Product Feed Optimisation

What Is Product Feed Optimisation?

Product feed optimisation is the strategic process of enhancing product data feeds to increase sales and revenues on shopping channels. It involves thoroughly analysing and fine-tuning multiple elements in the large product data files that get uploaded to ecommerce sites, online retailers, marketplaces, etc.

The key elements optimised in a product feed are – product titles, descriptions, brands, images, pricing, availability, product identifiers like SKU, and additional variant details like size, colour, material, etc. The goal is to ensure that the product details displayed across various channels are accurate, consistent, and compelling and help customers make quick purchase decisions.

Thorough feed optimisation is crucial as even minor errors or outdated information in feeds can drastically reduce product visibility impacting discoverability, site traffic to listings and seller’s profits.

How Do You Optimise A Product Feed?

There are several critical aspects involved in optimising a product feed for maximum reach and sales conversion:

Keyword Optimised Titles & Descriptions: Relevant keywords and phrases which customers frequently use for search queries must be added judiciously to product titles and descriptions to help match user intent and drive relevant traffic. But keyword stuffing should be avoided.

High-Quality Images: Professional high-resolution images that accurately display the product help in higher user engagement and conversion rates. Proper image file names, formats and sizes as needed by different platforms must be used.

Standard Product Categorisation: Products should be carefully mapped to the standard taxonomy classification used by different shopping sites to enable the correct display of products to search customers.

Pricing & Availability Accuracy: Any errors in product pricing and availability details across channels lead to negative customer experience and losses for the seller. Hence 100% accuracy must be ensured.

Feed Format Validations: Rigorous checks for formatting consistency, data inaccuracies, duplications etc. must be done to generate error-free files for platform acceptance.

What Is Product Feed Management?

Product feed management refers to the end-to-end administration of product data feed files for ecommerce channels. It includes:

Data Aggregation: Compiling product details from multiple sources across the organisation into one consolidated feed file.

Processing & Optimisation: Structuring, organising & optimising feed data for each platform as per their specifications.

Feed Creation: Generating files in platform-specific formats like CSV, XML, etc. with accurate data.

Distribution: Uploading feed files to respective channel servers using appropriate tools via FTP, APIs etc.

Monitoring & Maintenance: Tracking feed performance using analytics to address issues, updating feeds regularly with catalogue changes.

It is imperative for online sellers to continuously manage quality product feeds across marketplaces where they sell to avoid problems in product discovery which leads to lost sales.

Why Is Product Feed Management Important?

Consistent product feed management is crucial for retailers and sellers due to the following key reasons:

Complete Product Range Visible

When sellers manually update product catalogues on different marketplaces, errors happen resulting in only some products getting displayed to searching customers versus the complete catalogue.

With careful automated product data management, the complete diversity of sellers’ product lines gets maximum exposure across channels. Expertly optimised elements such as titles, specs, and images across thousands of SKUs result in surging qualified traffic from search and marketplace algorithms accurately reflecting the true breadth of offerings to buyers.

Improved Discoverability

Optimising product feed data elements as per each channel’s specifications plays a huge role in greatly improving product discovery and visibility in search results. For example, crafting engaging search-friendly titles and descriptions that resonate with user search terms is proven to increase click-through rates from listings to product pages by over 30% resulting in more add-to carts.

Standardised product categorisation also leads to more precise indexing based on channel taxonomy that maps user searches to relevant products driving traffic.

Timely Data Updates

Due to frequent catalogue changes, new product additions, pricing updates, inventory fluctuations etc. in fast-changing ecommerce, timely product feed data management is mandatory. Else outdated inaccurate listings alienate customers. Research shows about 60% of customers felt misled coming across incorrect product details.

Efficient automated product feed management systems allow sellers to rapidly upload the latest feeds thereby reflecting catalog changes across channels within hours versus weeks manually. This enables capitalising quickly on new opportunities, offers etc. boosting sales.

Increased Customer Confidence

Customers get easily frustrated coming across invalid, inconsistent product data across channels damaging user experience. However, complete and accurate product information builds immense customer trust in sellers’ reliability.

When high-quality images, correctly mapped specs and transparent availability data reinforce product descriptions, customers make faster purchase decisions up to 45% more often benefitting sales.

Operational Efficiency

For sellers retailing across dozens of marketplaces, manually managing so many product feeds becomes operationally challenging, needing large teams to coordinate it. Automated product feed upload and optimisation tools can compress this complex activity to just a few system-driven steps.

This removes weeks of manual efforts allowing allocation of critical resources to focus on value-adding tasks. Studies indicate process efficiency gains from properly managed feeds increased by over 30% in many organisations.

