In an enviable move, ChatGPT has started to surface products in its responses.
Although it is not entirely predictable when they occur or why some merchants are selected over others - I have seen some odd merchants mentioned and others omitted - this channel is going to become increasingly important for e-commerce vendors.
There are a few things you need to do to ensure you are ready for this:
1) Ensure you have Product Structured data (schema) on your sites; the more detailed, the better.
2) Sign up for the waiting list for OpenAI, and you'll be notified when their version of Google Merchant Center is ready.
3) Don't forget to do the same with Microsoft and the Copilot merchant programme.
4) Optimise your Google Merchant profiles and feeds as best you can (assuming you have them); these will still be hugely important.
Whilst we're waiting for OpenAI and their ilk to decide on the best ways to display product data in results, here are some other fundamental points to keep in mind.
- Users value trust, so reviews and clear signs of positive sentiment towards your brand/store are crucial
- Users are price-sensitive, so if you want to appear highly product listings, being competitive from a price PoV is key
- Rich, structured product information, like shades, size, features, instructions for use, etc., will all help provide context for people searching/prompting at the upper/middle funnel stage.
I'm pretty sure shopping results will eventually appear when a model - like ChatGPT - thinks a product is appropriate, even if the user hasn't said, "show me where to buy ____", so getting this information out there on our web pages and in our feeds is the best way to make use of these channels as they mature.
These posts provide some interesting further reading on the subject:
https://buff.ly/aOSRyag & https://buff.ly/d2pd9mX
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