Benefits of an E-Commerce Product Feed

Product feeds are an amazing source of information – for both retailers and customers. A lot of online buyers do prefer to look at the product feed before purchasing anything directly from the website. A well-written and relevant product feed is something they would rather trust.

What is a Product Feed

Product Feed is a structured data file (usually an XML file)with information about all products for a particular e-commerce website. Typically, it’s a database of products of a website that plays a very important role for any Ecommerce website, shopping portal, search ads etc. These data feeds are used to represent the current inventory for sale.

A typical product data feed will include

• Manufacturer’s part number
• Manufacturer
• Product URL
• Your part number
• UPC codes
• Product name
• Short description
• Long description
• Price
• Primary image
• Weight
• Size and dimensions
• Country of origin
• Technical specifications
• Category

In short, a product data feed will include everything from product information to price and its availability, and should ideally be updated or refreshed at least once a day for optimum results.

Why is a Product Feed important

Product feeds are used for a number of purposes – first and foremost being for showcasing your current inventory of products. It is also used for product level marketing – like comparison shopping, affiliate marketing, Google shopping, pay per click campaigns, social media marketing etc.

These product feeds are an excellent tool for enabling third-party site search vendors, helping them with a quick update on the changes in your product catalog – therefore, optimizing your website’s search function capability.

As a manufacturer, if you are looking for distributors for your products, a product feed will allow relevant distributors to update their databases with your products – saving time and effort.

Product Feeds also help in gaining popularity of your product, as it allows you to enlist the products in several websites –increasing your brand visibility across websites and channels.

As an e-commerce website owner, a good product feed is a pocket-friendly way to participate in multi-channel marketing and widen your customer base.

Customers get benefitted from these product feeds because it enables them to compare similar products, their prices, and dealers of such products. This kind of information helps them to grab good deals on purchases.

Since your products get listed on multiple websites, it helps in generating leads for your website, as the products are more likely to appear in search results. All this helps in increasing the traffic for your website.

Final Word

Providing detailed and accurate information about your product is appreciated by all, and a well-integrated product data feed can prove to be a great asset to your website and business, and can potentially help your business generate more revenue and get more customers.