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While plenty of people just search, plenty of people browse or search then browse/refine.

If you’re not including attributes, you’re not showing up for those people who browse or browse/refine.

Here’s your proof. There are 15,610 watches available on PriceGrabber.

However, if you add up the total number of products under ‘Fastener Type’, you only get 4954 products:

In other words, 60% of the watches on PriceGrabber will not be found through browsing the ‘Fastener Type’ refinement attribute. Now I’m not quite sure how PriceGrabber is getting it’s refinement attributes (partly from the manufacturers, partly from data feeds, I’d assume), but if it’s at all from data feeds, then it’s worth adding this type of attribute information to your feed (in the title, description, etc.).

And this rule doesn’t just apply to PriceGrabber. All of the shopping engines pride themselves on being able to pull out relevant attribute information. If there’s no attribute information in your data feed, your products will not be found by anyone refining their browse/search results.

The moral of the story: Include as much data as possible in your feed. And if there isn’t a field defined in a data feed spec which you think should be there, make them create one (heard of Google Base’s custom attributes???). You’re the expert on your products, not the shopping search engines.

You want an example?

My friends at Evogear are experts at playing in the snow (skiing, boarding, staying warm, etc.). Their refinement options for skis include brand, ability level, size range, waist width, and price. I’m a skier (and beginner boarder). The first thing I look at when purchasing skis is size range. Evogear provides a snazzy little pop with the following information:

Do any of the shopping engines provide ski refinement by size. Don’t think so. Because of this Evogear’s conversion rate probably takes a hit as consumers will search for skis, click through on a product, and potentially find the perfect pair of skis in the not so perfect size. Evogear pays for the click, but gets no conversion. ROI goes down. Evogear pulls it’s listings from the shopping engines, and everyone suffers.

Yes, I’m generalizing and over-simplifying a bit, but not much.

Disclaimer: All optimization strategies are suggestions and do not guarantee success (although I wouldn’t be writing these tips if I didn’t think they mattered). These are data feed optimization tactics I have used or others have suggested which I think everyone should at least think about, if not test (just test, please). Use at your own risk (you can always go back to the old, boring, pedestrian way of doing things). Or don’t use the tips and write a comment telling me I’m insane.

Before you try to refine your data feed, you first need to do the following:
-Set up a log analyzer program with conversion tracking
-Append shopping engine specific tracking URLS to the end of your product links (do not submit the same exact link to multiple engines)
At the very least, with this data in hand, you can track conversion per engine and sales/revenue per engine and hook this information up with cost data provided by the shopping engines to figure out simple things like engine-wide cost per acquisition (CPA) and ROI. From there, you can completely turn off an engine if it’s not a profitable marketing channel. Alternatively, if you’re doing great on all the shopping engines, you can increase all categories/keywords bids.

While completely acceptable, the problem with this strategy is that it looks at each engine as a basket of products when there are most likely some products which are hurting your overall ROI and other products which are helping your overall ROI.

In other words, a smarter (but more time consuming) strategy would be to figure out profitablity by product listing/SKU. If you want to succeed on the shopping engines, you must do this. If you are thinking ‘but Yahoo! Product Submit, Shopping.com, and others don’t provide this data,’ you’re right. Here’s a simple workaround: take SKU based reporting information from Shopzilla, NexTag, and Become, and generalize the profitability findings across the other shopping engines. Truthfully, I hate this strategy because traffic from Shopping.com is different than traffic from PriceGrabber is different than traffic from Smarter.com, but it’s the best way to handle the situation for most small and medium sized retailers. At the same time, everyone should be demanding (send an email a day) SKU level reporting from the engines which don’t offer it.
As for which products to cut and which to keep, I’d start by grouping your SKUs into three groups:

-Red: Products that get lots of clicks but no sales OR sales at a very negative ROI
-Green: Products that get clicks and sales at a positive ROI
-Yellow: Everything else

Before doing the obvious – cutting the ‘Red’ products from all paid shopping engines – make sure to check the categorization for your products. I’ve seen handbags, sweaters, and camcorders show up in the iPod category with proper, non-iPod pictures, but still get a ton of irrelevant clicks. While it’s a long shot that is the fix for your ‘Red’ products, it’s worth at least a quick check on the outliers. Ok, now cut your ‘Red’ products.

