E-commerce entrepreneurs have most likely heard about product feeds. As soon as you start to operate across multiple channels you have to rely on them. They allow you to grow, expand to new places and move quickly. So what is a product feed? Product feeds are standardized file types which contain product information in a structured and machine readable manner. Don’t worry, we’ll go into detail what this means. In this article we will cover the basics of product feeds and why they are important for your business.
What are product feeds?
Product feeds, also know as ‘product data feeds’ or simply ‘feeds’, are a printout or an export of your product catalogue. You can specify products in your online store’s content management system (CMS), to sell them in your shop. Doing so, you describe each product with a collection of characteristics or ‘attributes’. Each collection of attributes is a digital representation of a product.
As soon as you want to display your products on channels outside your CMS, like advertising for your products in Google Shopping or selling your products on a marketplace, you need a way to communicate those product attributes information with that channel in a usable manner. You probably want to this in a way that:
- Is not time-consuming
- Is easy to share
- Ensures up-to-date product information
How this should be done depends on a number of factors, like the size of your product catalogue, how frequent product information needs to be updated, and the requirements laid out by the respective channels. If you have only few products that don’t change very often, you could simply use a spreadsheet in which each row represents a product and each column represents a product attribute. However, as soon as you sell hundreds or even thousands of products this is no longer a recommended option. To understand what makes this type of feed different, it is important to explain two aspects:
- File formats
- Feed specifications
File formats
A product feed can be structured by different file formats which are often universally used and recognized. The most well known file formats are:
- Extensible Markup Language (XML)
- Plain Text (TXT)
- Comma Separated Values (CSV)
- Tab Separated Values (TSV)
- JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)
Maybe this sounds like abracadabra to you, but for now it is important to know that these types exist and that they are different ways to present the product information.
Feed specifications
Each channel may have specific requirements that outline the allowed file formats and how a feed should be structured. Specifications mainly focus on naming conventions of each product attribute, allowed values of each attribute, and which subset of attributes are mandatory. All together, we call these requirements the feed specification.
Before you start to generate a feed, it is important to establish which channels are going to be used and to identify which feed specifications apply. This will result in an actionable list to create a feed.
Why do you need a product feed?
As mentioned before, as soon as you want to display or list your products somewhere outside your CMS, you need an effective and efficient way to communicate all your product data. There are a number of reasons why you should rely on a product feed to do so.
Products feeds are the industry standard
In e-commerce or online marketing, there is no way around it: multi-channel approaches require product feeds. For certain channels it’s even mandatory.
- Price comparison websites – Feeds are the product descriptive content needed to run sites that compare pricing (price comparison websites), attributes (mostly in vertical search portals) and availability.
- Paid search affiliates – PPC campaigns use API’s that receive a range of attributes within product feeds to determine campaign keywords and bidding.
- Affiliate networks – affiliate networks funnel products though their platforms from merchants to affiliates.
- Marketplaces – receive product feeds from their merchants (eBay and Amazon for example).
- Social Networks – can accept product feeds from merchants to list products (Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest for example).
Product feeds enable automated product information updates
You frequently make changes in the product catalog information such as inventory and pricing updates. Changes should be updated on all platforms where you display that product information so that all customer will see the correct information in real-time. To prevent that you have to update your product details on each and every channel you should create Based on your technical integration of creating a product feed, most systems allow for frequent updates from your datasource (for example: your CMS).
They make differentiated product information easy
Different channels often maintain their own best practices with respect to titles, descriptions and required product attributes, especially in different countries. Feed management systems, plugins and custom feed solutions often offer you the ability to create a separate feed for each platform or country. This make it easy to comply with best practices.
Product feeds can be shared easily through an URL
Instead of working with files or an isolated CMS, feeds are often shareable through a URL. Share all relevant product details with each channel or partner easily with a dedicated link. Access can be protected by adding authentication with a login functionality.
Different product feed file formats
Your choice of file format should not greatly affect the performance of your products. However, different channels will have different requirements. While some will accept a number of different feed file formats, others may accept just one type. It’s also important to consider what kind of resources are available to your team as well as what kind of products the feed will include. Just to be clear: there’s no one perfect file format. So which types are widely used?
XML
The XML file format is usually the most common file type used by merchants.
However, XML coding knowledge is required for you to create a XML feed. Once you create the XML feed and submit it to the merchant, this feed will be submitted in the .xml file format.
CSV
A CSV file is a simple text file, where products fields are separated by commas.
CSV files can be open with almost any spreadsheet program, such as Microsoft Excel or Google Spreadsheets. Also, it contains only a single sheet in a file.
CSV files cannot save cells, columns, or rows, even they can’t save any formulas.
TEXT
TEXT format is the Tab-separated file format, that can include a number of different formats exported as plain text.
For example, the TEXT file could contain any number of readable formats, including CSV, XML, or others.
TSV
A TSV (Tab-Separated Values) file contains its data with a tab in the plain text format. This file format is similar to CSV file type.
In the TSV format, each field value is separated by a tab character.
JSON
JSON file type is the JavaScript Object Notation or JSON, it is quite different from a CSV file type to be used as a product feed.
Through this, you can utilize different attributes for each product entry. If your online shop has different kinds of products with different attributes, this file type can be especially helpful regarding this.
How to create a product feed
Depending on your Content Management System and, there are several ways to create a product feed. The most common solutions can be grouped as:
- Performing a website crawl
- Creating an API connection
- Using plugins or extensions
- Custom programmatic solution
- Spreadsheets
Small to Medium-sized eCommerce businesses with larger catalogs may choose to use an API/plugin method instead of a feed. Depending on which eCommerce platform the products reside in, the platform can be extended by using a third-party extension, also known as a plug-in.
Catalog product data can be transformed into feeds and sent to digital marketing partners and marketplaces using the plug-in connected to your eCommerce platform (such as Magento, Shopify). In most cases, plug-ins include limited personalization and configuration.
For more established and/or larger eCommerce businesses, Programmatic feeds can be generated using a procedure that dynamically creates a product data feed based on a set of variables. These variables prompt the feed to pull specific product information updates from a retailer’s eCommerce system, therefore providing shopping channels with the most updated and tailored information. Once the feeds are created, they can be made available for download or upload from within an eCommerce processor (such as Magento and Shopify).
To develop a programmatic feed, retailers can use either their in-house tech team, an outside software integrator or a product feed management provider.
Product feed optimization
Each platform or channel has its own way of displaying products to visitors. On comparison shopping platforms and marketplaces consumers may browse through categories or enter search queries. On social media users scroll through a feed which mixes user-generated content and product ads based on user preferences. The general rule is that matching products to users is largely based on product information. That is why you need to make sure you are adding relevant terms to your product’s title and description, describe colors, sizes and other characteristics based on what your customers search for. When a user is searching for a certain term that appears in your feed, it increases your ad rank and the possibility of your ad to show.