As a Google Partner, we now have access to Grow My Store – an online tool that evaluates your website and generates a report for you to help you boost your online business performance.
What is Google Grow My Store?
Grow My Store is a new online tool offered by Google that analyses your online e-commerce website, giving you a report that includes an overall score and detailed insights to help strengthen your website and business performance.
What’s more, you can also see how your website compares to other retailers in your industry and view personalised market trends to help you reach new customers.
Why Use Google Grow My Store?
Grow My Store reports help you to compare your website with the latest industry trends to boost your business and receive recommendations on how you can improve your website to get a higher conversion rate.
As a Google Partner, we are able to run a report for you, explain the sections that your site is scored against in depth, and advise on strategies that you can use to further improve your score.
Armed with your website report, we can help you to stand out in a competitive environment, expand services into new areas, and improve your website.
Grow My Store Report Factors
Overall Score
Before going in depth with each ranking section, Google gives you an overall score for your website. These are split into 4 levels:
- Beginner – 0 – 25%
- Basic – 25 – 50%
- Medium – 50 – 75%
- Advanced – 75 – 100%
This score is calculated based on the below sections.
Product Information
As an e-commerce website, your focus will be on your products and encouraging customers to browse and purchase these.
Google analyses how well you showcase your products, and breaks this down into 4 segments:
- Product Details – How well your products are listed and described on your website. Your products should be filled out with the relevant information, such as size, colour, price and images.
- Reviews – Google checks to see if you have product reviews enabled – as this can increase customer conversions.
- Product Search – Google analyses how well your search function operates on your website – to help convert visitors to customers. It also checks how well your filters work on your website search, so watch out for this too.
- Product Prices – You should have your prices published and visible for all website visitors to see.
Personalisation
This section analyses how you let customers personalise their accounts and configure their experience.
Google splits this into 2 sections:
- Personalised Accounts – Google checks to see if you allow users to create their own accounts on your website. This is because users like to be able to have their own accounts and receive personalised content.
- Wish Lists – Google checks to see if you allow customers to add to Wish Lists – as they are a powerful tool to improve shopping experience. This also encourages client loyalty, as users can come back and shop the items that they desire.
Flexible Fulfilment
In this section, Google analyses the flexibility that customers have when shopping, including payment and delivery options. The easier it is for customers to checkout, the more likely they are to purchase.
The 4 segments in this section include:
- Basket – Here, Google checks that users have the ability to add products to their basket, where they can then check and modify these choices from multiple devices.
- Next Day Delivery – Google advises that you offer a next day delivery service, and therefore checks to see if you have this available on your website.
- Free Returns – Offering free returns promotes good user experience, meaning that Google recommends having this available for customers.
- Multiple Payment Methods – Offering more ways to pay appeals to more people, and it’s suggested that you have as many payment methods as possible.
Customer Service
We all know that Customer Service is a priority for businesses, and Google advocates for this too. This section of the report focuses on the quality and availability of your business’es customer service.
Again, this is split into 4 segments:
- Contact Phone – Google checks that you have a phone number available on your website that is easy to find.
- Live Chats – It is advised that you have a web chat available – whether that’s an online chat, Facebook chat, or chat bot – for customers to get help quickly when they need it.
- Returns Policy – You should have a returns policy available on your website that is easy to understand for all customers (and you should also have free returns – see ‘Flexible Fulfilment’ section above).
- Social Media – With the rise of social media being used by consumers, the report checks that you have at least two social media accounts connected to your website.
Security
Browsing a safe and secure website is one of the top priorities that a consumer takes into account when purchasing online, so it’s no surprise that Google analyses the security of your website.
The report checks that you have an SSL certificate live on your website to make it HTTPS protocol compliant. This ensures that confidential information inputted from customers is kept encrypted and prevents hackers.
Mobile
Finally, the last section of the report is based on how mobile friendly your website is, which is unsurprising – with 46.7% of UK web traffic now coming from mobile devices.
This is split into 2 segments:
- Mobile Speed – Mobile speed can have a significant impact on your conversion rate, which is relevant with mobiles as they are being used so often.
- Mobile Friendly – Google takes into consideration how easy your website is to use on mobile.
Get Your Google Grow My Store Report
Do you want a Grow My Store Report, with our expert advice and guidance on how you can improve your website? Contact our expert team of website developers today to see how we can do this for you!
