Google Remarketing Ads for Shopify — Retargeting Setup Guide

Why Remarketing Is Essential for Shopify Conversion Rates

The average e-commerce conversion rate is 2–4%. That means 96–98% of first-time visitors to your Shopify store leave without buying. Some were not ready. Some were price-checking. Some got distracted. Some were genuinely interested but needed more time. Google remarketing lets you re-engage all of these visitors with targeted ads after they leave your site, following them across millions of websites in the Google Display Network, on YouTube, and in Gmail.

Because remarketing targets people who already know your brand and have already shown interest in your products, it consistently achieves higher conversion rates and lower CPAs than prospecting campaigns targeting cold audiences. For Shopify stores, a well-structured remarketing programme can recover 10–20% of otherwise-lost revenue at a fraction of the cost of acquiring new visitors.

Types of Google Remarketing Available to Shopify Stores

Google offers several remarketing formats, each suited to different stages of the customer journey:

• Standard Display Remarketing: Static or animated banner ads shown to past visitors across the Google Display Network. Best for brand awareness and recovering soft bounces.
• Dynamic Remarketing: Automatically shows ads featuring the exact products a visitor viewed on your Shopify store, using your Google Merchant Centre product feed. Significantly higher relevance and typically 2–3× better conversion rates than standard remarketing.
• YouTube Remarketing: Video ads served on YouTube to past site visitors. Excellent for high-consideration products where video builds trust before re-purchase.
• Gmail Remarketing: Ads appearing in the Promotions tab of Gmail inboxes. Lower volume but can work well for promotional offers and seasonal sales.
• RLSA (Remarketing Lists for Search Ads): Bid adjustments on Search campaigns for users who have previously visited your site. Not a separate campaign — it is a modifier applied to existing Search campaigns to bid higher on warm audiences.

Step 1 — Installing the Google Ads Remarketing Tag on Shopify

Remarketing requires a tag (piece of JavaScript) on your Shopify site that drops a cookie when visitors arrive, allowing Google to identify them later when they browse other websites. There are two ways to implement this:

Option A — Google Tag Manager (recommended): Install GTM on Shopify by adding the GTM container snippet to your theme.liquid file. Then within GTM, create a Google Ads Remarketing tag that fires on all pages. GTM also lets you fire additional product-view and cart-addition events for dynamic remarketing without touching Shopify code directly.

Option B — Google & YouTube Shopify App: The Google & YouTube app automatically installs a remarketing-compatible tag when you connect your Google Ads account. This is simpler but provides less control over which events are tracked. It also enables dynamic remarketing by linking your Merchant Centre feed to visitor product-view events automatically.

After installation, verify the tag is firing correctly using Google Tag Assistant (available as a Chrome extension). Allow 24–48 hours for audience populations to begin building before creating campaigns.

Step 2 — Building Audience Segments

The most important determinant of remarketing campaign performance is audience segmentation. Different audience segments have different levels of purchase intent and should receive different ad messages with different bid levels. Build these core segments in Google Ads (Tools → Audience manager):

• All Website Visitors (30 days): Everyone who visited your site in the last 30 days. Broad segment; use lower bids. Good for brand awareness messaging.
• Product Page Visitors (14 days): Anyone who viewed a product detail page. Higher intent than homepage visitors. Show dynamic product ads featuring what they viewed.
• Cart Abandoners (7 days): Visitors who added to cart but did not complete purchase. Highest intent segment. Deserves highest bids and most compelling ad offers (e.g., free shipping incentive, urgency messaging around stock levels).
• Checkout Abandoners (3 days): Visitors who reached checkout but did not complete. Almost buyers — very high conversion potential. Show clear, friction-reducing messaging.
• Past Purchasers (90–180 days): Existing customers. Use for upsell, cross-sell, and re-engagement campaigns. Exclude from new customer prospecting campaigns to avoid wasting budget on people who already bought.
• High-Value Visitors (visited 3+ times in 14 days): People who are researching carefully. High consideration, high intent. Worth aggressive bidding.

Step 3 — Setting Up Dynamic Remarketing

Dynamic remarketing is the highest-performing remarketing format for most Shopify stores because it shows each visitor the exact products they viewed, creating a highly personalised ad experience. Setup requires:

• A linked Google Merchant Centre account with an active product feed
• A Google Ads conversion tracking tag that passes product IDs (item_id) on product view events — the Google & YouTube app handles this automatically
• A Dynamic Display campaign in Google Ads targeting your remarketing audiences

When creating the campaign, select “Display” as campaign type, choose “Standard display campaign”, and under “Dynamic ads”, check “Use dynamic ads feed for personalised ads” and select your Merchant Centre feed. Google will automatically generate dynamic creative showing the viewed products, overlaid on a template that includes your logo and brand colours.

Upload a custom display ad template (using Canva or Google’s Display & Video 360 tools) for your highest-value audiences — cart abandoners deserve better creative than a generic feed template.

Bidding Strategy for Remarketing Campaigns

Remarketing audiences are warmer than cold audiences, so CPCs are typically lower and conversion rates higher. Use Target CPA bidding for remarketing once you have 30+ conversions from remarketing in a 30-day window. Start with manual CPC if you are just launching. Typical bid guidance:

• All site visitors: base CPC (e.g., £0.10–0.20)
• Product page viewers: 1.5× base CPC
• Cart abandoners: 2–3× base CPC (worth paying significantly more per click for this segment)
• Past purchasers (re-engagement): similar to all visitors but with separate dedicated messaging

RLSA — Remarketing Lists for Search Ads

RLSA is one of the most powerful and underused Google Ads features for Shopify stores. It allows you to adjust bids on your Search campaigns for users who have previously visited your site. This means when a past visitor returns to Google and searches for your product category, your ad bids higher and is more likely to appear in position 1.

Set up RLSA by navigating to your Search campaign → Audiences → Add audience segment → Observation. Add your remarketing lists as observation audiences, then set bid adjustments of +20–50% for product page viewers and +50–100% for cart abandoners. You can also use RLSA in “Targeting” mode (not just bid adjustment) to run Search campaigns that only show to past visitors — useful for competitive keywords where you only want to compete for users already familiar with your brand.

Ad Creative Best Practices for Remarketing

Remarketing creative should differ from prospecting creative. Prospecting ads introduce your brand and product range. Remarketing ads should re-engage with urgency, specificity, or incentive. Effective remarketing ad messages for Shopify stores:

• Cart abandoner: “Still thinking about it? Complete your order today — free UK delivery on all orders over £30.”
• Product viewer: “The [product name] you viewed is still available — limited stock remaining.”
• Past purchaser: “Back for more? Your next order gets 10% off with code RETURN10.”
• High-value visitor: “Free returns, 5-star reviews, UK-based team. Here’s why 10,000+ customers choose us.”

Upload responsive display ads with multiple headlines, descriptions, images, and logos — Google’s system will find the best-performing combinations for each placement. Minimum of 5 images and 5 headlines per responsive ad unit.

Remarketing is a high-ROI, relatively low-complexity addition to any Shopify Google Ads strategy. Oneonic sets up and manages complete Google remarketing programmes for Shopify stores, from tag installation through audience strategy and creative production. See remarketing results from our Shopify clients or contact us to start your remarketing setup.