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Why Data Feed Management and Marketing are an absolute must for webshops!

By December 23, 2019 One Comment

If you own a webshop then you must have heard of Data Feed Management and Marketing by now. If you haven’t then you must read this article for sure! In this article I will explain what a data feed is and what the importance is of data feed management and marketing.

What is a data feed or product feed?

A data feed is a file that consists of data with all your product details. The file format is often a CSV or XML. Sometimes e-commerce platforms such as Lightspeed and Shopify can automatically generate their own data feed after you placed all products in your webshop. 

As mentioned the data feed contains all your product information such as: product name, price, category, sex, content and descriptions. All fields must be separated with a line break.

What does a product feed do?

A data feed or product feed will help you to correctly load and spread your product range on other external channels such as Google Shopping, Amazon , Ebay and other popular online selling channels in your country

How a data feed management tool works:
Source: https://productsup.io/platform/google-shopping/

The data feed is placed on an online environment and the URL is passed on to the external channel. In this way the feed can be retrieved and loaded.

A product feed for Google Shopping must meet different specifications than, for example, a product feed for Amazon or Ebay . For example, each channel has its own feed specifications and therefore a universal feed for multiple channels cannot be developed. You can also extract and upload these product feeds in your Google Merchant center, if you have connected your webshops there.

Example of the data feed that Google Shopping needs
Source: www.channable.com

How to optimize a data/product feed?

A good data feed or product feed should not only meet the required specifications of the relevant channel. The more unique product data the better. There are two main product variants that are crucial if you want to have a good product feed. These are the product title where ideally you should mention the brand if possible, and the product item code EAN or UPC.

For example “Australian Gold SPF” is a sunblock cream. And optimized product title for this particular product would be: “Australian Gold SPF 10 Spray Gel without bronzer 237ml”

It is highly recommended to use dimensions and as many unique specifications in the data feed product titles and descriptions. This in order to enrich the feed as much as possible. In the end this will help to get a larger range in terms or search behavior. This actually looks like optimizing your Meta Titles for SEO.

The same applies to the descriptions of the various products. The more extensive the greater the chance that people can be found in the relevant channel.

Another example to generate more success with your product feed is to add custom labels in the product feed with “low margin” or “high margin” a breakdown can be made in Google AdWords / Shopping based on these margins. Another example is the breakdown by brand, product type or price level.

Optimizations to the product/data feeds are:

1.Improve product information.
2.Adjust titles based on search volume.
3.Adjust titles for readability.
4.Expand product descriptions.
5.Assign categories to the products.
6.Include product variants.
7.Add UTM tags.
8.Add custom labels such as “Brand”, “High / low margin”, “Product type”

Some of the best tools on the market at this moment are:

ChannelEngine
DataFeedWatch
Channable
Lengow
Funnel

Many of the above mentioned tools offer a detailed help service on how the create your own data feeds. If you still have questions regarding this article feel free to post them in the comment section below. Also feel free to share your own product or data feed tool with me if you know a better one than the ones I have mentioned.

Marco de Groen

Marco de Groen

A flying Dutchman who is Graphic Designer  Multimedia Designer | Webdesigner | Blogger | Illustrator | Infographics | Social Media | Brand Manager | Branding | Owner/Founder Asian Customs and The Daily Roar and Blackstone Design

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