All comparison shopping engines rely on product data feeds, submitted by merchants, to populate their index of product and company information. A data feed is a spreadsheet that lists all of the company’s products along with numerous attributes, which are defined characteristics or qualities of the products. Data feeds can be exported from most e-commerce platforms in an xml, csv, or txt file.
Every data feed must be formatted to the specification of each individual shopping engine, since they each have their own requirements. It is critical that each feed contains all of the required attribute fields for the engine you are working with.
Use of Attributes
Attributes define the features or characteristics of your products. Making sure that the attributes in your product data feed contain complete and relevant information is the best way to ensure that shoppers find your products. Each attribute consists of a name and one or more values (NAME OF ATTRIBUTE: VALUE OF ATTRIBUTE). For example, if someone were describing a recipe they wanted to share, they might use attributes such as "Theme: Brunch" "Ingredients: Salmon" "Chef: Tyler Florence."
Each comparison shopping engine requires a unique set of attributes that can range from the common to the obscure. Merchants also have the choice in some shopping engines to utilize recommended and optional attributes in addition to those that are required. Google Shopping allows merchants to create their own specialized custom attributes.
At minimum, you should be able to provide the following product attributes:
- Product Name (Title)
- Description
- Price
- ID (Each product should have a unique product ID number)
- Condition of Product (New, used or refurbished)
- Category (For best results, this should exactly match the destination engine’s category taxonomy)
- Image Link (Full link to an image of the product)
- Product Link (Full link to the product page within your web site)
Other common attributes may include:
- Size
- Color
- Payment Type
- Shipping Weight
- Quantity
- Availability
- Expiration Date
- UPC
- Manufacturer
- MPN
- SKU
To optimize your data feed, use all of the required and relevant optional attributes to provide as much information as possible. When formatting your data feed, it is imperative that your header row matches the attribute formatting of the destination engine and remember that capitalization and punctuation count.
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