Comparison Shopping Engine Datafeeds – GoECart Reference Guide Product Data Feeds - Overview While Search engines continue to be the major drivers of online sales, an up-and-coming new methodology of web merchandising is fast gaining ground, and is set to explode into the Ecommerce scenario in a big way. This new channel of marketing is represented by Comparison Shopping Engines such as Froogle, Shop.com, Yahoo Shopping and others. These product search Engines feature a single point of product presentation, price comparison, and in certain cases, even order placement. They score over conventional search engines in that they are completely geared toward product merchandising and the targeting of online customers, thus doing away with the academic and informational aspects of regular search engines that might hinder serious online buyers. In other words, when you feature your products on product search engines, you will be displaying your products to people seriously interested in making a purchase. Why Comparison Shopping Engines are important
Consider these statistics: i. One in three Internet users now visits a comparison shopping site in a typical month ii. Around 18 percent of America Online’s shoppers are using comparison search engines, but the comparison shoppers spent 24 percent more than those using traditional search methods As these numbers illustrate, Comparison Shopping Engines present a compelling proposition for online merchants to partner with them. Another major advantage of Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) is that all essential product information – including the price – is displayed in an easy-to-understood grid format, and a glance is sufficient to take in the key aspects of the product. This ‘snapshot’ information which enables buyers to compare the product features and prices offered by multiple merchants from a single page makes the online shopping process much more convenient for potential buyers. Even merchants can benefit by this aspect of CSEs since they have the capacity to conveniently review the pricing scheme of competitors and make adjustments to their pricing accordingly. Further, by carefully submitting to the CSEs the URLs of product pages that minimize the steps required for order completion (i.e. the pages that directly allow adding products to the shopping cart), merchants can make shopping on their websites a quick and convenient process for customers. This is a definite advantage, since the merchant is now in control of deciding what pages are to be displayed by the CSEs, something which is close to impossible in the case of traditional search engines, where the merchant is subject to the uncertainties of each Search Engine’s indexing methodologies. Other benefits for merchants are enhanced online visibility and the ability to display their offerings side-by side with major brands, which tends to improve their brand image by association. It is therefore clear that the sooner online merchants maneuver to take advantage of this new opportunity, the more their businesses stand to gain. How GoECart can help you capitalize on this opportunity
As a feature-rich, scalable and SEO-friendly turnkey solution, GoECart provides online Merchants with a formidable range of tools for attaining success in their E-Commerce endeavors. One of the most powerful tools among these is our Product Data Feeds Manager that enables Merchants to conveniently automate the submission and updation of product information with the Comparison Search Engines. GoECart is integrated with the Internet’s leading Comparison Search Engines (CSEs) – Froogle, Yahoo Shopping, Shopping.com, Shop.com and Shopzilla. This gives our clients a clear edge in their E-Commerce operations – a simple and intuitively designed Product Feed Management interface can have them submitting their merchandise information to the CSEs in minutes, thereby significantly extending their online reach. Another major advantage of Comparison Shopping Engines (CSEs) is that all essential product information – including the price – is displayed in an easy-to-understood grid format, and a glance is sufficient to take in the key aspects of the product. This ‘snapshot’ information which enables buyers to compare the product features and prices offered by multiple merchants from a single page makes the online shopping process much more convenient for potential buyers. You will need to perform a one-time signup with each of these CSEs and obtain FTP login credentials from them which you will use from the GoECart software. For details on how Product Feeds are created and managed in GoECart, please read on. How to create Product Data Feeds
From the Admin panel, please go to “Products -> Inventory Manager”. Click on the Edit link of the product for which you want to create the feed. The Product Editor will open up in a new popup window. In this window, click on the “Data Feeds” tab near the top right. You will see the names of various Shopping Search Engines displayed in a tabular format. By default, the tab for Froogle will be highlighted. The fields in this tab are described below. Froogle Product Feed

• Active: This checkbox must be selected if this product is to be included in the feeds.
• SKU*: The Product’s Stock Keeping Unit ID.
• Manufacturer SKU*: This is the GoECart Manufacturer SKU of the product.
• Name*: The name of the product.
• Manufacturer*: The Manufacturer name for this product.
• Description*: The Short Description field of this product will be displayed here. This description will be displayed when viewing the product on shopping search engine.
• Category*: The name of the category with which the product is associated. The product will be associated with this category in the shopping search engine.
• Price*: The Price of the product to be displayed in shopping search engine.