Now, as opposed to cutting the ‘Yellow’ products, take the time to look at the feed attributes – product name, product description, category, etc – and optimize the listing. Maybe your title is misleading. Maybe your description is pathetic. Maybe your image is so small that you’re getting curiosity clicks. Maybe you didn’t include shipping cost information. Maybe you didn’t include tax information. In other words, spend time optimizing your feed. These are the types of activities that you do with your PPC campaigns, why not dedicate the same effort to the shopping engines.

After cutting the ‘Reds’ and optimizing the ‘Yellows’, resubmit your feed to the shopping engines. Repeat this process once per week.

Disclaimer: All optimization strategies are suggestions and do not guarantee success. These are data feed optimization tactics I have used or others have suggested which I think everyone should at least think about, if not test. Use at your own risk. Or don’t use, just keep coming back.

Related Posts (which got me in trouble with some shopping engines)
-A Case For Product Level Bidding (June 5, 2006)
-Guest Commentary – JP Werlin on Product Level Bidding (June 6, 2005)

While Google Base has allowed users to create Adwords ads through their feeds for a bit, Google Base is now promoting this funcationality on the creating your bulk upload page

Google Base wants you to think about your Adwords ad as a set of attributes: ads_enabled, ad_text_line_1, ad_text_line_2, ad_text_line_3, ad_text_visible_url, and max_cpc.

Merchants don’t even have to pick keywords as Google targets the ads automatically. Hmmm. Makes a lot of sense, doesn’t it?

If you decide to go this route, it use as many Google Base defined and custom attributes as possible. The more information you give Google about your products, the more triggers there will be for your Adwords ads.

Paul O’Brien is a smart guy who knows the shopping comparison space, having worked at one years ago, and now responsible for managing feeds (among other online marketing activites) for HP Home & Office. You should definitely read his Kitchen Sink posts:

-The Kitchen Sink: Part 1 argues that merchants should treat their shopping engine listings like a catalog and include all product listings regardless of ROI

-The Kitchen Sink: Part 2 reinforces Part 1 by discussing a frustrating buying experience on Shopping.com

-The Kitchen Sink: Part 3 talks about improving ROI on the shopping engines

While I appreciate Paul’s arguments for including all product listings on the shopping engines regardless of ROI, it’s not something I recommend to small and medium sized businesses. I’ve just never met an online SME that could justify a marketing channel with a negative ROI.
Shopping comparison engines are a crucial part of the online shopping industry, with 10s of millions of consumers ending up on one or more of the engines each month (the shopping engines are extremely aggressive search marketers). A great reason to get up and running on the engines. Furthermore, Paul references a Yahoo! study which says that “of the total $32.5 billion spent on the Consumer Electronics products tracked in this study, online research influenced 77 percent or $25.1 billion.” Another great reason to get up and running on the engines…if your products can also be found in the local Best Buy.

While Paul’s strategy might make sense to larger businesses with large scale online and offline business operations, I would argue that small and medium sized businesses should actively manage their data feeds and cut listings which aren’t performing. And yes, SingleFeed just implemented functionality that easily enables merchants to send different product sets to different engines.

Tomorrow I’ll talk about some strategies for cutting your feeds…for now, make sure to read through Paul’s posts and make sure to set up a 3rd part tracking system ASAP.

Disclaimer: All optimization strategies are suggestions and do not guarantee success. These are data feed optimization tactics I have used or others have suggested which I think everyone should at least think about, if not test.

Cyber Monday is only 10 days away.  If you’re not up on the shopping comparison engines, you’re potentionally losing out on valuable traffic.  And since Google Base/Froogle is free, there’s no reason not to submit your feed.

