Product data feed optimization is essential to being competitive and profitable on shopping channels like Google Shopping, Amazon or eBay. And there’s no better example of this than product variations (also known as variables or options).
By sending more complete product variation data, you’ll be able to capitalize on increased impressions and more traffic by targeting those search phrases that shoppers are using to look for your products.
Understanding Parent-Child Product Relationships
Variation relationships are used to help customers easily discover, compare and purchase different variations of a product. They used specifically to connect products that are essentially the same, yet differ in one or more key attributes like size or color.
Similar products that vary according to a defined theme share a parent/child relationship in which one parent can have several child products. It is important to understand the difference between parent products and child products because each plays a distinct role in the exposure your products will get.
Say the parent product t-shirt is white, but its child products range from blue to red to black to gray. Parent products alone may be able to reach only one set of search phrases related to “white t-shirt”, but together with child the product variations, this same product can cover the full spectrum of shoppers’ color searches for t-shirts.
Avoiding the Dreaded “Data Dump”
The product information you submit to a shopping channel will directly affect how your products perform. But what happens if you don’t have control over the data you submit?
Shopping cart exports are nice because they provide an easy outlet for your product data. But some shopping carts only allow you to export product information at the parent level.
As we just learned, this can severely limit your products’ performance and reach in search results because the parent-level data might not contain all product variation data necessary to match what shoppers are looking for.
Put simply, shoppers searching for variations on color, size, style, etc., will miss your products.
Sending all of your products’ information will increase impressions and ensure that your products won’t be missed by shoppers looking for them.
Solving Your Product Data Feed Needs
Data quality will impact your products' performance on comparison shopping engines and marketplaces. By improving the quality of your product data feeds, you'll compete for more traffic and better positioning.
Don't settle for product feeds that are "just OK". Better performance and better ROI are there for the taking, but only if you take the time to give shoppers what they’re looking for.
We know that data feed optimization can get complicated; that’s why so many retailers rely on data feed management solutions like GoDataFeed. We designed our software with retailers like you in mind. Our goal is to ease the pain of wrangling product data and make it easy to optimize and automate feeds to hundreds of shopping channels.
If you need help, give one of our feed experts a call at 1-866-340-6619 and schedule a no-obligation live demo that’ll show you how to make the most of your data feeds.
