What is a product feed and what it should look like
A product feed is one of the first things we ask for before starting a cooperation with a new shop. We need it because it’s via a product feed that we put and maintain your products live on our platforms. But it’s not just about us! Product feeds are now the industry standard so any shop that wants to sell its products online needs one.
A product data feed is a structured collection of information about the products you are offering in your online shop, which can take the form of a CSV or an XML file. It includes details such as product name, description, price, and availability. Even if you don’t have a product feed yet, you can easily create one, using the data from your product catalog. You only need to put this data into a proper format and provide us with the link to the file where you upload it. It’s the kind of effort that really pays off because the kind of data that we expect is in line with the industry standard, so you’ll be able to use it with us, as well as with other marketing channels.
Make sure that the feed you share with us is regularly updated so that the information we display on our pages always matches the information you display in your shop. This is important not only from the perspective of user experience but also – from compliance with the legal requirements in the European Union. For example, if you want to offer a discount, the initial price you are reducing should be the lowest price that you applied for your product within 30 days prior to the reduction. For more details on the price reduction and other similar topics, check our Feed Requirements.
How to make a good product feed
You can always count on us to support you in improving your product feed. When giving recommendations, we focus on the aspects that potentially have the biggest impact on the shop’s performance. These include:
- clear product names
- comprehensive product descriptions
- good keywords (words by which customers look for products in search engines and on comparison websites)
Keywords are key
Out of the three aspects mentioned above, the right keywords are especially important. If the keywords are missing for many products, many of your products simply won’t be findable on our pages!
While we encourage you to follow our Feed Requirements (which we discuss further in this article), as long as your feed includes all the necessary keywords, it can still be okay if your attributes are not named exactly like ours. For example, if you store your product description under the attribute called “Info”, we will still be able to use it to successfully publish your products on our pages.
Better in color
All eyes on discounts
Another attribute that can be especially important is the sale price. We all know that online shoppers are more likely to click on products highlighted as having a reduced price.
The value of good pictures
Worth emphasizing is also the importance of good photos. Attractive images are super important in e-commerce as online shoppers buy with their eyes even more than customers buying in person. Sometimes all it takes is changing how the photos are cropped.
Brand power
Another very important piece of information is the product brand. It’s one of the most important attributes to include in the feed because online shoppers often look for products by specific brands and you surely don’t want to exclude your product from these searches.
In the case of brand information, it’s especially important that you share it with us in the right attribute in the feed file. As mentioned before, other pieces of product information we can sometimes extract from attributes named differently than in our preferred feed structure. However, in the case of the brand name, we usually don’t do that because in this case, accuracy is especially important. For the same reason, always make sure that you use a brand name that online shoppers will recognize. And remember that if you are the product manufacturer, you are the brand – so don’t hesitate to share it with our users!
No broken links
Yet another important thing is the product links – they need to work properly! It’s also crucial for a product link to lead specifically to a product page in your shop (and not, for example, a category page). If the user clicks on a product on our side they need to be taken to a page with exactly the same product in your shop. To ensure the best user experience, make sure that this product page looks nice and clean (for example, it doesn’t include any unnecessary pop-ups). It’s very important for conversions!
The right words
Last but not least: If you want to break into a new market and reach a wider audience, you will need a localized feed. Online shoppers rely on product descriptions and won’t buy from you if they don’t understand what you sell. The only exception to this rule is the Nordic countries. In Sweden, Denmark, and Finland, it might be enough to have the website and the feed in English.
