More and more consumers are shopping online. It offers great advantages, including comfort, saving time and sometimes money. Even those who long ago were a little reluctant to do so, they have already convinced of the great benefits that online shopping can offer them.
Online sales is a great showcase that allows you to reach customers with different profiles that would otherwise be impossible to attract to your physical store. That is why more and more merchants are encouraged to develop an online store to be able to offer their products online and increase sales. This may be your case.
The first step is to develop an attractive and well-structured website. It is important that you have useful and accurate information. Once your online store is up and running, it’s time to decide if you want to increase the visibility of your products or settle for selling them only through your website. This second option may be the most comfortable, but you will not be able to take advantage of the great potential offered by other types of online sales platforms.
Position your products in other types of channels such as Amazon, Facebook, Google Shopping etc. It will help you gain visibility, reach a greater number of potential customers, and improve brand recognition. However, this jump can be intimidating. You may not have experience selling online or, on the contrary, you have so many products or use so many export channels that it is overwhelming to manage everything.
Whatever your situation, we have the solution: use a Feed Manager. Surely it is a term that you are not familiar with yet, but it will be an extremely useful tool in the expansion of your digital business. The good news is that you do not need to be a technology expert or have a technical team to help you manage it. Even if your level is basic and you only use the computer to surf the internet, you can end up becoming an expert in managing feeds.
What is a feed in eCommerce
An eCommerce feed is a database where are they all the data of your product catalog. In this file you can find all kinds of information about your products or services: title, price, stock, color, photo, etc.
Depending on the sector this catalog will include specific information. For clothing it is very important to have data such as color or size, while for electronic products technical information such as memory, capacity… Your product catalog can be in different formats such as XML, CSV, Excel and more.
To import the information of your products in the feed management tool, you can do it through the previously mentioned formats. Another option is to establish a direct connection through a plugin or app that connects directly with ecommerce platforms such as Magento, PrestaShop or WooCommerce.
The complication is that when you start selling on different marketplaces You have to take into account that each one of them needs different specifications, having to adapt your feed to the requirements of each platform.
In the case of Google Shopping it is very important to include the product condition (new or second-hand), while for Amazon this field is not important. So if you want to sell on several different platforms, you will have to adapt your feed to each of these channels.
Doing it manually can be tiring, inefficient, and frustrating. If you want to take care of managing it yourself, having the autonomy and security that you are sending the most complete information, it is important to use a feed management tool that helps you optimize the information of your products or services quickly and easily.
How to use a feed manager in eCommerce
Too easy.
You will not need any computer developer to be able to implement it. You can optimize all of your product data by making sure always have the best information available. Editing, filtering and controlling the information of your products will be very simple. Some examples of the actions you can perform are exclude products that do not have an image or are out of stock, add additional information in the title such as size or color, extract specific information found within the description, remove the HTML language from a text, create new texts from other dynamic fields, etc.
The first step is import the information of your products in the feed manager and choose the channel where you want to start selling your products. It can be a marketplace, price comparator or network of .
When choosing the right channel, it is important to take into account the sector to which you belong. Not all platforms sell the same type of products, they are usually specialized in different types of products. In the case of technology and computing you can use channels such as Fnac or eBay, for clothes Amazon and Google Shopping may be interesting, while for gardening and DIY ManoMano or they may be the most appropriate. Also keep in mind the country in which you want to sell.
If you want to open market in other countries You will need to know which are the best known channels and which ones work best for each sector.
Whichever channel you choose, the feed management tool will tell you what specifications you need for each channel to ensure that you send the most useful and complete information about your products. In addition, you will have total control of your products, making sure that you do not put products on sale that are out of stock or whose price does not exceed the amount you specify. That way you will avoid unnecessary clicks and the dissatisfaction of potential customers.
Forget that your products appear in the wrong category, that they do not fit the user’s search specifications or that the prices of your products in the marketplace do not match the real prices on your website.
How to choose the most suitable eCommerce feed manager
It is important that the feed manager you choose have the export channels you want to use. The more export channels you have the better. This way you make sure you can use new platforms in the future. It is also advisable to check which channels are active in each country. Don’t limit your business there are thousands of opportunities outside our borders.
In addition, sometimes they include complementary functions that can be very useful, such as cConnecting orders with marketplaces to be able to control orders and their status directly from your eCommerce platform; Synchronization with Analytics to be able to plan your strategy based on the performance of the products on each of the platforms; SEM tool that allows you to design dynamic text ads for Google Ads and Bing Ads.
Obviously the price is another factor to take into account. Choose a tool that offers you flexibility when paying will be the most convenient. Monthly subscriptions without permanence offer you the possibility of modifying the plan whenever you want, being able to adapt the plan to the changing needs of your business. Also make sure they offer free technical support to avoid surprises at the end of the month. Especially at the beginning since you will need help until you get comfortable with the tool.
Finally mention the importance of have the information of your products constantly updated. Especially data like stock and prices. There are stores that change prices constantly, and if a lot is sold online, the stock can vary continuously. In many cases updating the feed once a day can be enough. But on certain dates, such as Christmas or where the pace of sales can be hectic, more daily updates are important.
Make sure the feed manager you use can give you as many updates as you need.
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