How Caribshopper Solved Catalog Issues to Boost Google Traffic and Sales

Business overview

Caribshopper is the leading online marketplace for Caribbean-made products. Each month, 22,000  visitors go to Caribshopper.com in search of authentic Caribbean goods. The marketplace quickly built a reputation among consumers living abroad and those curious about the culture by bringing local Jamaican, Trinidadian, and other Caribbean items from marginal to mainstream.  

Problem

Caribshopper’s popularity is based on its ability to offer shoppers a large selection of products from a wide-ranging mix of sources. From handmade products by local artisans to consumer goods produced by Caribbean manufacturers, the product data in Caribshopper’s catalog fluctuates from SKU to SKU. 

What’s included in the product details spreadsheets provided by vendors is not standardized in format, type, or even cell location. Because of that, the product information that is available to Caribshopper varies widely depending on category and vendor. Additionally, because some products are handmade or made by non-traditional manufacturers, they are missing required values like image and description altogether. 

Because of the complexity of their catalog, Caribshopper encountered friction when attempting to market their products on Google Shopping. The team spent over 80 hours trying but failing to get their products approved. 

“We spent countless hours trying to get our products on Google Merchant Center without a clear understanding of how to navigate their platform,” said Kadion Preston, Founder and CEO of Caribshopper. “But with Feed Management by GoDataFeed we were able to identify our ‘blind spots’ and execute the right strategies for our ecommerce store to get listed on Google, increase customer acquisition through the organic search channel, and enhance our shopping campaigns to increase sales by 15%.” 

Solution 

Ecommerce channels require standardized attributes before products can be listed. Google Shopping, for example, requires that advertisers submit their product data through Merchant Center. There, products go through a validation process to ensure they meet Google’s standards for product listing ads and organic shopping listings. If products are missing required values or if attributes are not properly mapped to Google’s specifications, they won’t be published.

Caribshopper did not have the channel knowledge or data management experience to overcome these validation hurdles on their own, so they turned to Feed Management by GoDataFeed. 

Over the past 15 years, GoDataFeed’s account managers have seen more than 10K catalogs and over 340M products from companies of all sizes and with all manner of available data.

“We manage product feeds for all kinds of merchants with very different catalogs, so it’s not uncommon for us to come across a variety of different product sources,” Jason Silvestre, GoDataFeed’s director of account management admits. “But their column headers housed a really broad mix of values from one product to the next, which made it impossible to give Google straightforward answers to required fields like product size, color, gender and availability. So we pored through their data and created a list of custom rules to extract the proper values and re-route attributes to meet Google’s requirements.” 

Results

Even though their products contained unstandardized data and mixed values under similar column headers, Caribshopper’s dedicated account manager was able to sort through their data and create custom rules that organized attributes properly. Within a week of signing on to Feed Management by GoDataFeed, Caribshopper’s entire product line was live on Merchant Center and they had a green light to start advertising on Google Shopping.

Since GoDataFeed started managing their product feeds, Google Shopping ads has become Caribshopper’s top source of paid traffic. They have also seen a 17% boost in organic Google Shopping traffic. 

As Caribshopper continues to expand its marketplace, they bring on new creators and sign with new manufacturers all the time. GoDataFeed works daily to reformat new product data and get products up on Google fast.

“Their Feed Management service felt like a direct extension to our marketing team and a great strategic fit because they saved us a ton of hours and ad budget trying to figure out these challenges on our own. Plus, as we continue to expand the Caribshopper brand, their detailed oversight and ecommerce experience has allowed us to focus on increasing sales and growing our business.”

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