Sign up for SingleFeed’s Google Base/Froogle submission service and we’ll waive the $9.99 fee for the first month. I’m only making this announcement here and on LoveYourFeed.  It will not be found by going directly to SingleFeed.

Important things to note:
1.  This offer is only valid for merchants with ecommerce sites that at a minimum accept credit cards or Google Checkout.  If you’re an eBay or Amazon Marketplace only seller, for example, we can’t help you right this moment.
2.  You will only receive 1 free month of service.  If you don’t cancel your account, you will be charged only $9.99/month starting a month after you set up your account with SingleFeed.  [Only $9.99/month to have SingleFeed manage and submit yor feed as well as give you optimization advice...that's a steal!]
3.  You will have to fill out our SingleFeed – which has more required fields than what you’re probably currently submitting to Google Base.  It will take time to create the feed, but it’s worth it.
4.  SingleFeed is a self-service system, but we’re here to help.  We also give out free optimization advice as we manually look at every feed that comes in.
5.  We recently added tracking functionality so you can see if Google Base/Froogle is driving clicks and conversions.  Our tracking defaults to Google Analytics standards, but can be customized for other solutions.

Here’s how to take advantage of this offer:
1.  Go to SingleFeed
2.  Create an account and select the Submit to Google Base/Froogle service (although we’d be happier if you selected the Deluxe Submission service).
3.  Immediately after signing up, send an email to ‘support at singlefeed dot com’ with the subject line ‘Free Month’ or ‘I want my $9.99′ or ‘Show me the money!’ and we’ll refund your $9.99 within 24 hours.  You must send this email to us to get your money back.
4.  Login to your SingleFeed account, read the FAQs, read the instructional notes, and create your single feed.  If you don’t have a Google Base account already set up, you will have to create one (we’re not an agency, so we don’t do it for you), but we have clear instructions on how to do it…just click on the Engines section, then the Google Base/Froogle button, then ‘learn how to sign up’.  It’ll take 5 minutes.

That’s it.  Test out SingleFeed for free right now!

While talking with a rep from one of the shopping engines yesterday about bidding, he mentioned a new optimization strategy I hadn’t thought of before.

As opposed to participating in the paid logo listing programs, why not test taking that logo down and applying some portion of the typical $0.10/click fee towards bidding. In most cases, the majority of merchants don’t bid or bid $0.01 above the minimum…well, a merchant without the logo could bid $0.09 above the minimum and probably get some great exposure. Sure, the logo won’t be there to attract clickers…but sometimes all you need is better positioning.

Disclaimer: This is a suggestion for a data feed optimization test…if you try it and it works, then you’re happy. If it doesn’t work, come back and yell at me, but remeber, strategies listed on LoveYourFeed do not guarantee success. These are tactics I have used or others have suggested which I think everyone should at least think about, if not test.

Update: Well, Trent just told me (11:57pm) that their system does not allow manually uploads of media (books, music, movies) files. Well, that’s silly.

I think most small businesses use the ‘Would you rather upload your feed file from your computer?’ option when uploading a feed to Shopping.com. Well, this feature seems to be down…

SingleFeed and all data feed management companies upload through FTP, but that must leave thousands of businesses which use this feature. I emailed Shopping.com to get a status update. Hopefully this issue will be resolved soon.

This is the type of post that I’d like the shopping engines to make themselves. As I said in one of my introductory posts, Yahoo!, Google, and recently Microsoft, do a great job of communicating outages/problems – especially when SEW or Webmaster World find a problem. It’s time for the shopping engines to step up to the plate on this one. No one can be perfect – in no way am I chiding SDC for this one feature being down – I just want them to reach out to merchants and let them know what’s up.

How can merchants love their feeds if they can’t even get them up on an engine?

Google Checkout cannot be used for items with prices less than $1.00.

If you have items in your feed at that price, make sure to strip out Google Checkout from the payment_type field or else those lines will be rejected by Google Base.

