Ever heard of Google currency conversion? If not, you’ve come to the right place!
In 2016, Google launched a brand-new currency conversion feature that’s been a complete game-changer for merchants worldwide. This feature lets merchants use automatic exchange rates for their target audiences in various locations on a global level and lets them expand their businesses wherever they please.
If you’re curious to learn more about Google currency conversion, read on and find out about its benefits, the best practices for using it, and finally, its limitations and potential drawbacks.
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What Is Google Currency Conversion and How Does it Work?
Google currency conversion is an excellent feature for ecommerce businesses that want to enhance their overall reach by selling or shipping their products in various countries worldwide. Some businesses have websites that don’t support automatic conversion for all currencies on their web pages, so this tool by Google can undoubtedly help them the most.
Additionally, it’s fully enabled on any Google Merchant Center account, so you don’t have to turn it on manually. All you have to do is submit the prices of all your products and let it work its magic; it’ll convert the prices into different currencies every time you post an ad or a product listing for a specific location!
Whenever your customers from different locations see your products, they’ll be able to find out the exact price of the product they’re interested in — in their currency — without any major changes in your landing pages.
The prices displayed in your product listings and ads are calculated using the exchange rates provided by Google Finance.
However, your business will have to comply with your target countries’ language guidelines and requirements in order to implement Google’s currency conversion. In addition, you’ll have to constantly keep your shipping settings up-to-date so they can adjust to the shipping rules of the countries.
Keep in mind that every time you make a sale through your website, your customers will be charged in your general currency, so the price they pay will ultimately depend on the exchange rate of each country’s currency used by the user’s payment service provider.
In some cases, the final and the estimated price of the article can differ. To keep things safe and transparent, you can display your products’ prices at your original exchange rate on your website.
What Are the Benefits of Using Google Currency Conversion for Online Stores?
As you can probably guess, using Google currency conversion for your online business has many advantages. Let’s find out more about each of them.
- Reach New Global Markets
By using Google currency conversion, you’ll be one step ahead of your competitors since you can expand your target audience in many different countries worldwide. You can even gain clients from countries on different continents and show that your brand is loyal to all your customers, even to those that are miles away from you.
- Make Shopping Easier for International Customers
Currency conversion will help your international customers find the correct price of your products without needing to convert them themselves via an additional tool. You’ll save them time that they can spend browsing your goods instead of perusing exchange rates.
Moreover, you’re showing them that you’re a transparent merchant that doesn’t want to charge them hidden fees that usually arise when there are different exchange rates in question.
- Increase Sales and Revenue
Another thing that makes this tool an excellent asset for your ecommerce business is that it will help you increase your sales and revenue pretty quickly. Adding converted prices will show your potential customers that your business is trustworthy, leading to more customers and a higher profit.
- Compete With Other international Ecommerce Businesses
By using Google currency conversion, you’ll definitely have a favorable advantage compared to other ecommerce businesses that don’t offer a conversion currency feature. Offering a better shopping experience to your customers will quickly let you stand out from your competitors.
4 Best Tips for Using Google Currency Conversion in Google Merchant Center
Now that we introduced you to Google currency conversion and its main advantages, let’s find out more about the best practices for using this valuable tool in Google Merchant Center.
- Set Up and Configure Your Account Correctly
As you’d probably guess, the first thing you’ll need to do is set up and configure your Google Merchant Account. You can do that pretty quickly – create a feed container and choose a specific country’s currency.
Then select the feed container, click on it, and go to “Settings.” Then, you can choose “Default currency,” and that’s it, your products’ prices will show in the country’s currency.
- Understand Exchange Rates and Fees
Before using Google currency conversion, you should understand the fees and exchange rates better. You should know that the exchange rates are updated constantly worldwide, and Google updates the numbers every few minutes.
If you want to be 100% sure that the customer journey is smooth in any location, make sure you’re always following the tax and price requirements for each of your target countries. You can learn more about the exchange rates on Google Finance.
- Monitor and Adjust your Settings as Needed
Just like you need to monitor and adjust your product feed and data all the time, you’ll need to update, monitor, and modify your Google currency conversion settings when necessary.
Also, when you add new locations where you’re selling your products, you can experiment with different promotion angles and other marketing features that might work better for the country in question.
- Test and Optimize Your Conversion Rates
From time to time, you’ll need to optimize and test your conversion rates. For example, you can use Google Ads Conversion tracking or Google Analytics to monitor your revenue.
Also, you can modify and adjust your bids to suit the countries where you sell your products and analyze how your business is performing in each country. If it’s performing exceptionally well in a specific country, you can try to increase your ads for that location.
Potential Drawbacks and Limitations of Using Google Currency Conversion
Luckily, Google’s currency conversion doesn’t have a lot of drawbacks or limitations that might create unwanted difficulties or issues. However, in some cases, you might notice that the currency on your website or a shopping ad and the one under your products’ data is different.
In this case, Google Merchant Center will warn you or suspend your account until the error is completely fixed. Until it’s resolved, you might find yourself in a situation where you’re wasting money on displaying ads that are not showing the correct currency, and let’s face it, nobody wants to spend money just to lose their customers.
If this happens, you’ll get an email explaining how to resolve this issue and update the currency in your products’ data so they can match the currency rates on your website in a specific timeframe.
Google recommends that you should always ensure that your products’ prices are displayed in the currency of all your target locations on your website, landing pages, product data, and finally, during checkout. The currency should be compliant with ISO 4217 Standard.
Why Google Currency Conversion Is a Valuable Tool for Online Store Owners
Known as one of the most straightforward tools on Google Merchant Center, Google’s currency conversion feature can help you compete with the best ecommerce brands in the global market without requiring you to make any changes to your website or landing pages.
You can’t lose anything by using it, but you can certainly gain a lot by attracting potential customers worldwide. By getting more customers, you’ll also see a positive spike in your profit, so using Google’s currency conversion tool is a win-win situation.
