Google Shopping / Merchant Center – Sale Price

Sale Price… The most common pitfall of e-commerce pricing strategy.

Google Shopping is a comparing platform. The price is the main factor on which the audience decides to click on the ad or not. 

The most common mistake I often see:

❌ Throughout the year, a fixed value for [price] and [sale_price] is included in the feed by default.

The primary goal of including these two attributes in your product feed should be to gain the ‘sale badge’. This is a black or green label that displays ‘SALE’ or ‘Price Drop’.

In addition, the regular price is crossed out and the promotional price is shown in green. This way, you stand out from your competitors. But how do you qualify for this?

✔ The base price or the higher price must have been charged for 30 days (these don’t have to be consecutive days) out of the past 200 days.
✔ A clearance price may not be charged for more than 30 days.
✔ The base price must be valid.
✔ The sale price must be lower than the base price.
✔ The discount during the sale must be more than 5% and less than 90%.

If you don’t meet these requirements, your promotional price will be displayed as the regular price. So, without a sale badge.

𝗪𝗵𝗮𝘁’𝘀 𝘁𝗵𝗲 𝗿𝗶𝗴𝗵𝘁 𝗮𝗽𝗽𝗿𝗼𝗮𝗰𝗵…

• Look for short periods outside the regular promotional weeks that all competitors participate in.
• Offer substantial discounts to make an impact (>25% and <50%).
• (No-brainer) Ensure sufficient stock.
• Check in the Merchantcenter if your product has gained the sale_badge status
• Label your eligible sale_badge products and separate them in a ‘push campaign”
• Let’s GO!