This page is for UK online retailers, from a single-brand Shopify store to a shop carrying a few thousand lines, who want Google Ads to produce profitable orders rather than a busy dashboard.
How UK shoppers search before they buy
Product searches are short and specific. People type a brand and a model, a product with a size or colour, or a category with a price, such as “men’s waterproof jacket under £100”. Many of them start on the Shopping results, where they compare a picture, a price and a delivery promise before reading a word of ad text.
What people search for also moves with the calendar. Black Friday, the weeks before Christmas, the Boxing Day sales, Mother’s Day in March and back-to-school all change what people look for, what a click costs and how quickly stock sells out. An account that runs the same budget and targets in November as in February will usually overspend in one month and starve in the other.
Then there are people searching for your shop by name, often after seeing you on social media or a marketplace. Those clicks are cheap and tend to convert well, which is exactly why they flatter a report when they are mixed in with everything else.
What makes an online shop’s account different
The product data does most of the targeting
Shopping ads and most of Performance Max have no keywords. Google matches searches to products using the titles, descriptions, categories and identifiers in your product feed, which reaches Google through Google Merchant Center. A product titled “Classic Tee 04” will be shown for very little; one that names the brand, product type, material, colour and size has a fair chance. Feed work is unglamorous, and it is often where the quickest improvement sits.
Sales tracked with their real value
Every purchase should reach Google Ads with its order value in pounds and a transaction ID, so a refreshed confirmation page is not counted as a second sale. I also agree whether the value includes VAT and delivery, because that choice changes every return figure the account reports. Without values, Google can only chase the number of orders, and a £9 accessory counts the same as a £600 sofa. My guide to checking that conversion tracking records real sales walks through the test I run on a live order.
UK visitors also have to be asked before advertising cookies are set, under UK GDPR and PECR. Consent mode lets Google model some of the sales it can no longer observe directly, but the banner and the tags need to be wired together properly or the account under-reports from the first day.
Margin sets the target, not revenue
Return on ad spend compares revenue with ad cost. It says nothing about the cost of goods, delivery, payment fees or returns. A shop with a 25% gross margin needs a far higher return than one at 70% just to break even, so I work out a break-even figure for each product group before setting any target. The ROAS and break-even calculator does the arithmetic if you want to check your own numbers first.
Prices, delivery and returns that match the site
Prices shown to UK consumers must include VAT, and Google expects the price, availability, delivery cost and returns terms in Merchant Center to match what a shopper sees on the product page. Mismatches lead to disapproved products and, if they keep happening, can put the whole Merchant Center account at risk. Sale prices need care as well: a “was” price has to be one you genuinely charged, both for Google and under UK consumer protection law.
Advertising rules and restricted products
Claims in ads and on product pages fall under the ASA’s CAP Code, which matters most for cosmetics, supplements, environmental claims and anything with a health angle. Google adds its own limits on categories such as alcohol, healthcare products and weapons, some of which need certification and some of which cannot be advertised at all. I check the catalogue against both before launch rather than finding out from a wave of disapprovals.
How I usually structure an ecommerce account
There is no single correct structure, but a retail account usually starts from the same few parts and changes as purchase data arrives.
- Brand search Kept in its own campaign so cheap brand orders do not hide the true cost of finding new customers.
- Shopping or Performance Max for the catalogue Split by margin band or by bestsellers versus the long tail, using custom labels in the feed. My page on Performance Max set-up and management explains when I choose it over a standard Shopping campaign.
- Non-brand search campaigns for valuable categories where text ads and a strong category page can win the click.
- Remarketing for people who viewed products or left a basket, with frequency kept modest so it does not follow them for weeks.
Bidding usually starts by maximising conversion value with no target, then moves to a target ROAS once there are several weeks of steady purchase data. A shop with a few dozen orders a month often does better with fewer, larger campaigns, because thin data spread across many campaigns leaves each one guessing.
How I run the work
The order below is the one I follow; the scope and timings are agreed with you before work starts.
- Audit. I review the account, the Merchant Center diagnostics, the feed and the tracking, and place or watch a test order to see what value actually reaches Google Ads.
- Margins and targets. You share rough margins and returns by category, and I turn them into break-even and target returns per product group.
- Fixes before spend. Feed titles, product types, identifiers, custom labels, VAT-inclusive prices, delivery settings and consent are put right before any budget goes up.
- Build or rebuild. Campaigns are set up as above, with brand separated and seasonal budgets planned in advance.
- Regular review. On a schedule agreed before work starts, I go through search terms, product performance, stock and pricing changes, then report spend, revenue, return and estimated profit in pounds, with what I plan to change next.
Common mistakes in online shop accounts
- Counting a purchase twice, or counting add-to-basket as a conversion, so bidding chases the wrong thing.
- Judging the account on one blended return, where brand orders hide loss-making non-brand spend.
- One target for the whole catalogue, so low-margin lines are allowed to lose money while high-margin ones are held back.
- Feed titles copied straight from the stock system, full of internal codes that nobody searches for.
- Advertising products that are out of stock, or whose price changed on the site but not in the feed.
- Search campaigns with no negative keywords, so searches for “free”, “second hand”, “repair” or “jobs” keep buying clicks.
- Ignoring returns. A category with a high returns rate can look profitable inside Google Ads and lose money in the management accounts.
Where Google Ads sits with SEO and social ads
Google Ads reaches people who already know what they want. Organic rankings for category and product pages reduce how much you pay for those same searches over time, which is the job of ecommerce SEO for online shops. Social ads create demand among people who were not searching yet, and Facebook and Instagram ads for online shops are the usual partner to search. When I report, I look at the channels together so the same sale is not claimed three times.
Next step
If you run a UK online shop and want a second opinion on your Google Ads, book a call with me. Send your site address and, if you have an account already, read-only access, and I will tell you whether the feed, the tracking or the bidding needs attention first.