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.

PriceGrabber Watches

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

Pricegrabber watch attribute

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:

evogear skis

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.