Hey folks! Want to share some exciting news for eCommerce owners.

Google recently opened up a program called ‘Customer Reviews’. It allows store owners to collect customer reviews, which can later be used as ‘seller ratings’.

Allowing you to show “stars” in your ads, like this:

And also, allowing you to show stars in the Google Shopping comparison, to build social proof that you are a trustworthy seller:

On top of that… Google also let you add a reviews widget on your site, so you can show off to prospective customers (assuming you have a good star rating!). The badge looks like this:

This program has been live for a while. But if you had your store on Shopify you could only use it if you upgraded to Shopify Plus. This was down to a stipulation by Google that your checkout pages had to be on your domain. Until recently, all Shopify checkout URLs were on the Shopify domain (checkout.shopify.com). Fortunately they recently changed this, and your store should have its own domain in the checkout URL (you can confirm this by adding something to the cart, and seeing what the URL is when you go to checkout).

If your checkout URL is your domain; you’re good to go!

So how do you set this up?

For the self learners, here’s the Google instructions for how to implement:
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/7124018

Come back to this post if you’re using Shopify, and want a list of the liquid variables to use.

Here’s are the basic initial steps:

1. Create and/or log in to your Google Merchant centre account
2. Ensure your Merchant Center account is verified and claimed
3. Click the 3-dot icon dropdown in the upper right corner
4. Select Merchant Center programs from the dropdown menu options
5. From the Merchant Center programs page, navigate to the Google Customer Reviews card
6. Click Get started to sign up
7. Agree to Google Customer Reviews program agreement
8. Check that Google Customer Reviews appears in your account

Next, for the code we need to add:

<!-- BEGIN GCR Opt-in Module Code -->
<script src="https://apis.google.com/js/platform.js?onload=renderOptIn"
  async defer>
</script>

<script>
  window.renderOptIn = function() { 
    window.gapi.load('surveyoptin', function() {
      window.gapi.surveyoptin.render(
        {
          // REQUIRED
          "merchant_id":"MERCHANT_ID",
          "order_id": "ORDER_ID",
          "email": "CUSTOMER_EMAIL",
          "delivery_country": "COUNTRY_CODE",
          "estimated_delivery_date": "YYYY-MM-DD",

          // OPTIONAL
          "opt_in_style": "OPT_IN_STYLE"
        }); 
     });
  }
</script>
<!-- END GCR Opt-in Module Code -->

Next, we need to replace all the capitalized values that are surrounded by “<” and “>” characters.

Some of these will feature fixed values, and some will need dynamic values.

How to fill these out:

Code for Shopify:

For the YYYY-MM-DD option – where you want to record the estimated shipping time. The Shopify code above basically sets a time (in this case 604800 seconds, or in other words, a week) since the date of the order. There’s 86400 seconds in a day, so you can base off that number to get a time accurate for your store.

For example, adding 5 days after order creation would look like:
{{ order.created_at | date:’%s’ | plus:432000 | date:”%F” }}

All this code needs to be added to the Shopify Admin, under Settings > Checkout > Additional Scripts.

One key thing to check is that the quotes are in plain text. Quite often when copying them, the single quotes need retyping. If they’re not in plain text, it could break the JS code. The error below is an example of a (likely) copy and paste issue:

Confirm its working by viewing the page source on one of your checkout page URLs. If you’re using AdWords conversion tracking, or a Facebook ads pixel, you should be able to retrieve a checkout URL from there. Alternatively, create a dummy order, and save the checkout URL from that.

Additionally, check the javascript by opening Console in Google Chrome’s Inspector tool.

Once you have enough reviews, you can then proceed to add the reviews badge/widget to your page using these instructions.

If someone knows the equivalent dynamic variables for Magento, BigCommerce or any other major eCommerce platform, please add it in the comments :)

This is a quick post to cover ROAS in Google AdWords. When it comes to selling things on AdWords, there’s two things you really want to optimize for, sales volume, and return on ad spend. You want to get as many sales as possible (volume), but you want to do so whilst spending as little as possible (where ROAS comes in).

Another popular metric to track is cost per conversion (aka cost per acquisition (CPA)). The problem with this metric, is that it doesn’t differentiate between big orders and small orders.

If one month, I get a lower overall CPA than last month, but each order is for a small amount, I haven’t really won. ROAS takes into account every cent of each sale.

So how do we go about tracking this?

Firstly, its imperative to ensure your conversion tracking is setup correctly, and recording the conversion value of each sale. You want to make sure you’re dynamically adjusting the conversion value section based upon the eCommerce software you’re using. And you want also want to ensure you’re not recording any duplicate conversions.

If you’re on Shopify, check out my guide for how to do this.

After that, its simply a case of adding the correct column to your AdWords dashboard. The column is named “Conv. value / cost”.

The output that you’ll see from this column will be something like “5.21”. And the way to understand it, is that it refers to the number of dollars (or the currency unit you’re using) returned for each dollar of AdWords spend. In this example, it would be $5.21 dollars returned, for each dollar spent. Higher = better. Lower = worse.

Example of the column used in AdWords

Its very useful, when you’re running AdWords campaigns, to correctly track conversions (conversions in eCommerce generally = sales).

If you don’t do this, its hard to optimize your campaigns and make more $$$.

In this post I’m going to show you how to setup AdWords conversion tracking for Shopify.

CRUCIALLY, I’m going to show you how to add code that avoids tracking duplications. That is to say, it will prevent a sale for appearing as 2 or more conversions, when there was only one! (yes, this happens sometimes).

