Keep the lights on to reach more shoppers this January

Last week we covered how mobile has changed shopping behavior during Black Friday weekend. But its effects don’t stop there. Mobile is making it easier to find sales and great deals, encouraging shoppers to browse during traditionally lower traffic seasons; in fact, 22% more mobile shoppers visited retailers via Google in the January after the holiday season, than in the October before.1 For certain categories, like Furniture or Home & Garden, January visits increased up to 39% over their October levels.2 Optimize your strategy to keep your Google Shopping lights on for these savvy shoppers and start the year off with a bang.

Categories seeing higher traffic from Google in January 2016 than October 2015 (UK categories available here)

Optimization tips for key traffic-driving categories in January

There are five categories where retailers saw more traffic coming from Google in January of 2016 than in October 2015. If you sell products in these categories, use the following best practices to expand your reach to shoppers.

1. Use click share to drive more engagement. Products in top positions may see better engagement from shoppers, especially on mobile. The following benchmarks highlight the mobile click share by category you’ll need to be competitive in reaching the top positions. To grow your click share, start by increasing your bids and ad relevance for your priority products.

Category	Mobile Click Share Benchmark3
Electronics	19%
Home and Garden	26%
Health and beauty	30%
Vehicles and Parts	15%
Furniture	22%

2. Create a strategic seasonal campaign. Separate strategic products or items on sale with a separate campaign with a higher campaign priority. A separate campaign enables more flexibility in managing bids and budgets for these products without affecting the rest of your campaigns.

3. Use custom labels to create seasonal product groups. If you plan to sell high-value products in a given category, like winter accessories for vehicles and parts, use custom labels to create a segmented product group in your campaign. This way, you can specifically adjust the bids for winter accessories and then monitor the click share to reach top positions in Google Shopping results.

4. Remarket your products to previous shoppers. Increase the visibility of your products to shoppers who visited your site during the holidays but didn’t convert. Create a remarketing list of previous visitors who may have abandoned their carts at checkout. Chances are, these shoppers are still looking for the best deal available. If you’re having a clearance sale, highlight your lower prices to these shoppers as they continue to browse.

Whether it’s to gear up for the winter or take advantage of clearance sales, these shoppers were eager to continue shopping online last January. Continue adjusting budgets, especially in categories that saw increased traffic last year to reach these shoppers in the New Year.

For more best practices on driving a successful holiday season, visit the help center.

Posted By Alex Chen, Product Marketing Manager, Google Shopping

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1. Google Internal Data aggregate mobile traffic October 2015 and January 2016, US.
2. Google Internal Data aggregate traffic by category October 2015 and January 2016, US.
3. Google Internal Data October 13 to October 20, 2016 average click share for overall mobile campaign or product groups with a selection of products in top-level Shopping categories, Global.