product feeds and ecommerce: how the quality of your product data can impact your business

PRODUCT FEEDS AND ECOMMERCEHow the quality of your product data can impact your business

© Bright North 2015

© Bright North 2015 PAGE: 001

Executive Summary 002

What Are Product Feeds? 003

The Problem With Product Feeds 005

Why Should You Care? 007

5 Things You Can And Should Do 010

Conclusion 016

How We Can Help 018

Clients 020

Get In Touch 021

Contents


Product Feeds are now an integral part of any ecommerce

channel strategy.

They allow merchants to take their products to a wider

audience, but there are subtleties to their creation and

delivery that may cause issues for the unwary.

We discuss why Product Feeds matter and what merchants

can do to ensure they get the best service from their current

feed provider and maximise their conversion rate across

their channels.

Executive Summary


What Are Product Feeds?


Primarily, they’re a technology that allows a merchant to

publish their inventory to external sales channels, expanding

their reach and enabling increased conversions.

Comparison Shopping Engines, Affiliate Networks, channel partners,

advertising systems, Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay and many

others demand clear, accurate and validated product data.

Good feeds are generated from clear, detailed product

information on your systems, and are quickly and reliably

formatted for each of your output channels.

Output channels vary wildly in their requirements for the

formatting and validation of your data; Google Merchant

Centre, Amazon, eBay and the Affiliate Networks all have

differing, separately evolving and complex requirements.

Channel Intelligence

Marketplaces Publishers

CSEs + More...

Data Files Clients

Data Files Website Scraping

APIs Merchant Web

Platforms

SFTP API


The Problem With Product Feeds


At Bright North, we work with feeds from a wide variety

of different merchants, multiple feed providers and a large

number of formats.

It’s become apparent that the lack of consistency in the feeds,

combined with high error rates, poor reporting and a lack of

transparency across the sector are leading to merchants losing

significant revenue.

In the case of one of the UK’s largest retail and fashion groups,

a lack of transparency from their feed provider resulted in

them being unaware that their entire performance marketing

feed was offline and full of out-of-stock and out-of-date

products, for almost three months.

And in the case of one of the UK’s largest supermarkets,

we found that up to 5% of the products in their feed were

missing images, even though those images were available to

consumers browsing the main site.

In the case of one of the UK’s largest supermarkets, we found that up to 5% of the products in their feed were missing images.


Why Should You Care?


Ultimately, substandard Product Feeds lead to reduced

revenue for merchants, affiliate publishers, networks and

everyone in between.

Consider that the Product Feed is the sole means of providing

these channels with the collateral they need to effectively sell a

retailer’s product, and that this is core information needed by

potential customers to influence buying decisions.

A feed that does not accurately describe each product’s

attributes, pricing and availability will lead to

• customer confusion

• loss of brand trust and capital

• and a corresponding reduction in sales.

In particular, there’s a huge opportunity for increased

conversions through performance channels like affiliate

marketing; one travel company we spoke to attributes 50% of

their entire digital revenue to affiliate marketing alone.

Substandard Product Feeds

lead to reduced revenue for merchants,

affiliate publish-ers, networks and everyone

in between.


Existing research indicates that the provision of high-quality

Product Feeds can lead to

• double-digit increases in conversion,

• a near-doubling in Earnings-per-Click (EPC), and

• a 5-10% increase in customer retention.

Feeds with missing or incorrect product data result in a poor

brand experience, decreased trust and customers buying

from competitors instead.

In an increasingly competitive environment retailers simply cannot

afford to miss out on these conversions through bad product data.


5 Things You Can And Should Do


First impressions count; consumer trust is directly linked to

their first experience with your brand.

Ask your supplier for error reporting to establish where

your product data has missing or incomplete information.

They should be able to give you the percentage of broken

images in your feed, and how many of your products are

being rejected by policies at Google Merchant Centre or

Amazon for example, as an absolute minimum.

There are 5 key factors that can influence how

your feeds perform.

1Accuracy


Sometimes, retailers struggle to match consistent product

details with the amount of info available from manufacturers.

A common problem is missing manufacturer product

identifiers, which are required fields for many marketplaces

including the Google Merchant Centre.

Ensure that your feed provider is picking up all the data

you need. Missing details could see your feed suspended or

even banned from key channels like Google Shopping.

2Completeness


Where available, ask your supplier for distribution reports.

Understand who’s using your feeds and ensure they have

the most recent versions.

Alert your top publishers when feeds are updated, particularly

in the event of new offers or flash sales.

Ensure that your supplier is refreshing your feed in line with

the times you update your product catalogue.

If your feed is out of date then your customers will land on

invalid pages or out-of-stock products, and your conversion

rate will suffer.

3Timeliness


Product feeds are a simple concept, but their implementation

under the hood is complex and relies on many moving parts,

from your platform to the channels you’re pushing to.

Channels change, without notice, systems go down unexpectedly

and product description authors make mistakes.

Make sure that your supplier is clearly communicating with

you on these issues; if they were unable to pull your feed

because something went wrong with your ecommerce

platform, they should be the ones telling you, not leaving it

until you find out days later as your sales tail off.

Great reporting from your supplier will help you to identify

products whose descriptions need rewriting, systems that are

performing poorly at busy times, imagery that should be replaced

and new channels who can help you to increase your sales.

Expect the best from your supplier and they should help you

to drive more conversions.

4Transparency


Make sure that your feed supplier is talking to you. Not

just basic reporting but also proactively suggesting ways

to improve your feeds, increase your conversions and push

your products into new and emerging channels.

Amazon, Google and eBay frequently change the regulations

and recommendations for the content of feeds into their

systems; ensure that your supplier keeps you abreast of these

changes and their impact on your business.

And the next time you find an interesting channel you’d like

to investigate, ask yourself why your supplier hasn’t already

suggested it to you.

5Communication


Conclusion


Product feeds are an integral part of any multi-channel strategy.

Issues can arise when your feed supplier doesn’t communicate

with you, where their technology falls short of the mark,

or where they’re not up-to-date with changes across

channels that might affect how your products are

represented to customers.

Ultimately clear communication, reliable, effective technology

and a commitment to staying current with this ever-changing

industry are the hallmarks of a good feed supplier.

Expect the best from your chosen partner and you can benefit

from real improvements in your bottom line.

Expect the best from your chosen partner and you can benefit from real improvements in your bottom line.


How We Can Help


Bright North’s feed technology, Convolo, pulls product

catalogue data from any source and serves it to any channel

in multiple formats. The system guarantees higher quality

data feeds than any competitor meaning a superior customer

experience and higher sales conversions.

Add to this complete publisher integration, error identification

and augmentation, smart widgets for experience

personalisation and full dashboard reporting enabling full

feed optimisation, and Convolo is the most powerful feed

technology on the market.

Convolo has been developed using a best-in-class technology

stack that enables us to stay current with emerging trends

in ecommerce. This ensures that Convolo will always be

compatible with your stack and that our solution can be

integrated with minimal time and effort, maximizing the time

your products are available to your partners.

To find out more, get in touch at

[email protected]


Clients


Get In Touch

PHONE

+44(0) 20 3598 2217

EMAIL

[email protected]

WEBSITE

www.brightnorth.co.uk

product feeds and ecommerce: how the quality of your product data can impact your business

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