With such a huge and competitive e-commerce economy, accurate product information is highly important in this day and age for advertisers.
In recent years we have seen hard economic times which in tandem with mobile, web and social media technology have changed how we interact online.
We have been given a mass of more channels to reach information or products we require and of course merchants are, or at least should be, responding to these changes with new ways to interact with clients online.
Data Feed Tech
Data Feed Technology has never been so important before to merchants until today and a lot of people still fail to submit full product data in their feeds such as SKU, images, availability, promotional text etc. A full, high-quality data feed enables you to have consistency across all channels and should be considered of upmost importance – please see FeedPlatform.com for an Advanced Feed Management System.
Shift in Technology
Technology is changing, it always has and it always will and our job and yours is to try and keep on top of it. Even options like affiliate or email marketing and PPC (Pay Per Click) search which have been the cornerstone have gone through massive changes and diversification.
In addition to this we have seen the growth of other areas like CSEs, interactive banners, Facebook, Mobile Commerce etc. These can’t be ignored as it looks like they are here to stay and will grow further.
Mix of Channels
The only problem we have with this influx of new technologies and channels is that it is hard for merchants to successfully use them all to the max of their capabilities.
This is a major contributor to the reason that new technologies and tools have been created to help develop rich product data feeds along with getting them out to the correct places.
Merchants, historically, have had issues with ensuring that their product feeds are completely up to date with pricing and availability information.
Feed Importance
Although the data actually contained in the feed is of upmost importance, what is also highly important is the formatting of the data itself, which must be kept consistent.
If, for example, a feed is missing key information or attributes it can make it an arduous task to integrate the information with different CSEs.
One of the other most important factors is with links and images that don’t link correctly to the product advertised or even anywhere at all resulting in a completely lost sale or conversion.
Digital Marketing Performance
Extracting the data of products from a website’s front end, a feed can be created which includes all the information of a merchant’s inventory which can then be used to be sent to many different advertisement channels.
There are tools that can be used to edit this feed so as it can be used with different advertisement channels.
Data Feeds
Data Feeds themselves are also becoming more popular in advertising applications. For example, they can be used to email clients who had selected a product to purchase but never completed the deal. This product information can then be fed into a personalised email and sent to the client, this type of advertisement can wield conversion rates around 20%.
In addition to this, social media sites can be filled with information using information from your data feeds.
UK Future
E-commerce is a high growth sector in the UK currently with more than 200,00 people employed in the sector and providing more than 7% of national GDP which is expected to rise, therefore it is definetely something that merchants need to be thinking about for their businesses, whatever size.
If you need help setting up a Data Feed then why not speak to one of our Digital Specialists here at Network Intellect.
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