Product Feeds are essential in today’s online marketing activities and can be used for anything from powering your Pay Per Click (PPC) activities through to selling your product through 3rd parties like Amazon but in a time where getting your feeds right is so important it’s shocking just how many companies are getting it wrong.
Product feeds can have a wide range of different data set in them and although there have been a number of attempts to unify the data within product feeds so far all these attempts have been mostly unsuccessful and it is easy to see why. With so many industries all using feeds, trying to agree on a “uniform” feed is near to impossible when each industry requires different data. Perhaps a better way of addressing this would to start looking at the unique fields each industry needs and create individual industry stand data sets.
When looking at data feeds there are a lot of variables that need to be taken into account, from the format you use, which would normally be CSV, XML or API, through to what fields your need to include and in some cases even how many feeds are needed. To get this right the first thing you need to decide is who is going to use your feed and what they are going to be using the feed for. Once you know this you’ll be able to start planning your feed.
The 4 first steps in the production of data feeds:
• Planning:- Plan ahead when you are setting up your feed systems and tools, because there are very few companies out there that use the same feed as each other, creating a tool that lets allows you to create new feeds with different fields and then host it automatically on a URL is a must
• Technical:- The technical requirements of products feed are fairly simply until something goes wrong, make sure you’ve setup some basic monitoring system so when your feed goes down or doesn’t update correctly you’re not the last to know
• Data:- make sure your product details are correct and up to date, this includes not just price but also category mapping of products. You are going to need to make an investment into your product feed to really make the most from it, but the rewards are well worth the investment when you get it right
• Scalability:- Make sure you are looking to the future, producing a feed that can handle a few downloads every day is quite a simple task, but as your companies grow so will the strain on your data feeds, you may only start with a handful of companies taking your feed, but as your company grows so will the number of companies using your feed and when you move to an API the strain will increase even more
From the very beginning you’ll need to make sure you’ve setup some type of conversion tracking for your feed, there are a lot of different companies all charging on different metrics that use feeds, you are going to need to take this into account when looking at what products you make available in your feeds. The two main costing models are CPC (cost per click) and CPA (cost per acquisition).
What should you take into account with:
• CPC Feed:- Most commonly this applies to price comparison sites like Ciao, Kelkoo or Shopping.com where you are being charged each time a user clicks through to your site, bear in mind there is not a guaranteed sale from the clicks you are being charged for. You can still monetize these channels by making sure you are tracking the click to sale process and to do this correctly you are going to need a reliable solution, i.e. beyond Google analytics, with this tracking you can then start to really monitor which products are producing a poor ROI and take action to rectify this.
• CPA Feed:- This normally refers to affiliate sites like twenga and Idealo. Because you only pay out if a sale occurs, you do not need to worry as much about filtering out products. However, keeping your CPA partner informed of what is converting and including details like stock quantity will definitely help your relationship with your affiliate partners. Keeping your CPA partners informed will enable them to decide whether to promote a product that you are currently low on or out of stock or push the highest converting products to their users.
Feeds can be used for a lot more than simply displaying a product from an eCommerce store on different web sites, feeds can be used to share all types of information like analytical data from tools like Google Analytics.
Product feeds are definitely here to stay and it is about time companies accepted this and looked at ways to improve both the quality and reliability of their feeds. In a world where consumers are now so used to getting the information they want when they want it, can any company really afford old, out of date data displayed or worse yet just simply not be include in results?
A quick guide to understanding feed formats
CSV (comma separated values): Although CSV are probably the most commonly available types of feeds, there are a number of flaws with them by definition, a CSV file i.e. a comma-separated value file which in is where the issues lie. Using a comma as the separating character, when one of your values is text based e.g. like a description, it is going to cause problems as many descriptions use commas, this means that each comma in the description is going to fragment it and in turn break the importing systems mapping of the feed by adding too many columns. There are a number of ways around this, for example using a pipe character as your separator rather than a comma, as this is pretty much never used in any description text. Despite a relatively simple solution to the problem, companies seem to be missing a trick.
