LoveYourFeed.com

At SingleFeed, we try to follow the shopping engine data feed specifications as closely as possible. We have tons of automated rules that help keep our merchants’ feeds clean so they are accepted by the shopping engines.

One rule that we’ve followed since close to inception is no promotional text in the product name or product description field. This is almost a universal rule on the shopping engines so implementing this rule was a no-brainer.

Shopzilla’s data feed specification states: “Do not misrepresent, include promotional or extraneous information in the Descriptions.” We understand ‘promotional’ information to mean no phrases like ‘Free Shipping’. Well, it seems that Zappos is getting away with breaking this rule:

I’m not exactly picking on Zappos with this post, although they should play by the same rules as everyone else. Rather, I want to point out that while Shopzilla allows up to 1000 characters in its description field, it only displays around 60 in the first example and around 300 in the second example.

In other words, for data feed optimization purposes, merchants should be selling as much as possible (within the rules of the shopping engines) in the first 50 or so characters of the product description field. Without a proper sell, a consumer will have to click on a ‘more’ button (in the examples above) and the merchant will be charged a click fee as that ‘more’ button is a click to the merchant’s site, not to a longer product description.

Some engines display a little more of the description, some engines display a little less. Make sure to view how your product descriptions are being displayed and then change your product descriptions accordingly.

We all know that Google Base supports many different types of listings: products, jobs, recipes, travel packages, reviews, vehicles, housing, etc… Google refers to these as item types (not to be confused with the more specific product type). In true Google fashion, you can even create a custom item type. Users can filter their search results on Base by item type and Google probably considers it as a ranking factor, just like any other attribute. Also, only listings with item type “products” will appear on Google Product Search. For all these reasons, it is important to make sure you have the correct item type selected. We work closely with Miguel Salcido over at eVisibility and recently noticed that the bulk upload for one of his clients, costume e-tailer Star Costumes, was listed under the incorrect item type. We switched this to “products” on Oct 16 and, well, the numbers speak for themselves:

The other day a client asked me to remove the shipping cost information from their feed. This caught me by surprise. My first response was to give the advice that I always give to merchants: You should provide as much data to the shopping engines as you can. The more product information the consumer is able to get on the shopping engine, the less likely they will be to click over to your site just to get that information and before they are committed to a purchase… ie: your goal should be to attract less browsers and more buyers.

Needless to say, I asked the client about their concern. They felt that the total price (base + tax and shipping) displayed on the shopping engines was misleading for users who were interested in buying multiple items. Take the example below. This red polo is $29.50 at Gap.com. Shipping is a flat rate of $6, bringing the total to $35.50, which is the price prominently featured on Shopping.com.

Our client’s concern was that if a shopper wanted to buy two shirts, for example, they might do a quick calculation by doubling $35.50 and assume they would be charged $71. In fact, they would be paying for two shirts at $29.50 each with the same $6 flat rate for shipping, bringing the total to only $65.

I’d honestly never thought of this before. The client believed that that negative impact of removing shipping information from their feed might be offset by the positive impact of not misleading and deterring consumers who are interested in buying more than one item. I won’t tell you what I personally think because I’m a numbers guy myself. I’m all for testing and letting the results speak for themselves. As such, we removed the shipping cost information from one of the shopping engines as a test. We are waiting to see how it has affected both traffic volume and performance.

Some of the shopping engines don’t display tax and shipping in certain categories, so this issue doesn’t arise. Also, of those that do display it, some break out each charge and others roll it all up (like Shopping.com above). You would imagine that a consumer interested in buying multiple items would be more likely to calculate the correct total price given the first scenario… in fact, you simply can’t calculate it from the data Shopping.com presents. Delving into some of these engine specific scenarios made me realize that there is a separate post here (hence, part 1). Look out for Part 2…

Feel free to post up your thoughts on this strategy and the validity of this argument.