By the end of 2015, eCommerce sales had come up to somewhere more than a whopping $341 billion! Isn’t that an impressive number? But, as per Google’s research, this accounts for only 10% of sales; the remaining 90% is done only in stores, not online. Because of this reason, Google AdWords introduced the in-store visits metric in 2014 that helps businesses understand how much in-store foot traffic their location-based PPC ads were driving. For the best PPC services for your business, you must get in touch with a reputed and proficient company providing the same.
Till date, Google has been successful at measuring more than 1 billion store visits! But, not all businesses have access to this powerful measuring metric. However, at the Google Performance Summit, the search engine promised that this metric will soon become widely available to more businesses. Whether your business has access to this metric or whether you will be receiving access soon, you must have some basic knowledge about AdWords’ store visit conversions.
What are store visit conversions?
Google looks at phone location history to decide on whether someone who clicked on your search ad did visit your store or not to estimate store visit conversions. Google checks on the ad clicks on every kind of device like desktops, smartphones and tablets. The in-store conversion data will help businesses understand which keywords, devices and ad campaigns send a majority of people to your store. This will help you optimize your account to increase your returns on investment. Obviously this doesn’t mean that the visitors purchased from you but yes, it definitely shows that they visited your store after clicking on your ads.
How incremental are store visits?
Even though a majority of purchases happen at a physical store, digital channels still play a very important role in the buying process. Google did a research to determine how many store visits are incremental, and it found that the number of incremental store visits driven by mobile search ads exceeded the number of online purchase conversions. It also found out that if there was no influence of mobile search ads, these store visits would never have happened.
How to get access to store visit conversions?
More than 1000 advertisers in 11 countries today have access to the store visit metric, and as mentioned earlier, Google has promised that more businesses will get access to it soon. You can get access to tracking store visits too by contacting your account manager. But, there are certain requirements that you will need. You must have multiple physical store locations in a country that is eligible for the metric. Moreover, you should link a Google My Business account to your AdWords account, and you must receive thousands of ad clicks and multiple store visits every month.
How does Google measure store visits?
Google Maps and the AdWords team work together to match the location history of hundreds of millions of users with Maps data for more than two million businesses. AdWords works with Google Maps because Maps knows millions of businesses globally. Google uses a hybrid approach with a large number of signals to measure visits, and to ensure accuracy, Google surveyed more than 5 million people to confirm that they visited the store. This information is used by Google to update its algorithms.
Does Google use beacons to improve?
Google has started to experiment with beacons to improve on its algorithm. Google is exploring how to use Bluetooth Low-Energy beacons for in-store visits and analytics. Google helps people who operate at smaller locations and businesses through these beacons.
