Shipping is a requirement for Google Shopping. If you do not provide a shipping method Google will not allow Smart Shopping ads and you will receive errors.
The shipping costs that you submit to Google must match the shipping costs provided on your website so that if a customer clicks through from an ad, they will see the same shipping cost on your site.
NB: If Google identifies a discrepancy between your website shipping costs and the shipping costs for Google Shopping ads, the costs submitted to Google needs to be greater. If you are unable to match exactly, Google recommends overestimating shipping costs submitted to Google.
There are 2 ways to set up your shipping for Google with Omnivore:
- If you have basic shipping then you can add your shipping policies in Omnivore and we will put them in your product feed to Google. In Omnivore you can set up:
- A default shipping option
- Shipping using Product Groups
- Standard or Express (not both)
- If you have complex shipping requirements e.g shipping charges based on location then you can add the shipping into the Google Merchant Centre directly. See Google article Set up delivery zones.
Please note you can only send one shipping option per product in the Google Feed so if you have a standard and express option for products in your website you can only send one to Google not both.
When you set up shipping in Omnivore, you will need to choose if you will add your shipping via Omnivore or via Google Merchant Centre. To do this, go to Settings - Google Ads - Shipping and select the option you would like:
What these options will send in the Google product feed:
- If you select "I will be using shipping rate tables..." you are telling Omnivore that you already have your shipping set up in your Google Merchant Account. In this case, Omnivore will send the shipping label (and also shipping weight, if you have supplied weight for your products). This shipping label name must correspond with the associated shipping policy in Google. You can set shipping labels in Omnivore by going to Settings > Google Ads > Shipping and adding in a shipping policy
- If you select "I will set up shipping..." then the Google product feed will contain the shipping type, price, etc. product-by-product. With this option, there is no need to configure hipping in Google since all the required data is embedded in the feed itself.
More information about shipping on Google.