Other issues that you may experience, but are not quite as easy to fix, are UPC (unique product codes) in your feed that starts with zero, which quite a large number of UPC’s do, automated system will often automatically reformat the number to remove the zero which changes the unique product code.
So with so many issue being found in a CSV feed why is this such a popular format?
The advantage of a CSV really comes from the fact that it’s such an easy format for everyone to use (except perhaps the techies), a simplified way of looking at a CSV file is as a spreadsheet where each product is a row and each column is a value, in fact programmes like excel even let you import and export CSV files and this feature is what helps make them so widely used, it’s allows a person of nearly no technical ability to use a feed.
XML: XML feeds are starting to take some ground and some companies like Trade Doubler are moving completely away from CSV file in favour of XML. From a technical standpoint it’s easy to see why they would want to do this, after seeing the issues with CSV files above, however XML feeds are no walk in the park either.
Unlike a CSV file an XML file doesn’t really have any “normal in life comparison” like a spread sheet is to the CSV file, to demonstrate this here’s an example of a XML feed
<– XML feed example (supplied by w3schools.com) –>
<?xml version=”1.0″ encoding=”ISO-8859-1″?>
<shiporder orderid=”889923″
xmlns:xsi=”http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance”
xsi:noNamespaceSchemaLocation=”shiporder.xsd”>
<orderperson>John Smith</orderperson>
<shipto>
<name>Ola Nordmann</name>
<address>Langgt 23</address>
<city>4000 Stavanger</city>
<country>Norway</country>
</shipto>
<item>
<title>Empire Burlesque</title>
<note>Special Edition</note>
<quantity>1</quantity>
<price>10.90</price>
</item>
<item>
<title>Hide your heart</title>
<quantity>1</quantity>
<price>9.90</price>
</item>
</shiporder>
<– XML feed example (supplied by w3schools.com) –>
XML can also be written in a number of ways these “styles” of writing a XML feed are known as a Schema and whenever you are looking to setup a XML feed, it’s always best to request the schema from the company you are creating the feed for. The clear advantage of a XML feed over a CSV is that once its setup there is normally very little that goes wrong with the formatting, but you can still run into problems with updating and loads(I understand what you mean by loads but will other people do?) if you’ve not planned ahead for this.
API / WebServices: there is a lot of talk about API feeds and web services being the way to go and in our opinion it’s true (for the most part). So first of all what is an API?
At a basic level an API is a way for two applications (or websites) to talk to each other and we don’t mean they have a good chin wag and catch up, it simply allows one site or application to ask the other a question and then in turn have this question answered so probably one of the best known examples of this in action is a price comparison site like Kayak. Kayak’s flight search, known as a meta search in the industry, use API’s to find the cheapest priced flights and in this example the question it asks to all the different airlines “do you fly from XX to XX” and the airlines would reply with a yes or no and if it’s a yes the airline passes the price and URL to book that specific flight.
Ok so we’ll admit this is a very simplified way of thinking about it, but ignoring the technical side this is actually quite a good way to think of an API.
So why is this a better system? Well one of them most common problems with a standard XML or a CSV feed is that the data is at best 24 hours old, but more often than not the data is a lot older still, believe it or not but we’ve seen cases where the feed has not been updated in 6 months, just think how many prices have changed or products have been added or removed in the last 6 months? Would you really want customers seeing product prices or products you stopped selling 6 months ago?
API’s also mean things like stock availability can be taken into account as the API’s response (answer) to a request (question) could include stock information and delivery time i.e. out of stock, but expect back in stock in XX days’ time.
So to summarise the advantage of an API feed is up to date information and in a world where current up to date information is expected by consumers I’d expect to see APIs used a lot more often.