To check if you’ve been getting duplicate conversions in AdWords, go to Tools in the top bar, then conversions. Then from the conversions page, choose webpages from the left side:

Set the time period you’re look at to All Time, or at least 30+ days. This should give us enough conversion data to work with. Then sort the list of results in descending order by clicking All Conversions.

If any of the pages have more than one conversion (such as below), you know you’ve been hit with duplicate Shopify conversions:

In order to setup AdWords conversion tracking correctly, this is the process we are going to follow:

1. Get conversion code from AdWords
2. Edit the code, so that we add in custom code for Shopify
3. Paste the edited code into a box in your Shopify admin panel

1/ Get conversion code from AdWords

In your AdWords account, choose Tools and then Conversions

And then you want to choose + Conversion

Then choose Website Conversion

Then choose the following settings:

• Name: Shopify Sale
• Value: Each conversion has a different value. If there’s no value, use $1
• Count: Every Conversion
• Conversion Window: 30-day conversion window
• Category: Purchase/Sale
• Include in “Conversions”: Yes
• Attribution model: Use “Last Click” model

Then choose Save and continue

At which point you will get the snippet of code that you need:

The code will look like this:

<!-- Google Code for Shopify Sale Conversion Page -->
<script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */
var google_conversion_id = your-id;
var google_conversion_language = "en";
var google_conversion_format = "3";
var google_conversion_color = "ffffff";
var google_conversion_label = "your-label";
var google_conversion_value = 1.00;
var google_conversion_currency = "USD";
var google_remarketing_only = false;
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<div style="display:inline;">
<img height="1" width="1" style="border-style:none;" alt="" src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/your-id/?value=1.00&amp;currency_code=USD&amp;label=your-label&amp;guid=ON&amp;script=0"/>
</div>
</noscript>

Now we want to modify it with the following changes:

We want to change the line:

var google_conversion_value = 1.00;

to

if ({{ subtotal_price }}) { var google_conversion_value = {{ subtotal_price | money_without_currency | remove: ',' }}; }

Lastly, you’ll want to edit the part of the noscript tag that contains the value. Change

value=1.00

to

value={{ subtotal_price | money_without_currency | remove: ',' }}

Making the above code look like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */
var google_conversion_id = your-id;
var google_conversion_language = "en";
var google_conversion_format = "3";
var google_conversion_color = "ffffff";
var google_conversion_label = "your-label";
if ({{ subtotal_price }}) { var google_conversion_value = {{ subtotal_price | money_without_currency | remove: ',' }}; }
var google_conversion_currency = "USD";
var google_remarketing_only = false;
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<div style="display:inline;">
<img height="1" width="1" style="border-style:none;" alt="" src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/your-id/?value={{ subtotal_price | money_without_currency | remove: ',' }}&amp;currency_code=USD&amp;oid={{order.order_number}}&amp;label=your-label&amp;guid=ON&amp;script=0"/>
</div>
</noscript>

Next, we want to add some code to track order IDs. This is the bit that will prevent us registering duplicate conversions in AdWords. See the Google article for extended details on how it works.

We will add the following line:

if ({{ order.order_number }}) { var google_conversion_order_id = "{{ order.order_number }}"; }

Essentially the code says; check if the page returns an order number, and if so, pass it to the variable.

You may want to check your order number setup in Shopify, because if you edited it, and want it to match up, you’ll need to add an extra prefix. I don’t think you need it to match up 100% though. All this functions serves to do is ensure the same order number can’t be counted twice.

Then we want to add the corresponding noscript tag:

&oid={{ order.order_number }}

Making the code look like this:

<script type="text/javascript">
/* <![CDATA[ */
var google_conversion_id = your-id;
var google_conversion_language = "en";
var google_conversion_format = "3";
var google_conversion_color = "ffffff";
var google_conversion_label = "your-label";
if ({{ subtotal_price }}) { var google_conversion_value = {{ subtotal_price | money_without_currency | remove: ',' }}; }
if ({{ order.order_number }}) { var google_conversion_order_id = "{{ order.order_number }}"; }
var google_conversion_currency = "USD";
var google_remarketing_only = false;
/* ]]> */
</script>
<script type="text/javascript" src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion.js">
</script>
<noscript>
<div style="display:inline;">
<img height="1" width="1" style="border-style:none;" alt="" src="//www.googleadservices.com/pagead/conversion/your-id/?value={{ subtotal_price | money_without_currency | remove: ',' }}&amp;currency_code=USD&amp;oid={{ order.order_number }}&amp;label=your-label&amp;guid=ON&amp;script=0"/>
</div>
</noscript>

At which point we’re nearly there.

Finally, we have the option to add some further code.

Shopify have a snippet of liquid code called first_time_accessed (more info on it here). Code placed within this statement *should* only be displayed once.

Since testing it, I’ve found its not 100% reliable. Hence adding the above order ID code.

But it’s better than nothing for the other codes in your checkout code. Ones that don’t have an order ID parameter that can be added (Bing comes to mind).

All you have to do is surround your conversion code with the statement:
{% if first_time_accessed %}

and then close it with:
{% endif %}

All this code goes in the Additional Scrips box in your Shopify dashboard. This section can be located by going to Settings -> Checkout. Scroll down until you find this box:

If any of the above isn’t clear, leave me a comment, and I’ll clarify + improve it.