How Does A Product Feed Work?

The working mechanism of product feeds involves:

Data Compilation: The seller first puts together all required product details like price, image, description, inventory etc. from internal systems into one file.

Feed File Creation: Structured product data files getting generated batchwise via tools, and checked for errors.

Platform Submission: Using file transfer protocols, API integrations etc. feed files get uploaded to the shopping platform’s catalog system based on their specifications.

Indexing: Platform catalog systems via algorithms parse and process the feed data about each product submitting it to their database and search indexes.

Display: When shoppers search for products, the catalog systems match user search input to indexed product data sourcing the most relevant products for display from the seller’s feed.

Best Practices For Optimising Product Feeds

Some key aspects to follow for optimising commerce feeds:

• Include all necessary product attributes needed by every platform in appropriate data formats to meet their technical and content expectations.
• Enrich product titles with relevant search keywords, and highlight USPs without over-optimisation. Craft engaging descriptions bringing out product benefits.
• Carefully arrange product categories and labels per platform taxonomy for correct display on search results.
• Use local high-quality image content emphasising unique selling points with proper tags, formats, and resolutions.
• Ensure extremely accurate price, quantity, colour, size and other associated data to provide customers with correct information.
• Rigorously validate feeds via automated tools and manual checks to avoid file errors, data inconsistencies etc. delaying processing.
• Frequently revalidate and update feed files on catalog changes, new additions etc. to reflect the latest offerings.
• Consider feed optimisation systems to scale up products and platforms while retaining control of feed quality.

Benefits Of Product Feed Optimisation

The major advantages of optimising product feeds are:

Increased Visibility: Well-optimised feeds enhance discoverability on marketplaces and search engines enabling greater visibility of the entire product lineup to more searching users resulting in higher qualified website traffic.

Boosted Conversion Rates: Compelling and accurate product data builds customer trust about brand and product claims helping make quicker purchase decisions thereby directly boosting sales conversions.

Enhanced User Experience: Relevant and clear product catalog information helps match customer needs with appropriate offerings accurately creating superior shopping experiences that build loyalty.

Improved Sales Volumes: Combining the advantage of increased visibility and higher conversions from optimised feeds directly translates to exponential overall sales growth and revenues across channels.

Greater Efficiency: Automated optimisation of product feeds saves weeks of effort over manually handling it while ensuring the best outcomes across customer touchpoints.

How Much Does Feeds Optimisation Cost?

The cost of product feed optimisation varies depending on the number of products, platforms covered and specific requirements. However, expert services need not be expensive given the exponential sales growth and process efficiency gains generated from quality-optimised feeds.

Mid-sized online sellers dealing with thousands to tens of thousands of daily catalogue changes would need extensive automation costing a minimum of £650 to £1000 per month. Full-service feed optimisation providers refine product data as per pre-defined KPIs for as low as 2% marginal fees on additional sales revenue generated. They offer guaranteed ROI validating their service quality.

For large enterprises, managing millions of product data daily across regions has massive complexity. On-premise feed management systems require a high one-time investment of £20,000 and more for hardware/software plus ongoing expenses on resources.

Leading feed optimisation companies charge between £2000 to £6500 monthly for their fully managed smart services personalised to each client’s infrastructure constraints, channel requirements and expansion plans to deliver strong economies of scale.

While evaluating feed optimisation costs, sellers must analyse from a lifetime value perspective. The dynamic changes in catalogs, channels and shopper needs require continuous optimisations for sustained growth rather than one-time setups.

So choosing experienced partners with robust technologies provides the best ROI as their expertise and learnings greatly improve key metrics like product discoverability, site traffic, order values and operational productivity year after year.

Reposition’s Product Feed Optimisation Services

Reposition offers unmatched expertise in all aspects of product feed optimisation tailored to the seller’s specific needs at an affordable cost:

New Feed Building & Onboarding Support: We create new standardised and channel-compliant product feeds for sellers expanding to new platforms in quick turnaround times helping accelerate channel adoption.

Feed Optimisation: Our data analysts optimise existing product feeds to dramatically improve online visibility, traffic and conversions by leveraging industry best practices.

Feed Management: We help sellers streamline the critical but complex tasks involved in product feed handling across platforms through partially or fully managed services.

Custom Feed Solutions: For unique catalogue needs, we provide custom product data feed solutions tailored to your internal systems and channel requirements supporting easy automation.

With years of specialisation in feed optimisation and a proven track record of delivering outstanding ROI to clients, we are perfectly positioned to be your trusted feed management partner.