Greetings eCommerce Circle. Michael J Kaye was nice enough to give me the opportunity to share with you some important tips about shopping feeds and shopping feed optimization. Below are 10 things you should know about shopping feeds.

Top 10 things you should know about shopping feeds:

1. When choosing an eCommerce platform, make sure it has the ability to easily update and export your shopping feed so you can easily manipulate it for free online marketing channels.
   Good places to start are Google Product Search, Bing Shopping and TheFind.
   More info: Google Product Search AKA Google Shopping | Bing Shopping | TheFind
2. Each shopping feed has different product attributes in different columns, like product title, merchant product ID, and product categories. Some shopping engines will require certain attributes to list products on their website, like Product Title, Product Description, Merchant Product ID, Category, Product URL and Image URL. Sometimes the order of your columns matter, sometimes they don’t. If you make any header or column changes to a shopping feed, make sure you format your shopping feed so the shopping engine reads it correctly.
3. You’ll need to use an FTP program to download and upload your shopping feed from various locations. Some good free programs are FileZilla or CuteFTP.
4. Depending on your stock levels and number of products, you’ll need to update your inventory and shopping feeds often to ensure your product shopping is accurate. You don’t want to submit products to marketing channels that are out of stock. One way to update your inventory in your shopping feeds is to add a Stock Status column and use the values True or False to denote whether the product is in stock or out of stock.
5. Each shopping engine has a set of specifications that you can use to optimize the shopping you send them. We’ve compiled a shopping feed specifications and examples page that you can use to send shopping feeds to Google Product Search, Bing Shopping, TheFind, and more.
6. Each marketing channel or shopping engine can be tracked with different tools. Some shopping engines have their own tracking pixels that merchant can use for free to track sales, clicks, revenue and conversion rates. You can also append the product URLs in your shopping feed with tracking shopping for Google Analytics. This data can be used to optimize these accounts and should be installed in your order confirmation page so your shopping feed products can be tracked.
7. Some shopping engines like Shopping.com let you list a regular price and a sale price in your shopping feed. The engine then crosses the regular price with a big red X and displays the sale price in red below. This gives your listings an extra pop against your competition. More info: optimize Shopping.com shopping feed.
8. Categorization is important. Each of your products needs to be categorize with specific category information to get as much qualified traffic as possible. For Google Product Search, your product_type attribute defines your category. Each shopping engine has their own categorization. Be sure to look it up and match your products as accurately as possible for best results. If you’re unsure how to categorize your product, as your account manager at a shopping engine or post a question in a help forum. The extra time you take to figure this column out is worth it. More info: shopping feed categories.
9. Adding brand information to your products can greatly increase their findability. Even a step further, append your brand column in front of your product titles so your products can be searchable by those keywords.
10. UPCs and MPNs are very important pieces of data to get more traffic on the shopping engines. More importantly, UPCs and MPNs let you SKU up, or list on comparison pages with your competitors. Without unique identifiers on electronics and other hard goods, you’ll lose out on traffic because your listing will be separate, away from the main comparison page. Don’t have UPCs? Look on Google Product Search for the products you have that don’t have UPCs and view the product details. Most hard goods have UPCs, you can strip them and add it to your shopping feed.

For more information on shopping feeds be sure to check out the CPC Strategy blog, the most active shopping feed optimization blog online.

As you surely know by now, Microsoft shuttered Bing cashback at the end of July. They have already launched the new Bing Shopping which is completely free for merchants. Like Google Product Search, it is a must for every merchant to be listed on Bing Shopping. It’s free, so why not?

Microsoft is currently allowing new merchants to join the program. You will need to go to the Microsoft Advertising site and fill out the Bing Shopping Merchant Application Form, once you do that you should hear back from the Bing Shopping team within a couple of weeks.

Once you are approved to join the shopping program, you’ll get an email with your account login information and feed specs. All you need to do to go live is:

• Fill out your merchant contact info, shipping and tax rules within the Merchant Portal.
• Setup and submit your data feed via FTP.

If you’ve done it before for Google Base, you can do it again. It’s free, you might as well…

UPDATE: This article is outdated, you can find updated instructions for the new Bing Shopping/Microsoft adCenter self-service portal here.

