What is product feed management?

In the field of online sales, visibility is a core issue. It is essential for e-vendors to be present on networks dedicated to online sales. Yet it is just as important to provide these platforms with comprehensive product catalogues, that are up-to-date and accurately filled in. This is precisely what product feed management makes sure of.

A product feed is an incoming feed enabling an e-vendor to export their product catalogue to an online sales platform, such as a marketplace, price comparison site, affiliated site, etc. The feed generally comes in the form of an XML or CSV file, and contains everything necessary for recognising a product, advertising it online and ensuring good SEO on the targeted platform. This includes product names, prices, features, availability, etc.

The importance of product feed management

Sending your product feed to a platform like Google Shopping or Amazon is not enough. You still have to make sure the site approves the feed and integrates your products to its categories, then advertises them in online visitors’ search results. Yet construction problems within the product feed and feature errors are not rare and can impact your sales – or the platform may even simply refuse access to you. Product feed management helps reduce these risks to zero, which is a definite prerequisite for selling on marketplaces and other price comparison sites.

The advantages of product feed management

Product feed management enables you to:

• ensure good product catalogue viability before export onto sales platforms;
• refresh your content in real time (prices, availability, delivery options, etc.);
• manage your orders originating from various advertising networks (for instance: Google Shopping and Amazon);
• manage your stock levels in real time and guarantee product availability;
• monitor offer profitability (by comparing your various costs with your net profit for each product sold);
• optimising your return on investment.

This is of course if you wish to use a relevant product feed management solution – to the likes of those provided by Lengow.