Obviously this is a small issue, but knowing this can save you the hassle of waiting for Google Base to return the error and re-submitting. Hopefully in the future Google Base will be smart enough to automatically rip out Google Checkout from the payment_type field if there are other payment types listed.

A couple days ago, I talked about optimizing the product title or product description in your data feed. Well, let’s take that a step further. Consider optimizing the titles and descriptions for holiday related keywords/keyword phrases.

As I wrote in ComparisonEngines last year, “Shopping comparison engines are very similar to major search engines like Yahoo! and Google in that they look for keywords (in your feed) to determine relevant results for searches. Are your products titles and descriptions chock full of holiday related terms? And no, keyword stuffing is not an effective method here…just use common sense. Spruce up that fleece jacket desctription to read ‘Christmas present idea: Fleece Jackets for Mom and Dad for the holidays. Ok, a little kitschy, but you might just show up in searches for ‘christmas present’…

So remember that the tie you’re selling isn’t just a tie, it’s a potential gift for dad…test out a title/description like this:

Title: Paisley tie gift for dad.
Description: This paisley tie is the perfect hannukah gift or christmas gift for dad.

Yes, I’m sure people are searching for ‘paisley tie’, but I have a feeling that ‘gift for dad’, ‘hannukah gift’, and ‘christmas gift’ are also popular search phrases. Why let the gift basket companies have all the sales?

Disclaimer: All optimization strategies are suggestions and do not guarantee success. These are data feed optimization tactics I have used or others have suggested which I think everyone should at least think about, if not test.

-Fill out as many Google Base attribute fields as possible. This one isn’t brain surgery as Google tells merchants to do this. They even changed their directions to make it look like all of their attribute fields are required: “You are required to include these attributes for all of the items in your bulk upload file. If you do not have information available for an attribute, you may leave it out, but keep in mind that including as many attributes as possible will increase your items’ exposure in search results.” Well, in truth, you don’t have to include all the fields in your feed (bulk upload), but I guess it’s Google’s way of pushing merchants to enter as much information as possible. Personally, I just think it creates confusion, but as merchants won’t properly read the directions, just see Required Attributes, and freak out. Bottom line? Give Google Base as much information as possible.

-Google Checkout as ‘payment_accepted’ and Quantity. If you enter Google Checkout for the ‘payment_accepted‘ field, you must include the ‘quantity‘ field in your feed and enter a value in the field. If you have a ton of merchandise in stock, just put in a random value like 99. BTW, a lot of people have been confused by this (including myself – I had to check with Link @ ChannelAdvisor when I first ran into the problem) so Google Base recently explained the problem and changed the directions for the ‘quantity’ field.
-Google Base and PayPal as ‘payment_accepted’. Google Base does not accept PayPal and eBay does not accept Google Checkout (there was a whole tiff about this earlier in the year). However, because Google Base knows that so many merchants accept PayPal and will automatically put it in their ‘payment_accepted’ field, they accept the value and end up just stripping it out of the feed. And until Google Base tells merchants not to put PayPal in the ‘payment_accepted’ field, I think we’re all safe including it.

-Have fun with Google Base Custom Attributes. If you’re following the first suggestion of this post (fill out as many attribute fields as possible), it’s time to start using custom attributes. And get creative with the custom attributes. For example, everyone looks for Free Shipping offers over the holiday season. Why not create a custom attribute called ‘Free Shipping’ and just give it a value of ‘Yes’ or ‘No’. If Google Base works as it’s supposed to, a new refinement option should come up for your category of products called ‘Free Shipping’. Consumers will filter, and you’ll be the only merchant to show up (until word gets around). At the end of the day, Google Base’s ‘shipping’ field is too complicated. This is a quick way around it.

Disclaimer: All optimization strategies are suggestions and do not guarantee success. These are data feed optimization tactics I have used or others have suggested which I think everyone should at least think about, if not test.