TheFind.com has been around for some time and has been a great tool for consumers to find the products they are looking for. Until now TheFind has populated its product database by crawling the web and filling in the blanks from third-party feeds.

I just realized this a few days ago, but in late April they launched the ability to upload a feed via FTP.

Great news! TheFind has launched a feed upload tool through the Merchant Center and now accepts direct feeds from merchants.

What does this mean for you?

• Greater control over product information on TheFind (ability to set up notifications to primary email address, letting you know when the feed is live)
• Faster updates (initial feed can go live within 72 hours)
• Increase product relevancy through our new, expanded attributes, as seen in our the data feed specs.

I’ve just submitted a data feeds for several clients, we’ll see how it works. In the meantime, you can register here.

Magento Commerce has the ability to track eCommerce sale with Google Analytics out of the box (more on that in a future post). Something that a lot of merchants struggle with is how to set up conversion tracking for other tracking software or comparison shopping engines.

How To

Here is an easy hack to track conversions for Shopzilla, PriceGrabber and the likes:

Open the file: app\design\frontend\XXXX\XXXX\template\checkout\success.phtml

At the end of the file, add the following code, this will create two variables with the order number and the order total:

<?php
	//Get Order Number & Order Total
	$order = Mage::getModel('sales/order')->loadByIncrementId(Mage::getSingleton('checkout/session')->getLastRealOrderId());
	$amount = number_format($order->getGrandTotal(),2);
?>

After the above code snippet, copy and paste the tracking code from the third party analytics software of comparison shopping engine. Insert the following variable where they suggest placing the order ID and the order total:

<?php echo $amount; ?> // Order Total
<?php echo $this->getOrderId() ?> // Order Number

Here is a code example for the Shopzilla conversion tracking tool:

<script language="javascript">
	var mid            = 'XXXXX'; // Your Shopzilla Merchant ID
	var cust_type      = '';
	var order_value    = '<?php echo $amount; ?>'; // Order Amount
	var order_id       = '<?php echo $this->getOrderId() ?>'; //Order Number
	var units_ordered  = '';
</script>
<script language="javascript" src="https://www.shopzilla.com/css/roi_tracker.js"></script>
<script language="JavaScript" src="https://eval.bizrate.com/js/pos_193511.js" type="text/javascript"></script>

Image Credit: Search Engine Journal

What’s The Problem?

Every eCommerce business wants to advertise on as many channels as possible. When it comes to comparison shopping, you will want to syndicate your products to the top shopping engines. The problem is that every comparison shopping engine has a different data feed format and category structure. This creates an extra headache for the business owner. You have no choice if you want your products on their site…

The Many Solutions

Depending on the size of your company and your skill set, you have many different options ranging from hacking scripts and full service management.

D.I.Y. Style

• Download your products into Excel and copy and paste until you got it right. Any business that means business cannot do it this way. It is too time consuming and you won’t be able to update it often enough.
• Hack together some scripts to automatically create the files for each CSE. You get bonus points for automatically uploading to each CSE via FTP.
• Use a third party self service tool to syndicate your feeds self service style. MerchantAdvantage is a great desktop tool for this, it is priced at $695 per month with no limits on websites, products or CSEs.

Third Party Syndication

Use a third party system to automatically create and syndicate many feeds from one file that you upload. This is ideal for smaller eCommerce sites with approximately 5-10k products. Here are some companies that provide this service:

• GoDataFeed — Plans available for $50/$75 per month, with a 5,000 SKU limit.
• SingleFeed — Plans starting at $99 per month, with a 100,000 SKU limit.
• VersaFeed — Plans starting at $195 per month, with a 10,000 SKU limit.

Full Service Syndication & Managment

I would suggest using a small but reputable agency to syndicate your feeds, they are generally prices better than the big guys but give you a lot of personal attention. Here are a couple of such companies:

• Blue Cherry Group
• CPC Strategy

Another option is to go with a full service management solution from one of the big guys. I’ve had pretty good success with ChannelAdvisor specifically.