One of the most recognised advertising mediums online is the banner. Banners come in a number of formats, styles and sizes, each of which bring their own range of positives and negatives. When planning a online campaign that requires banners, there are a number of elements that should be taken into account, regardless of the format of the banner, what sizes you should be producing is the most important starting point. For most industries there are defaults sizes, therefore before producing your banners, check what they are! If you provide banners in sizes no one can place on their site, your banners will not be used. As apparent as this may seem, the creative department may get carried away with creating, rather than execution.
The IAB and most affiliate networks provide some basic guide lines on banners sizes. 88×31, 120×600, 120×60, 125×125, 234×60, 468×60 (IAB regulation sizes), seem to be the most commonly requested by affiliate networks. however it is worth looking at producing a 300×250 and 728×90 banners, as these two sizes are commonly used by CPM companies, but seem to becoming more and more popular with affiliates.
As well as making sure your banners are in the correct sizes, here are some basic rules to follow, to help make sure your banners are as effective as possible:
Call to Action: not only do you need to let the user know they can click on the advert to find out more, you need to provide them with a reason to click though. Banners are one of the smallest sales pitch you’ll ever have the chance to make, your banner is a chance for you to sell yourself!
Event Specific: Tailor banners to specific events which are applicable to your business. An Example of this could be Christmas or fathers day to name just a few.
Product Specific: Do you have a product or product range that consistently sells better then your other ranges? Why not produce an advertisement specifically for your ‘best sellers’ to allow your publishers to target this more effectively.
Keep it Fresh: Don’t just produce a set of banners and forget about them, try to build a library of advertisement material your publisher partners can use. Keep updating your older banners to make sure the information on them is always current and correct, as well as producing new banners, giving affiliates an array of creatives to choose from, old & new.
You also need to make sure your banners are effective & attractive; choosing the right format can help with this. ODST are going to look at the 3 main types of banners – .gif, Flash and HTML banners and outline some positives and negatives of using each of these formats, as well as feedback from two people who use banners as part of there every day jobs. Lee McCoy from Get Visible who is going to share a little insight form his point of views as a publisher (Affiliate).
Q: Hi Lee, can you give a quick introduction of yourself?
I run the Get Visible Internet Marketing consultancy and have been involved in online promotion for over 13 years and on virtually every side of the equation possible. My greatest fear for the industry is that often merchants and site owners don’t fully assess their marketing, instead they go for a ‘black box’ approach where they’ll continue a compaign as long as they feel more is coming out of it than going in.
<!– Example gif Banner –>
<!– Example gif Banner –>
.gif: Probably the most commonly available banner format, it is easy to see why. Gif animated banners are the most cost effective to produce, they allow simple animation and if made correctly have a relatively small file size, meaning the loading time for the banner is kept to a minimum.
The negative to the .gif banner is that any animation on them must be kept to a few frames, so the animation is not able to be much more than rotating text, without greatly increasing the file size of the banner. Increased file size is something that has always been avoided, but with a change in Internet connections all moving to broadband and connection speeds ever increasing, are the file sizes becoming less of an issue?
Things have definitely moved on a great deal since the early days of the Internet and the 56k dial up connection, we all had to deal with. What now needs to be considered is the theory of search engines taking your pages loading speed into account, thus potentially the reason why file sizes of a banner should be kept to a minimum. Is this really the case, ODST’s guest publisher Lee McCoy shares his opinions.
Q Lee: what are you views on the file size of banners is this something you look at when selecting what banner you’re going to use on your site and do you believe that the loading speed of a banner would affect your search engine ranking?
Google definitely is looking at site speed when ranking sites, the issue is ‘how much’ and do you have a ROI in worrying about it? When it comes to site speed I’m more concerned about the general site design and how that results in a slow load time. I’m also concerned with server speed and have recently moved to faster servers as a result of some analysis.
When it comes to image banners, I’m generally less concerned and will typically select banners which contribute with the look and feel of the site. I am, though, concerned with flash banners which can often slow down the loading of sites. If I do use them I make sure I add them to the site so they’re rendered after the main body of the page – so they don’t slow the site loading down.