* The corresponding GoECart product attributes for these data items will be pre-populated by the system.

Make any desired changes to the default values, and click on the “Save” button to save the Product Feed settings.

Note: Saving the Data Feeds settings will not update the product details displayed on the storefront side.

Apart from the fields mentioned above, you can use the simple interface at the bottom to add Custom fields of your choice to the feed. For example, for a book product, you can specify ISBN as a custom field. Up to 5 custom fields may be added for any product.

Please refer to the Froogle search engine feed documentation to learn more about Custom fields.

The URL is: https://www.google.com/froogle/merchants/advanced_feed_instructions.html

You may setup your dedicated Froogle Account via
https://www.google.com/froogle/merchants/welcome

Once feeds are approved by Froogle review committee, the listing will be displayed in the Froogle as shown in the image below: Yahoo Product Feed

• Active: This checkbox must be selected if this product is to be included in the feeds.
• SKU*: The Product’s Stock Keeping Unit ID.
• Manufacturer SKU*: The GoECart SKU of the product.
• Name*: The name of the product to be displayed in the shopping search engine
• Manufacturer*: The Manufacturer name for this product.
• Description*: A Short Description of this product.
• Category*: The name of the category with which the product is associated in the shopping search engine.
• Price*: The Price of the product to be displayed in shopping search engine. GoECart price is populated by default

* The corresponding GoECart product attributes for these data items will be pre-populated by the system.

Make any desired changes, and click on the “Save” button to save the Product Feed settings.

Note: Saving the Data Feeds settings will not update the product details displayed on the storefront side.

Apart from the fields mentioned above, you can use the simple interface at the bottom to add Custom fields of your choice to the feed. For example, for a book product, you can specify ISBN as a custom field. Up to 5 custom fields may be added for any product.

Please refer to Yahoo shopping documentation at the following URL to learn about custom fields and their usage: http://searchmarketing.yahoo.com/shopsb/shpsb_specs.php

You may setup your dedicated Yahoo! Shopping Account via
https://productsubmit.adcentral.yahoo.com/sspi/us/i2

Once feeds are approved by Yahoo! review committee, the listing will be displayed in the Yahoo! Shopping as shown in the image below: Shopping.com Product Feed

• Active: This checkbox must be selected if this product is to be included in the feeds.
• SKU*: The Product’s Stock Keeping Unit ID.
• Manufacturer SKU*: The GoECart SKU of the product.
• Name*: The name of the product to be displayed in the shopping search engine
• Manufacturer*: The Manufacturer name for this product.
• Description*: A Short Description of this product. This description will be displayed when viewing the product on shopping search engine.
• Category*: The name of the category with which the product is associated in the shopping search engine.
• Price*: The Price of the product to be displayed in shopping search engine.

* The corresponding GoECart product attributes for these data items will be pre-populated by the system.

Make any desired changes, and click on the “Save” button to save the Product Feed settings.

Note: Saving the Data Feeds settings will not update the product details displayed on the storefront side.

Apart from the fields mentioned above, you can use the simple interface at the bottom to add Custom fields of your choice to the feed. For example, for a book product, you can specify ISBN as a custom field. Up to 5 custom fields may be added for any product.

NOTE: Shopping.com: Feed specification document can be accessed via secure Merchant area.

