Retailers and marketers may be pleasantly surprised when logging into their Google Merchant Center accounts today.
And, Google is making it quite obvious.
It’s official, the New Google Merchant Center Experience is finally here! Well, to be honest this is actually the second “new experience” since Merchant Center last received a much-needed face lift.
In 2018, Google overhauled Merchant Center not once, but twice in just a few months – improving the look and feel of both the feeds and the diagnostics sections.
But today brought something entirely new:
For 2019, Google spared nothing and has COMPLETELY overhauled the Merchant Center interface, cleaning up the appearance and navigation entirely.
After clicking through the “welcome message” you’ll be brought to the Overview section – stylized a bit differently and given a new section for “Pending Tasks” with notifications indicating where you may still need to do a little setup:
Navigation has been trimmed up quite a bit as well, and Google has mimicked its “wrench” icon from Google Ads for account settings. For example, the Products drop down menu now holds the Diagnostics, All products, and Feeds sections.
Under Marketing you will find the Promotions Tool:
And under Growth you’ll find Google has nestled in the Opportunities, Market Insights (Product Suggestions), and also included the section for Managing/Enabling Merchant Center Programs like Dyanmic Remarketing and Merchant Promotions:
Rounding out the new experience is the settings navigation, neatly tucked away under the iconic wrench icon we have grown accustomed to from the Google Ads interface. This happens to be where you’ll be handing the all too familiar Shipping and Tax settings:
Overall, we are loving the new look and feel, although it certainly was surprise and will take some getting used to.
This is a cleaner, sleeker experience and just another indication that Google is working incredibly hard to enhance the UX of their various products.
What’s next? Who knows!