Data Feed Management - All You Need To Know

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By: Manish Shewaramani

Data Feed Management - All You Need To Know

Many business people expect to efficiently distribute and manage the digital listings of their products and they want to use the data feed management system. Effective data feed management includes optimizing listings to perform on several channels, sending and receiving precise data from every channel, and updating the overall inventory on external sites.

What is Data Feed Management?

Data feed management is the process by which you distribute and also manage the overall digital listings of products. This data management solution for your products is to update them in various online stores and other networks, price comparison engines, affiliate platforms, and ad exchanges.

The product feed is the database that includes information from the product catalog. The first-class product feed can be sent from an eCommerce to an external sales channel and expand the virtual showcase.

There are so many types of data feeds. Keep in mind that news stories are aggregated in the news feed and well-experienced stock traders use the finance needs for tracking the marketing data.

When Your Company Requires Data Feed Management Solution?

Every business does not require outside assistance with data feed management. This requirement is based on the product catalog’s size, in-house resources, and channels you wish to sell products on. A good data feed management solution enhances the eCommerce business beyond doubt.

Any merchant with a catalog of products and desires to sell such products on multiple channels must have a brick-and-mortar storefront, a user-friendly shop on the website, and a popular eCommerce platform account to house product data.

You can advertise your products on Facebook and Google to drive traffic to the website and sell products on several marketplaces like Wal-Mart and Amazon.

You have to overcome so many challenges yourself when you do not get a data feed management solution. Every channel has its policies and requirements. You must adhere to such things to list and sell products.

Listing your large catalog of products one by one without an existing integration with every channel takes a long time. You have to find and overcome limitations about how to change or format product data.

If you do not have enough sufficient resources, time, and expertise to categorize products and optimize the listings for very good ad campaigns and search relevancy, then you have to prefer and use the data feed management system.

Benefits of integrating a product data feed management tool

It is essential to manage the feed provided at the different marketplace for the sales and development of the product.

Control

Implementing the feed management tool helps the organization in taking control of all the information available related to the product that is essential for its sale on the online market. It allows the organization to be self-sufficient for the data controller and not to depend on anyone for the essential data.

Automation

The feed management tool automates the process of generation of the feed with ease. It helps in keeping the product feed details updated and in sync with the real-time data.

Dynamism

Implementing the feed management tools reduces the efforts of the organization to hand the stock and price change details manually. This tool automatically incorporates the changes with ease.

Security

Data accuracy is very important when presenting the details to the various channels for sales and marketing. It is also important to present the data to the end-users in the best possible manner and in the right format, structure, and category. Feed management tools ensure that the right data is categorized properly and maintain data security.

Efficiency

The feed management tools help in increasing efficiency as it leads to saving time and money. It prevents advertising the products that have reached out-of-stock status. It also allows in-text optimization that makes the advertisements more attractive and helpful in improving the conversion rate.

As the advertisement gets updated automatically based on the conditions, it prevents the wastage of time.

Functions of a product data feed management tool

Faster publication of the product list

The feed management tool helps in incorporating all the product-related details like specifications, descriptions, etc. based on the various attributes. This helps in the accurate classification or categorization of the product for the different channels.

This enables the users to search for the product of their choice with ease. It also allows for connecting the product catalog with the different marketplaces and ensures that the products are published in the correct category.

Product information updates

The product feed management tool enables keeping the product information management like cost, size, color, a new product in the catalog, etc. reflected immediately on the marketplace. This guarantees the organization in publishing the real-time data and making it available to their end-users.

Product exclusion

There are different requirements for the products on different channels and platforms based on the location or targeted segment. Not all the products need to be made available on each of these platforms.

Implementing the feed management tool enables the organization in filtering the products. This includes filtering the products that are out-of-stock to avoid the dissatisfaction of potential customers. It will help in removing the product that does not have any images as it will not attract many buyers.

