Why Datafeeds Can Be Useful In Comparison Shopping Engines
Author: Gregory Mulford
Author: Gregory Mulford
A datafeed (aka a data feed) is defined as an electronic transmission of inventory data from a server to another one. A comparison shopping engine (or shopping search engine) shows different lists of costs for specific products to potential customers. Combine the two together, and what would happen? Yahoo Shopping, Google Base, Amazon, Bing Cashback, plus more. All of these websites have developed into go to sites for potential buyers searching for items to buy online (from an inexpensive do dad, to overpriced memorabilia), or if not really buying, at least getting a comparing price for a local store. Seeing as these are the types of sites that potential buyers are browsing, anyone desiring to get wider sales for what they have for sale most likely are wanting to have a few of these available on one or more of these shopping search engines. Taking the required amount of time to add products to these sites often goes a long way towards expanding your sales. However, inserting a product (one by one, field by field, and picture after picture) is a time consuming and labor intensive process when you have many items for sale. Did you know that this often is redundant for many of the shopping engines that people most likely wish to advertise with? Why I say this is because many of the highly trafficked shopping search engines now offer customers the capability of uploading site specific formatted data feeds. A data feed, when in use with a shopping search engines, basically is a list of columns which you need to fill in with pertinent information (mostly being in excel CSV format or tab delimited TXT format). I'll try to show you a rough sample of what to expect (of course not forgetting that it should look more like an excel sheet). Cell 1 = Product Name, Cell 2 = Price, Cell 3 = Location, etc., with a few more fields possible. So if you wanted to make a product data feed sheet, it would be something like this (again, formatted to mimic an excel sheet). product name Price Location Superman DVD $12.65 New York Where data feeds really start to shine however, is the ability to upload multiple products within the same sheet. So using the example from above, the item I wanted to sell was a Superman DVD. Now, assume I also have some more movies such as a Spiderman DVD. In order to add this film to the list, all I would have to do is to insert the required information in the data fields below my original product. Here's an example. product name Price Location Superman DVD $12.65 New York Spiderman DVD $9.95 New York ect. So when using a data feed, you are capable of including your whole catalog of items for sale into a ecommerce shopping engine sites with one sheet instead of one at a time. As an added bonus, suppose you have to make price adjustments to some of your products which you have already uploaded. To do a fast alternation, all that is needed is for you to adjust the price field in your saved data feed form to show as the newly desired price, resubmit the corrected list to the search engine again, and the altered prices will now be shown online. This also will work for any field you might need to alter. These are sites which all use data feeds. Google Base, Yahoo Shopping, Shopzilla, Pricegrabber, Nextag, Shopping.com, Bing Cashback, Become, Smarter.com, Pronto, Amazon Product Ads. Rember these points. 1. Data feeds are designed to make possible multiple item insertion into a data base (ecommerce shopping engine site) 2. To use a data feed, put in the required information into the correct cells. 3. When an item needs an update, this can is accomplished by altering the relevant information cells in a data feed list and resubmitting. 4. The majority of the website which have the highest amount of possible sales make use of data feeds. A datafeed (aka a data feed) is defined as an electronic transmission of inventory data from a server to another one. A comparison shopping engine (or shopping search engine) shows different lists of costs for specific products to potential customers. Combine the two together, and what would happen? Yahoo Shopping, Google Base, Amazon, Bing Cashback, plus more. All of these websites have developed into go to sites for potential buyers searching for items to buy online (from an inexpensive do dad, to overpriced memorabilia), or if not really buying, at least getting a comparing price for a local store. Seeing as these are the types of sites that potential buyers are browsing, anyone desiring to get wider sales for what they have for sale most likely are wanting to have a few of these available on one or more of these shopping search engines. Taking the required amount of time to add products to these sites often goes a long way towards expanding your sales. However, inserting a product (one by one, field by field, and picture after picture) is a time consuming and labor intensive process when you have many items for sale. Did you know that this often is redundant for many of the shopping engines that people most likely wish to advertise with? Why I say this is because many of the highly trafficked shopping search engines now offer customers the capability of uploading site specific formatted data feeds. A data feed, when in use with a shopping search engines, basically is a list of columns which you need to fill in with pertinent information (mostly being in excel CSV format or tab delimited TXT format). I'll try to show you a rough sample of what to expect (of course not forgetting that it should look more like an excel sheet). Cell 1 = Product Name, Cell 2 = Price, Cell 3 = Location, etc., with a few more fields possible. So if you wanted to make a product data feed sheet, it would be something like this (again, formatted to mimic an excel sheet). product name Price Location Superman DVD $12.65 New York Where data feeds really start to shine however, is the ability to upload multiple products within the same sheet. So using the example from above, the item I wanted to sell was a Superman DVD. Now, assume I also have some more movies such as a Spiderman DVD. In order to add this film to the list, all I would have to do is to insert the required information in the data fields below my original product. Here's an example. product name Price Location Superman DVD $12.65 New York Spiderman DVD $9.95 New York ect. So when using a data feed, you are capable of including your whole catalog of items for sale into a ecommerce shopping engine sites with one sheet instead of one at a time. As an added bonus, suppose you have to make price adjustments to some of your products which you have already uploaded. To do a fast alternation, all that is needed is for you to adjust the price field in your saved data feed form to show as the newly desired price, resubmit the corrected list to the search engine again, and the altered prices will now be shown online. This also will work for any field you might need to alter. These are sites which all use data feeds. Google Base, Yahoo Shopping, Shopzilla, Pricegrabber, Nextag, Shopping.com, Bing Cashback, Become, Smarter.com, Pronto, Amazon Product Ads. Rember these points. 1. Data feeds are designed to make possible multiple item insertion into a data base (ecommerce shopping engine site) 2. To use a data feed, put in the required information into the correct cells. 3. When an item needs an update, this can is accomplished by altering the relevant information cells in a data feed list and resubmitting. 4. The majority of the website which have the highest amount of possible sales make use of data feeds. About the Author:
Gregory Mulford is an expatriate living and working in China for the last 3 years. He is currently the marketing director for "Shenzhen CE and IT Limited" as well as its online store front
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