Inaccurate product data is costly.
Wrong price. Out of stock items. Old titles and descriptions for new models. Outdated image links. These can all wreak havoc on the health of your product feed.
Not only do you incur the cost of each click, but you also miss out on an opportunity to close a sale. And now you’ve lost that shopper’s trust, possibly forever.
So yeah, data accuracy is always important. But it becomes mission critical during the heavy-traffic weeks between Black Friday and New Year’s Day. Some businesses do 90% of their revenue during the holiday months.
During this pivotal time of the year, just one small mistake on your product listings could cost your company hundreds – if not thousands – of dollars.
In this blog post we identify the 3 common culprits of inaccurate data. Use this information to search your product data for irregularities. Catch and correct issues before they snowball into bigger problems.
Wrong Quantity
Accurate quantity is tricky -- and very easy to get wrong when you’re selling on multiple channels.
If you list a lower quantity than you have in stock, then you could potentially lose out on sales. Your product will be “sold out” before it actually is. But if you list a higher quantity than you have in stock, you could oversell. That could potentially be worse, because some marketplaces penalize sellers for overselling, and they may even suspend your account.
Unfortunately, if you’re not syncing inventory updates often enough, this is going to be a common headache. The more channels you sell on, the tougher it is to keep track of how many total sales you’ve made and update inventory across channels.
Incorrect Price
This is a huge one. And it can hurt you in two ways.
Incurred CPC Costs
It’s amazing how much difference a decimal point makes. After all, $100.00 is very different from $10.00. And when you post an incorrect price that is too low, you can be sure word will spread fast.
In most cases, you’re just going to get a ton of clicks and a huge bounce rate. But there’s always the chance that excited shoppers skipped right through to the buy button -- which can result in a slew of cancelled orders – or a big financial loss to your company.
Misspent Clicks
If you post an incorrect price that is too high, then you’re not going to be competitive in SERPs and you won’t get the clicks necessary to yield sales. Meanwhile, your competitors are benefiting from all that extra traffic.
Do this long enough and your low CTR will hurt overall Quality Scores, bring down your ad rank and further damaging your campaign’s ability to stay competitive.
Outdated Titles & Descriptions
Product data changes. That’s part and parcel of retail. New models, extended variations, expanded sizes or colors -- these all require that you pivot product information to reflect new values.
That’s easier said than done when you’re talking about hundreds, possibly thousands, of products. If you’re dealing with a substantial number of products, the only one way to do this without losing your sanity is to sync your data multiple times per day with a feed management tool like GoDataFeed.
Final Note
The solution to data inaccuracies is simple: Sync your product data more often to ensure it’s continuously accurate. You can automate this process using a shopping feed management tool to increase catalog import frequencies. If you’re doing this manually, you’ll need to get started right away to get it done before the holiday rush.
If you’re unsure how to increase your import frequency, or need help figuring out your import frequency sweet spot for the holidays, talk to your account manager today. Our data feed experts will recommend an import frequency that meets your business needs.
