support delivery to PO boxes, APO/FPO boxes, Alaska, Hawaii, or Puerto Rico.
  • France: Monaco and French overseas territories (DOM TOM).

Understanding estimated delivery date

Learn more about Shopping Actions Best Practices Episode 1: Calculating the estimated delivery date

Estimated delivery date is the “arrives by” date that customers are shown when checking out. This value is calculated as “maximum handling days + maximum transit days.” Estimated delivery date is calculated using days, and also takes order cutoff time into account.

Here is an example of what estimated delivery date might look like with the settings below in Merchant Center:

Order placed after the cut-off of 3 p.m. EST
0 - 1 handling days
3 - 5 transit days