Comparison shopping engines require product information to be uploaded in a file format that asks the client to map products into their system. To accomplish this, a merchant needs to have an understanding of both the platform they are extracting product information from and the destination shopping engine’s incoming file format. It is a rare thing to have these two file formats match. To create a properly formatted feed, a merchant should have a good understanding of feed format file types.
Data feed formats from e-commerce platforms output in either xml, csv or txt tab delimited file types. Data feed formats for comparison shopping engines input in either xml, csv or txt tab delimited file types. XML file formats can be in either rss 1.0, rss 2.0, atom 1.0 or atom 2.0 formats and can maintain many namespace conventions. A reasonable understanding of the variations of these xml file types is helpful in manually formatting and maintaining a constantly changing data feed file. Given the amount of product information in a feed, it is important to be able to move from one format to another quickly and with accuracy.
Once you have established what format your file is in and what format it needs to be converted to, you must ensure your new file format has all of the required attribute fields for the destination engine you are working with.
Attributes
Attributes define the characteristics of 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," and "Chef: Tyler Florence."
Using well defined attributes that contain complete, relevant information is the best way to help shoppers find your product content. Each comparison shopping engine requires a unique set of attributes and can range from the common to the obscure. In formatting your data feed, it is imperative your header row matches the attribute formatting of the destination engine. Capitalization and punctuation count.
Each major comparison shopping engine makes this information available and some even provide a template file.
At minimum, you should be able to provide these 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
There are additional optional attributes available. These attributes may vary in each major comparison shopping engine.
Google Product Search allows an even more specialized attribute which is their custom unique attribute. To create this attribute, you must change the name space in the header row and define what type of entry it is. More information for txt tab delimited format is available here.. In the case of xml formats, you must also declare that namespace in the header of the document. More information on the xml namespace declaration is available here.
Google Product Search is the only comparison shopping engine that allows for this custom unique attribute.
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