What is a Product Feed and Why Is It Needed?
A product feed is a file that contains information about the products in your online store. It is used to transmit data to marketplaces, advertising platforms (such as Google Shopping, Yandex Market, Facebook Ads), and other external services. A feed helps automate the process of updating your product assortment, prices, and stock levels, ensuring that they are always up-to-date without manual intervention.
Creating product feeds manually is not feasible because it is a very labor-intensive process, especially when dealing with a large product assortment. While most CMS systems for online stores have built-in tools to generate product feeds, none of them provide the level of flexibility and detailed customization needed for business purposes. Therefore, it is crucial to use professional product feed generation tools, such as NotPIM.com. This service automates the feed generation process, taking into account all the specific needs and requirements of your business.
Services like NotPIM.com offer solutions for automatically generating product feeds in various formats, which is particularly convenient for online stores that need to regularly update product information on multiple platforms.
Common Product Feed Formats
There are several popular product feed formats, each with its own features and use cases:
- XML — This is the most common format, supported by most marketplaces and advertising platforms, such as Google Shopping and Facebook Ads.
- YML — A format developed by Yandex specifically for Yandex.Market. It takes into account the platform’s requirements and has become the standard in Russia and the CIS.
- CSV — A tabular format that is convenient for processing and analyzing data, often used for exporting and importing products between different systems.
- JSON — This format is used in API integrations and some advertising systems, such as Facebook Ads.
- Google Sheets — A format that is convenient for manually editing data and is often used for small catalogs and team collaboration.
NotPIM.com supports generating feeds in any of these formats, offering flexibility and convenience when working with various platforms.
How Often Should You Update the Data in the Feed?
The frequency of feed updates depends on changes in your store. The main factors that trigger feed updates are:
- Changes in product stock levels.
- The arrival of new products.
- Price changes (especially if they are influenced by currency fluctuations).
- Significant updates to product descriptions (such as fixing errors in the brand, article number, photos, etc.).
It is recommended to update the product feed at least once a day. This is usually done in the morning, for example, updating the feed by 8:00 AM, so that partners can download it and start their day with the most current data. However, in order to do this, the store needs to update all product data at least by 7:50 AM to allow a few minutes for the feed generation process.
It is crucial that the data in the product feed always matches the current information on the website. Discrepancies can lead to partners losing trust in the feed. When data does not match, partners might start looking for alternative ways to obtain the correct information, such as developing crawlers for your website, which can create additional challenges and load on your site.
If you or your partners encounter problems with product feeds, NotPIM.com can help by setting up automatic feed generation on a schedule, with filters tailored to each partner’s needs.
Do All Products Need to Be Included in the Feed?
No, you should only include products in the feed that are relevant for a particular platform. For example:
- For marketplaces, it is essential to only send products that are available in stock.
- In advertising campaigns, it is better to exclude products with low margins or those that are out of stock.
- For affiliate programs, you can create a separate feed for promotional items.
NotPIM.com allows you to create multiple feeds for different purposes, which simplifies working with various sales channels.
Can a Product Feed Be Used for Content Distribution?
Yes, a product feed can be used not only for marketplaces and advertising, but also for automatically filling content on your website. For example:
- Automatically updating product cards on the website.
- Importing product data from other sources.
- Updating prices and stock levels without manual editing.
NotPIM.com helps not only generate and verify feeds, but also populate your website with content from external sources, significantly simplifying assortment management.
Where Should You Store the Generated Product Feeds?
The product feed file does not necessarily need to be stored on the main domain of your store. An optimal solution is to upload the feed to a public storage location, where partners can download it on their schedules. It is considered good practice to place a link to a common product registry in the “For Partners” section or a similar section of your site. This makes it easier for partners to access up-to-date information and simplifies interaction with external services.
NotPIM.com allows you to create subdomains in the form of a “business card” website, where your store can set up public files, post announcements, and offer partners automatic feed generation in the formats they need. This is a convenient solution for businesses aiming for transparency and automating data exchange.
Conclusion
A product feed is an indispensable tool for online stores that helps automate the transmission of data to marketplaces, advertising systems, and other platforms. To work effectively, it is important to choose the right feed format, regularly update the information, and use specialized tools, such as NotPIM.com, to simplify feed management and improve content handling efficiency.
