Best practices for listing wireless products and services

Wireless products and services often have more complex pricing and contract models than other products that you may list in your Shopping ads and free product listings. This article explains how to submit your product data and landing pages for wireless devices such as mobile phones or tablets (with or without a contract), or prepaid SIM cards.

In this article

• Benefits
• Submit accurate product data for your wireless products and services
• Optimise your landing pages for wireless products and services
• Pre-select and mark up wireless product variants on your landing page

Benefits

• Reach the right customers. Details in your product data and landing pages allow Google to understand what you're selling, and then to show your ads and free listings to customers based on the type of products that they're looking for.
• Keep products approved. Submitting incorrect or inconsistent product data may lead to product disapprovals or account enforcement, so make sure that your product data is always up to date.

Submit accurate product data for your wireless products and services

Follow the standard requirements

People are looking for specific product information when they're searching for wireless products and services. Ensure that they get the information that they need by submitting all required product attributes. Each product variant (identified, for example, through different values for the colour [color] and size [size] attributes) must also be submitted as a separate product within your product data. Learn more about product data specification.

Mobile phones, tablets or prepaid SIM cards for a fixed price

Mobile phones, tablets or prepaid SIM cards can be shown in any country when paid in full up front and not combined with optional monthly device instalment payments or a wireless subscription plan. You can use the price [price] attribute (not '0') to provide the full price.

Mobile phones or tablets with subscription plan and/or instalments

Eligibility to list certain types of products varies from country to country. Check the instalment [installment] and subscription cost [subscription_cost] attributes to see if your products and services can be advertised with instalment payments or with a subscription plan in your desired target country.

Get your product data in Merchant Center with the right timing for new product launches

If you have a specific launch date for a new wireless product, submit your product data 3–5 business days before the launch to allow time for Google to crawl and validate your product data, but no earlier than 30 days in advance. Taking this extra step will ensure that your product can be listed on the actual launch date. You can add your new product data:

• Before the launch date (recommended) so that your product data and campaign setup can ramp up prior to the actual launch announcement. Set the value for the availability [availability] attribute to preorder, and set the value for the availability date [availability_date] attribute to the official release date of the product. This will also allow you to take orders for the product even before the product has been released for sale.
• On or after the launch date, but be aware that it can take up to 72 hours for feed processing to be completed. Submit your product data as soon as possible to avoid errors and set the value for the availability [availability] attribute to display as in_stock.

Especially for new product launches, make sure that you submit accurate and optimised product information to set up your ads and free listings for success. Obtain the correct GTINs, optimise your product title [title] to display the important product information and build your values for the product type [product_type] attribute to at least three levels to capture the most relevant search traffic.

Optimise your landing pages for wireless products and services

When customers click through to your landing page from your Shopping ad, your product information must match on the landing page to create the most seamless experience. If activation charges or other fees will be applied at checkout, make sure that this information is clearly displayed on your landing page before your customer enters your checkout flow. Excluding or showing different product information can mislead and frustrate your customers. Learn more about landing page requirements.

Pre-select and mark up wireless product variants on your landing page

To ensure the most consistent customer experience, make sure that you lead customers to a landing page with the pre-selected mobile phone variant that corresponds to your Shopping ad. This way, when someone clicks through from your ad, they will see the same product variant that they were searching for.

One way of pre-selecting product variants is by appending unique URL parameters to your link [link] attribute. Always test to make sure that your landing page passes the URL parameter back properly and behaves as expected. For example, your landing page should load a pre-selected radio button or drop-down selection of the respective phone variant.

Additionally, you can allow Google to pull in product information for multiple variants on the same landing page by adding structured data markup to your landing page's source code. Structured data markup lets Google read your site and pull product data directly from your HTML source code. Learn more about structured data markup

By implementing structured data markup and enabling automatic product updates, you can maintain accurate product information automatically, like price and availability.

Example: Use URL parameters for phone colour variants

URL parameters for colour options: You can pre-select variants to distinguish different colour options on the same landing page by adding URL parameters like the following:

• Silver phone variant: https://store.google.com/product/pixel_phone?sku=_pixel_phone_silver_32gb
• Black phone variant: https://store.google.com/product/pixel_phone?sku=_pixel_phone_black_32gb

Simplify the purchase flow to a single landing page

Make it easier for your customers to choose and purchase their desired wireless product and service bundle on the same landing page. Separating the purchase flow across multiple pages can cause your customers to bounce from your site before completing the purchase.

Submitting high-quality product information and landing pages is the backbone to running successful campaigns. Take steps today to incorporate these best practices for improving and optimising your product data. The more relevant and clear the information that you can provide, the more sales you'll be likely to drive for your wireless products and services.