In the ever-evolving world of eCommerce and online marketing, staying updated with the latest guidelines and tools is crucial for success. For businesses that rely on Google’s Merchant Listings to display their products, recent changes to Google’s structured data documentation could have a significant impact.

One of the key updates is the introduction of membership loyalty pricing in Google Merchant Listings, which is currently in its beta phase. This new feature allows merchants to provide tailored pricing for members of loyalty programs, providing an opportunity to enhance customer experience and increase engagement. Along with this, Google has also updated its documentation to offer more clarity on how to handle various pricing types, including active prices, sale prices, strikethrough prices, and member prices, all within the context of JSON-LD structured data.

In this blog post, we will break down the recent updates, explore the different pricing properties introduced by Google, and explain how you can implement them to better serve your customers and optimize your product listings.

What’s New in Google Merchant Listing Structured Data?

Google has been continuously refining its Merchant Listings system to ensure it delivers accurate and relevant information to users, helping businesses improve their visibility and ultimately drive more sales. The most recent update to the structured data documentation brings attention to membership loyalty pricing property types.

What Is Membership Loyalty Pricing?

Membership loyalty pricing is the price that a product is offered at to a member of a particular loyalty program. If your business runs a loyalty program (for example, a rewards program for frequent shoppers), the new “member price” feature allows you to specify a price that’s exclusive to those who are part of the program.

With this update, you can now clearly differentiate between different pricing tiers for regular customers and loyal members, offering discounts or special pricing to your most engaged shoppers.

Why Should You Care?

Loyalty programs are a great way to increase customer retention and drive repeat purchases. If your business offers a loyalty program, this feature can help you display your member-only pricing in a more structured and clear way. Not only does it enhance the user experience, but it also increases the chances of converting more customers into loyal members.

For instance, a customer browsing your online store may see a regular price for a product and a lower, special “member price” if they are part of your loyalty program. This can be a powerful incentive for new customers to join your program and for existing members to make a purchase.

Understanding the Key Pricing Properties

With the new update, Google’s structured data now includes several price specifications that you can use under the Offer object. However, not all price types are created equal, and Google has provided specific instructions on how to implement these changes. Let’s break down the different pricing properties:

Active Prices

Active prices are the standard prices at which a product is being sold. They are the current price of an item, and they don’t have a priceType or validForMemberTier property attached.

  • What You Need to Know: If you’re setting an active price for a product, you won’t need to use any special attributes like priceType or validForMemberTier. Just provide the straightforward price value, and it will be recognized as the active price for the product.

Sale Prices

Sale prices are the discounted prices that apply when a product is on sale. These prices are typically marked with a priceType property set to “SalePrice.”

  • What You Need to Know: When setting a sale price for a product, use the priceType property to mark it as a sale price. This helps Google understand that the price is a temporary discount and not the regular price. The sale price will display as a discounted price in your Merchant Listings.

Strikethrough Prices

Strikethrough prices refer to the original price of a product before a discount has been applied. This price is typically crossed out on the website to highlight the new sale price.

  • What You Need to Know: To implement a strikethrough price, you’ll need to set the priceType to “StrikethroughPrice.” During a transition period, Google will also allow ListPrice as a valid option. However, strikethrough prices cannot have the validForMemberTier property, which means they’re not linked to any specific loyalty program tier.

Member Prices

The member price is the exclusive price offered to members of a loyalty program. This price is marked by a validForMemberTier property, which helps to specify which loyalty tier the pricing applies to.

  • What You Need to Know: Member prices are only applicable to members of loyalty programs. When using the validForMemberTier property, make sure not to use the priceType property. Member prices should only use the validForMemberTier attribute to denote the specific tier of customers eligible for the pricing.

Best Practices for Implementing These Changes

To make the most of the new features in Google’s Merchant Listings, it’s important to implement these updates correctly. Here are some best practices for doing so:

1. Use JSON-LD Structured Data Correctly

Structured data is a crucial part of product listings because it helps search engines understand the content of your website and display it more accurately in search results. With the new pricing options, you’ll need to use JSON-LD (JavaScript Object Notation for Linked Data) to encode the prices properly.

Here’s a simple example of how to implement a member price using JSON-LD:

{

  “@context”: “https://schema.org”,

  “@type”: “Product”,

  “name”: “Example Product”,

  “offers”: {

    “@type”: “Offer”,

    “price currency”: “USD”,

    “price”: “25.00”,

    “price specification”: {

      “@type”: “PriceSpecification”,

      “validForMemberTier”: “GoldMember”,

      “price”: “20.00”

    }

  }

}

 

In this example, the price specification property is used to define the price available to Gold Members, with the regular price being $25.00 and the member price being $20.00.

Avoid Conflicting Properties

It’s important to note that certain properties cannot be used together. For instance:

  • If you are specifying a strikethrough price, don’t add the validForMemberTier property.
  • If you are specifying a member price, do not include the priceType property.

Make sure to carefully follow the guidelines provided by Google in the documentation to avoid conflicts that may lead to errors or misinterpretation of your data.

Stay Transparent with Your Pricing

One of the primary goals of structured data is to provide clarity to users and search engines alike. Transparency in your pricing can help build trust with your customers. By offering clear distinctions between regular prices, sale prices, and member prices, you’re helping customers understand exactly what they are paying for and how they can benefit from joining your loyalty program.

Test Your Implementation

After implementing the updates, it’s crucial to test your structured data to ensure that it’s working correctly. Google provides a Rich Results Test tool that can help you validate your JSON-LD markup and check if your products’ prices are displaying properly in search results.

The Future of Loyalty Pricing and Structured Data

The beta release of loyalty pricing is just the beginning. Google is continuously working to improve the way structured data supports eCommerce businesses. As more merchants start using membership loyalty pricing, we can expect to see further refinements and additional features rolled out in the future.

For now, businesses should focus on implementing these changes correctly and ensuring that their product listings are optimized to show the right prices to the right customers. Loyalty programs are a great way to engage your audience, and by taking advantage of these new pricing properties, you can give your customers even more reasons to stay loyal to your brand.

 

Google’s recent update to its Merchant Listing structured data documentation is a game-changer for businesses offering loyalty programs. By allowing you to specify member prices, sale prices, strikethrough prices, and more, these updates open up new opportunities for merchants to enhance their listings and provide better pricing options to their customers.

If you run a loyalty program, implementing member prices and following best practices for structured data can significantly improve your visibility in search results and create a more personalized shopping experience for your customers.

Stay updated with Google’s documentation, keep testing your implementation, and continue to optimize your product listings to make the most out of these new pricing features.