Product feed Beginner's guide

What is a product feed?

Product feed is a file containing the description and attributes of products available in the offer of an online store.The feed usually comes in XML or CSV format, and its structure is adjusted to the specifications of the marketing channels we use.

What does a sample product feed look like?

You can find one here: http://feedink.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/04/feedink-pla-feed-sample-en.xml

Why do I need a product feed?

If you want to feature your products in price comparison engines, first you have to generate your own product feed. It’s exactly the same in the case of Google Product Listing Ads (PLA).The product feed enables communication between your store and the platform for which it has been made available. That’s why the quality of data provided in the feed is extremely important in terms of getting satisfactory results in this marketing channel. The more information we include in the product feed, the bigger the chance that the customer will find our offer.

Product feed format

There’s no shortage of partners using product feeds and that’s why a variety of formats is used.The most popular integrations can be found in this section: http://feedink.com/integrations/

Good practice

1. Try to update your feed as often as possible; normally, we should do it daily. Still, the more frequently we do it, the greater the outcome of our efforts.2. Go beyond the minimum of required attributes. Your product feed should include as much information as possible. For instance, it is good practice to indicate the price before and after a discount, or to assign bestseller attribute to a particular product group.3. Descriptions, titles and pictures of your products should be unique, distinguishing you from the competition operating in the same sector. This will have an impact on SEO and allow your products to be found even based on “long tail” queries.