Also, I make sure I self-host the creative if I can as I’ve got direct control over my site’s speed and uptime – I try and reduce the number of links in the web publishing chain as possible.
Using .gif formats you are also going to be losing the image quality, which is something that can be avoided when you’re using other formats.
Q: What are the benefits you see of using .gif banners?
With .gif you’re typically going to get a fairly quick load time – if their design and marketing agencies know what they’re doing. Without an agency a merchant may just load up something that looks good (to them) but is slow or improperly created.
Also gif banners can be self-hosted which, for someone like me, is a definite bonus.
Q: What are the negatives of .gif banners?
The downside, however, is that self-hosting ensures that live banners can get out of date quickly. Hotel Chocolat are experts at changing banners to show the most relevant ones. They seemingly do this as soon as seasonal events end and makes my life a great deal easier. With them, I let them control the process as I know they’re “on the ball.”
Q: Do you see .gif banners being one the most popular format of banners in the affiliate industry in 5 years time?
That’s a difficult question as each publisher will continue to have their own requirements. However, it has to be animated gifs that contain seasonal offers. I’d like merchants start to make publisher-specific banners more readily available. Recently Montezuma’s created banners just for one of my sites with an exclusive voucher code on. If there’s some way that they can be created dynamically from a merchant’s own admin system then that would be fantastic. I do feel, however, that there would be more move towards flash if the iPad/iPhone etc supported the format.
Flash: Flash banners have been around for quite some time, yet only recently they have been used. Flash banners allow for advance animation and higher quality images than a gif banner, and can include user interaction.It is not uncommon to see a flash banner with a simple game or form element that encourage user interacting before they are sent to the advertisers website. Flash banners do have a couple of draw backs, one of the main ones is the cost of developing them. The price of a well made flash banner can often be double the cost of .gif banner and that is if you are looking at a animated banner. If you are looking for more advanced banners, like ones with games or form elements included, you can be looking at a hefty increase in price.
<!– Example flash banner –>
<!– Example flash banner –>
Q: As you are aware Flash banners are really only recently starting to become common place in the affiliate industry, in comparison with CPM networks where they have been around for a lot longer. Why do you think this is?
With CPM networks there are economies of scale. You load up to a ValueClick / Double click and you’ve got a huge market. Whilst affiliate publishers are, perhaps, more sophisticated and less inclined to opt for Flash creatives which would offer a lower ROI to create them as a result.
Q: Do you see Flash banners use in affiliate marketing as a positive, negative or indifferent step for the industry and why?
Personally, a positive one. As long as there’s a time-out facility that checks wether it has loaded in a set time and replaces with a suitable gif banner.
HTML: HTML banners are not a new development, but there use in the online space is still fairly uncommon, although this seems to be changing.
HTML banners come in a range of styles from search banners, like those used by hotel or flight companies, allowing the user to select their destination and travel dates; to content “widgets”, which are used to display a selection of products with up-to-date information e.g. prices, on the banner it self.
The use of AJAX integrated with a HTML banner, offers even more in-depth search options within the banner & a more advanced engagement with the user, not offered by gif banners.
However, HTML banners presents a clear negative from a design, setup and integration point of view. The complexity of design, setup and integration are going to effect the cost involved in producing these type of banners.
Q: HTML banners are getting more and more advanced all the time, We’ve seen these start as very basic search banner to much more impressive search banners that display the search results. From your experience would you say that HTML banners helped increase sales or are they being used by companies to simply make nose about their programme?
I love HTML Banners and the Buyagift one was great when I focused on the gift sector. The problem arises when people use a global CSS that places padding and/or borders around images. If people don’t know how to escape or remove image formatting in sections of their site then they may just be inclined to promote via gif banners.
The Final Word: to make the most of your banner campaign keeping your banner “fresh” and making them as targeted as possible is always going to be the key so succeeding with banners make sure your updating regularly and getting them targeted to products and events will ensure you converting view to clicks and click to sales.