• ChannelAdvisor
• ChannelIntelligence
• Mercent

Do you have any experience with any of the companies listed above? Do you know of another company that provides such a service? Please let us know in the comments.

Photo Credit: alles-schlumpf

Product Categorization

The hardest part about syndicating products to all the Comparison Shopping Engines (CSE), is categorizing products properly according to each individual taxonomy. When you invest the extra time and categorize everything correctly, you will definitely see a boost in your click-through rate and conversions. If you have a large data feed you should consider mapping your categories to the corresponding category on PriceGrabber.

Merchant Logos

When a customer comes to a page comparing product prices from 10 sellers, the merchant logo option will help your listing stick out. Logos are not free though, PriceGrabber charges an additional $0.10 per click logo listings. However, like everything else in life: you get what you pay for. Logo listings have historically show higher conversion rates than products listed without them.

Merchant Reviews

It is imperative to maintain a positive rating on PriceGrabber as well as all CSEs. Not all customers shop by price only, sometimes a customer will pay a few dollars more to purchase from someone with a higher rating than you. The best idea is to push your customers to review their purchase.

Featured Sellers

PriceGrabber is one of the few CSEs that offer the ability to have your products listed with a Featured Seller status. You will need to talk to your PriceGrabber account representative to get pricing information and sign up for it. In the categories that I have tried Featured Seller product listings I have seen a boost in conversions, although I’m not sure what kind of performance it would have in a heavily saturated category such as digital cameras and iPods.

Does PriceGrabber work for you? Tell us in the comments.

Categorizing your products properly on each comparison shopping engine is one of the most important parts of your product listings. Sometimes having a product in the wrong category can get you many wasteful clicks and will cost you an arm and a leg at the same time. On the other hand, having your product in the correct categories will get you more relevant clicks with a higher chance of converting into a sale.

There are a couple of ways to ensure that your products are displayed in the correct categories.

Manually Tag Items

Most shopping cart systems allows for many product attributes. You can use this to create a hidden attributes for each product, and then set the value of each comparison shopping engine category name or ID number. You want to do this inside of your shopping cart system so that the data is saved and exported with your newly generated feeds.

This solution is ideal for small product catalogs where entering the information manually is easily done.

Map Categories

If you have many products and entering the category information one by one is not an option, try mapping your categories for theirs. You will basically create a list of all your categories and the corresponding CSE category. Every time you generate your feed files, have it look up the category name based on your mapping.

If All Else Fails

Alternatively you can just submit your category names and let the CSE do the mapping. Just keep in mind that this may have poor results.

If you utilize your own category names in your feeds, you will want to bid 0.00 on any items that somehow wind up in completely irrelevant categories. This will save you from unnecessary spend.

Bottom Line

Do it once and do it right.

Sometimes it’s hard to stick out on shopping comparison engines. Every little tweak can help. Adding your logo to your listings will definitely raise your click through rate (CTR). This may be fairly obvious to some merchants, but many merchants don’t include their logo with their listings.

Aside from laziness, there are other reasons not include your logo with your listings. The main reason is cost. Most CSEs charge extra for use of their mechant logo program. However, if you can afford it or if you still have a decent return on investment, you should include your logo.

If you are not sure if it’s worth it for you, run a test for two weeks or a month and see how you click through rate, and in effect your return on investment increases.

Image Credit: Shopfin.org

When you have a large feed, there is usually a very long tail of products that send traffic to your site. Sometimes you can get one or two clicks on a thousand different products. You may not notice the cost of each click on it’s own, but it starts to add up. With a standard Kill Report it’s hard to get rid of the long tail because you don’t have enough metrics.

When & Where

In extreme cases where you cannot stomach the excessive costs of a specific shopping engine (CSE) and you are unable to lower the spend through other methods, it is recommended to send a feed with only the brands that have performed well historically. Keep in mind that by running an inclusion only feed, you are also getting rid of products that may perform well. So keep testing the feed by adding new products and monitor it for changes.

Bottom Line

You might stop a lot of quality traffic by sending an inclusion only feed. You might also save your business a ton of money. Keep your eyes open and watch the performance.