Thursday, March 28, 2024
HomeeCommerce NewsGoogle to suspend merchants who practice price discrepancy starting April 6,2021

Google to suspend merchants who practice price discrepancy starting April 6,2021

Studies have found over 75% of potential customers will leave a site without purchasing. One of the reasons for abandoned checkouts is pricing discrepancy. For anyone who isn’t sure what pricing discrepancy is, A pricing discrepancy (sometimes referred to as a rate discrepancy) happens when a customer goes to the checkout page on your website and finds a different price than they expected for their order. it can happen due to various reasons including shipping costs, taxes, handling fees like express delivery, or gift wrapping expenses. Another common price discrepancy among e-commerce stores is handling fees that aren’t fully disclosed until late in the checkout process.

To tackle this problem, Google gives a solution. Google announced that starting April 6, 2021, it is enforcing a longstanding policy of requiring merchants to display the price of an item from their e-commerce page, all the way through the checkout process in the shopping cart. If you show a higher price than what is on your landing page, Google can suspend your account.

Google posted its guidelines for the checkout requirements:-

“People expect to pay the advertised price for your products. If the price of a product advertised in a Shopping ad or free product listing is different from the price shown in a customer’s shopping cart, that could create a negative experience for the customer and could result in the loss of a sale. To ensure that the customer gets a clear price the following steps are to be followed.

  • The price of the price should be the same throughout the checkout process.
  • The price shouldn’t increase at the checkout.
  • The price could be lowered after the product is added to the cart if a promotion is added.

This enforcement starts by 6 April 2021 and anyone who violates the guideline will receive a 28-day warning to resolve those mismatches, otherwise their account will be subject to suspension at the end of the warning period.

How does Google enforce this?

When several months ago Google told us that GoogleBot can add items to your shopping cart. The purpose was to not mess up your conversion metrics, but rather to have “automated systems to ensure consumers are getting accurate pricing information from our merchants.”

So Google knows about some merchants violating this rule and has decided to start enforcing it with suspension notices.

Google wrote “consistent and accurate pricing is one of the most important factors shoppers take into considerations when making a purchase. If the product’s price at the checkout is higher than the price shown in an ad, free product listing, or on a product landing page, shoppers are more likely to abandon the purchase.”

 

Sanna Sharma
Sanna Sharma
Sanna Sharma is an emerging freelance content writer, specializing in content relating to e-commerce news. She is working with Ecommercenext.org currently. It is a platform that provides the latest e-commerce news, events, blogs, webinars, reviews, job postings, and analysis from around the world. She is a keen individual with competitive writing abilities and is always working on herself to become a better her.
RELATED ARTICLES

Most Popular