Create Your Data Feed
Simply put, a data feed is just a list of products or services submitted to shopping sites in order to have the products displayed alongside your competition for comparison. Some feeds require the columns be in a certain order, so check the specs for each engine before you submit. Many sites accept a Google feed as well as other formats, so it makes a good starting place for creating them. If you have a lot of products, it may be much easier to manage your data feeds with a tool like Singlefeed. This would also make it is easier to add/remove new or discontinued products on a regular basis. However, here are the steps if you want to do it manually:
- Obtain a list of the products you would like to include in the data feed.
- Visit the engine you are submitting to and download a sample file. (Here’s a sample Google Data Feed <- use this to format your feed)
- Align and fill out the required fields for each product in the feed. If you are adding a lot of products, consider having a data feed management company assist you in listing your products across all the major shopping engines.
- Save in the proper format (.txt, .csv, .xml) and submit your product data feed.
Obtain a List of Products
Obtain a list of products from a data export or simply ask your IT department for the data. This should be a fairly simple step in the process.
Create Your Feed
You may need to visit each of the shopping sites that you plan on submitting to and retrieve a sample feed so that you can format yours. If they accept other formats, such as a Google Feed, then you may only need to create one. Submitting a feed in a format not supported could result in your products look weird on the destination site or not being displayed at all. No worries, the shopping engine should notify you if you submit an invalid feed.
If you have the information and there is a valid field for that item, submit it. This is especially true with Google Products, but should be done anytime possible. The more info you submit, the more likely your products are to display for various queries. Google even allows you to create custom fields to describe your products.
Save and Submit
Your feed needs to be save in a specific format. Usually it will be a text file (.txt) or a comma separated list (.csv). If you are editing your feed with Microsoft Excel, just do a Save As and choose the correct format. Submit your feed through the Web interface of any particular shopping engine or make it easier on yourself and download an ftp client. Filezilla is a great free ftp tool. Each shopping engine should provide you with an ftp location, usually found by logging into your account. Filezilla allows you to save each ftp address and login info so that you don’t have to remember it. It also provides an easy to use interface and makes it a very quick and easy way to upload all your feeds in a very short amount of time. Alternatively, you could pay a company to handle all this for you, from data extraction to feed submission and tracking.
Why Outsource Data Feed Management?
Outsourcing typically means you would submit just one feed to a company like singlefeed.com. Then you just pick which shopping engines to submit to and the feeds are generated and submitted automatically based on the data you provide them. SingleFeed gives you click data for all the engines. They plan to give you cost data and SKU level ROI in the future. That would be great because it is the best way to track the success of a data feed.
If you are an Internet retailer and do not submit you products to at least the free shopping engines, then you are missing out. Check out our shopping engine guide for a list of shopping engines that you can submit to. This list will continue to grow.
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