Do you have an E-commerce website? Boost Your Online exposure and conversions with Shopping Feeds.

MoreVisibility - July 2, 2008

Do you have an E-Commerce Website? Boost your Online Exposure and Conversions with Shopping Feeds

E-commerce websites always have a difficult challenge with organic/natural placement for a myriad of reasons. Some of the most common challenges are frequent content changes when new products are added, replaced, or removed, finding a shopping cart or a CMS solution that is SEO friendly as well as user friendly (and affordable)! This list can go on and on.

An E-commerce website should not rely on solely driving direct traffic in order to garner a profit. By utilizing shopping feeds, you can gain valuable exposure in very highly trafficked shopping portals, such as Amazon, Biz Rate, NexTag, Google Base (aka: Froogle), and Yahoo! Shopping, just to name a few. If you are an E-commerce site and haven’t looked into shopping feeds yet, you should learn how to gain additional exposure through these channels.

So, how do you add shopping feeds (also referred to as product feeds) to your online marketing? The first step is always determining which portals you want your products to appear in. Each portal has a specific file format in order to be accepted. If your feed doesn’t meet their requirements, your products won’t be displayed. This is where many e-commerce websites fail in executing a proper shopping feed strategy. The feed is created in Excel and requires various attributes of your product (these can include a picture, price, size options, color choices, etc). Be sure to fill the attribute requirements out completely, verifying all required fields have been tackled, and check the submission status after your initial submission to be sure it was accepted. Turning away from the project without checking the submission status is another point where companies frequently get off track.

Keep in mind that even after your product feeds have been submitted successfully, requirements set forth today will not always work tomorrow! Shopping feeds require continuous supervision. In addition, your prices may change, and you’ll likely add new products. As you make the changes on your website and product offerings, you should take the extra time to update your product feeds as well.

So now you may be thinking…the task of instituting shopping feeds can seem daunting, but let me reassure you that there are many benefits including:

• Branding
• Product exposure
• Additional revenue opportunities
• Access to targeted buyers

If you are interested in increasing your presence online, putting your products in front of targeted customers should make common sense. If establishing or maintaining the feeds becomes too time consuming then you should consider having an agency, like MoreVisibility manage them on your behalf.