You may setup your dedicated Shopping.com Account via
http://www2.shopping.com/

Once feeds are approved by Shopping.com review committee, the listing will be displayed in the Shopping.com as shown in the image below: Shopping.com is one of the leading online comparison shopping service and the 3rd largest online shopping destination. Shopping.com partners with GoECart to help you reach millions of shoppers generate more sales and effectively manage your campaign on Shopping.com. Through Shopping.com, your store can be exposed to more than 15% of all online shoppers. Shop.com Product Feed

• Active: Make sure this checkbox is selected if the product is active for feeds.
• SKU*: Product Stock Keeping Unit.
• Keywords: Keywords are used to help products appear in search results.
• Name*: The name of the product to be displayed in shopping search engine.
• Group Name: The main Shop.com product interface is called a container. This container needs to have a name, and the Group Name field is used to assign the product container its name. The name given to the container should identify what the container is trying to represent. If a container has several line items (i.e. products), the container name should be general enough to be applicable to all these products, yet specific enough that potential customers could find this container when performing a search.
• Description*: The Short description of the product will be displayed here. This description will be displayed when viewing the product on shopping search engine.
• Category*: It will display the category name with which the product is associated. The product will be associated with this category in shopping search engine.
• Price*: The Price of the product to be displayed in shopping search engine.

* The corresponding GoECart product attributes for these data items will be pre-populated by the system.

Make any desired changes, and click on the “Save” button to save the Product Feed settings.

Note: Saving the Data Feeds settings will not update the product details displayed on the storefront side.

Apart from the fields mentioned above, you can use the simple interface at the bottom to add Custom fields of your choice to the feed. For example, for a book product, you can specify ISBN as a custom field. Up to 5 custom fields may be added for any product.

Please refer to Shop.com documentation to learn about custom fields and their usage. Shop.com: http://www.shop.com/op/a-market-integration

You may setup your dedicated Shop.com Account via
http://www.shop.com/amos/cc/main/ccn_create_account/ccsyn/260

Once feeds are approved by Shop.com review committee, the listing will be displayed in the Shop.com as shown in the image below: Shopzilla Product Feed

• Active: This checkbox must be selected if this product is to be included in the feeds.
• SKU*: The Product’s Stock Keeping Unit ID.
• Condition: This field can be used to provide more information on the condition of the merchandise such as wear and tear.
• Name*: The name of the product to be displayed in shopping search engine.
• Manufacturer*: The Manufacturer name for this product.
• Description*: A Short Description of this product will be displayed here. This description will be displayed when viewing the product on shopping search engine.
• Category*: The name of the category with which the product is associated in the shopping search engine.
• Price*: The Price of the product to be displayed in shopping search engine.

* The corresponding GoECart product attributes for these data items will be pre-populated by the system.

Make any desired changes, and click on the “Save” button to save the Product Feed settings.

Note: Saving the Data Feeds settings will not update the product details displayed on the storefront side.

Apart from the fields mentioned above, you can use the simple interface at the bottom to add Custom fields of your choice to the feed. For example, for a book product, you can specify ISBN as a custom field. Up to 5 custom fields may be added for any product.

The Feed specification document for ShopZilla can be accessed via the secure Merchant area.

You may setup your dedicated ShopZilla Account via
http://merchant.shopzilla.com/oa/registration/index.xpml

Once feeds are approved by ShopZilla review committee, the listing will be displayed in the ShopZilla as shown in the image below: The Importance of Product Attributes in Data Feed Marketing
All retailers want to get to know their customers so they can efficiently meet their needs. It doesn’t matter if you are a multi-million dollar retailer or a small hometown retailer who serves his local community. Day in and day out both retailers have the same goal of better understanding and delighting their customers. The hometown retailer interacts directly with his customers whereas the multi-million dollar retailer reviews the analytics data, when doing so both merchants are trying to find out what merchandise to stock and how best to reach their customers.

Just like the above two retailers you control the merchandising of your online storefront, however you have another challenge, many more direct competitors. Since online shoppers can easily to jump from one site to another, today’s internet merchants must look at what they are going to do to differentiate themselves from their competitors.

With more online merchants placing a higher emphasis on creating a delightful customer experience, many metrics that use to receive top priority such as lowering CPC and CPM rates are taking a back seat. They are finding that by improving their site to give customers what they want when they want it, their marketing budget goes even further.

An example of this is when searching for a product online most online stores now allow you to sort products by attributes such as color, brand, price etc... Mid-last year shopping.com, the largest comparison shopping network, redesigned their site and placed a sort products by attribute feature in the navigation menu. Shopping.com site visitors can now specify precisely what they’re looking for in a product. This results in a better user experience and a higher conversion rate.