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The Guide to Setting Up Google Dynamic Remarketing Product Ads for Squarespace E-Commerce Sites

Running Google Dynamic Product Remarketing Ads on SquarespaceFor users with SquareSpace e-commerce websites that are looking to run Google Dynamic Remarketing Product ads, you’re faced with a Unicorn of a problem for 2020: A development issue that isn’t solvable from a quick search on Stack Overflow. Scary!

This isn’t a new problem, either. When we began working on this for a client, we did the inevitable Google Search and came across folks looking for a solution to this in 2015, 2016, 2017, 2018, 2019, and 2020. None seems to exist. This is even more frustrating when you realize that Squarespace has beautifully elegant, automatic integration with Facebook’s dynamic product remarketing ad platform. But not Google Ads.

So we built a process that does it. It’s not elegant, and it requires updates for new products rather than automatically including them, but it does work. So we present:

The INTERNET’S SEEMINGLY ONLY GUIDE to getting google ads dynamic remarketing products ads on SQUARESPACE E-COMMERCE SITES

Set aside an hour or two to complete this, the first time. It will take a while. In addition, you will need to use all of these tools: Google Tag Manager, Google Analytics, Google Sheets, and Google Merchant Center – so if you haven’t used all of them before, you may want to familiarize yourself before taking this on.

The basic gist of the process is:

  • Add Google Tag Manager to your SquareSpace site.
  • Add the user-defined variables price and SKU to your Tag Manager.
  • Export your inventory from SquareSpace.
  • Use some Google Sheets tricks to get your inventory into a lookup table that matches price and SKU to your product.

Ready? Let’s do this.

  1. First, ensure that Google Analytics is set up on your website, and implemented with SquareSpace via their default installation.
  2. Next, Create a Google Tag Manager account/container for your website. You likely don’t already have this, because Squarespace integrates Google Universal Analytics without the need for a Tag Manager, but it is essential to set up dynamic product remarketing. As a friendly reminder, you do not need to add your standard Google Analytics tracking code as a Tag into your Tag Manager implementation, since that’s already being tracked on the site from step 1.
  3. Add the Google Tag Manager code to your SquareSpace site via Code Injection.
  4. You’ll want to add two User-Defined Variables to your Google Tag Manager container. Thse
  5. Secondly, you’ll want to export your inventory from Squarespace. There are a couple of solutions to doing this, but we found SquareFeed.io to work the best.
  6. This part is built off the brilliant folks over at Bounteous, who crafted the original look-up table we adapted from. Utilize their spreadsheet to Built two lookup tables on Google Tag Manager:
    1. First, create a User-Defined Variable for the sku. This requires a Lookup Table with the input of the URL (following the domain), and the Output of the Squarespace sku.
    2. Next, create a second User-Defined Variable for price. Again, use a lookup table with the input of the URL (following the domain) and the Output of the price.
  7. Now that you have your two custom variables in place, you can set up your Google Ads Remarketing tag. Below are the options to choose:
    1. Conversion ID: Get from your Google Ads Account
    2. Check off “Send Dynamic Remarketing Event Data”
    3. Event Name: view_item
    4. Event Value: {{price}}
    5. Event Items: {{sku}}
    6. Enable Restricted Data Processing: False
    7. Custom Parameters: Manually Specify
      1. Key: google_business_vertical
      2. Value: retail.

 

Screenshot of a Google Tag Manager Tag for Squarespace Google Ads Dynamic Product Remarketing

  1. Set it up to trigger on all pages. (If you’re feeling fancy, you could only have it trigger on product pages, but you’ll have to code that up yourself.
  2. Publish your Google Tag Manager container.
  3. Check via the Google Tag Assistant to confirm that your products are showing the dynamic tags!

Congratulations! You set up Google Ads Dynamic Product Remarketing Ads on a Squarespace site.

PLEASE note: This Method is not perfect

Unfortunately, this solution is a bit of a work-around. While I was pleased with what it did solve, here’s what you’ll need to keep track of manually.

  • Your product feed is not updated automatically on Google Merchant Center. That still requires SquareFeed.io, which will need to be manually pulled after new items are added.
  • Variations aren’t solved.
  • Checkout isn’t solved.

But for smaller retailers, it’s a good solution. If you have a better one, please let us know in the comments.

Need help setting this up yourself, or have other e-commerce questions? We’re always happy to talk at Online Optimism!