Optimization of the published information

Providing complete information to the customers is very essential as it prompts them to make their purchases. The conversion rates are higher when the product information is complete with all the essential details like attractive titles, descriptions, images, etc.

The feed management tool ensures that all the details that are essential and mandatory are complete for the different channels and platforms.

Key functionalities of data feed management

1. Easy product categorization

The customers prefer comparing the product with the similar ones available in the market on various channels and platforms. There are different requirements set by the various channels and platforms for displaying the details for the potential customers.

As the requirements are varied for these channels, managing these details manually becomes tiresome. The feed management tool enables the organization to organize the product details for matching the categories set by the different export channels.

It also enables generating the categories by using the in-built smart functionality for categorization. This use of instant and inbuilt features leads to saving time and effort. It enables the creation of all the fields for the details as required by the different channels. This will help the business to increase its reach.

2. Powerful “if-then” rules

While updating the details for the feed for the different marketing or eCommerce channels, details for various attributes are essential. The feed management tool enables automatic updating of the details.

It incorporates the ‘if-then’ rule that allows the organization to easily code for the available data. It enables setting up the rules for automatically applying the rules while adding the details for the new product on the online shop.

It helps in precisely controlling the flow of products across the different export channels. It modifies the available product information as per the requirement of the various channels.

A good and robust feed management tool will allow the organization in getting instant feedback while applying the rules to the product catalog.

3. Top-quality data feed

For a product-based company, the product details play a very crucial role. The quality of the details provided to the end-users defines the trust and confidence built in the product and the brand.

The implementation of the feed management tool helps in improving the quality of the data by reducing the errors, removing the duplicates, eliminating poor data, updating the real-time details, etc.

It also increases the data consistency and the online visibility. The feed management tools allow for matching the fields and importing the necessary details into the specified fields.

The use of these feed management tools allows the organization to stay up-to-date with the latest details and changes as requested by the different channels.

4. Feeds & APIs

The export channels require specific details for the products like the level of stock, costing, etc. Manually entering these details can be tiresome and time-consuming. Manual addition of the data can cause time lag and may miss out on the real-time details.

Some marketplaces make use of the API connections for keeping the details updated on the online shops.

Implementing these APIs ensures the continuous and automated exchange of the details between the marketplace and the online shop.

The feed management tools have a feature that allows the organization to schedule the time for updating the details on the channel. Making use of APIs does not require scheduling the update times.

It automatically synchronized the data with the real-time to keep the details updated. This helps the organization in keeping the stock information updated on the export channels.

Examples of data feed management

As a beginner in data feed management, you have to focus on the fundamentals at first and keep up-to-date with the complete tasks and processes involved in it.

1. Product listing

Product listing involves so many operations. The main objective of the product listing is to take product data from one source or several sources and use the complete data to make product listings somewhere else.

Merchants who are invited to sell products on Target Plus can use Magento for eCommerce to house several SKUs. However, they have only sold products on their website until this situation.

They must find a good option to get their products into Target Plus. They can hire developers for building a custom integration to use the API of Target and work with one of its product listing partners of Target.

You must correctly categorize products to list products on any channel. This is because the channel displays products where they belong. Shopping channels let customers filter products by several attributes.

Granular and accurate categorization helps a lot to reach the customers who are likely to purchase what you are offering.

2. Product feed optimization

The main purpose of product feed optimization is to help your product listings to reach their complete potential with consistent, robust, and accurate product data. You can prepare your product titles for the Google Shopping campaign.

You have to make certain that they all include the brand and product names, relevant product nouns, colors, sizes, gender, age, material, availability, and other things. You can enhance the search relevance by adding relevant product nouns like a rain jacket and running shoes.

Google uses the product data to find when and where the products appear in the search results. You have to properly optimize your product listings. Optimizing the product feed means assigning the correct product types to products. This facility lets you segment the ad campaigns.

You can apply the custom labels to the products as per how well they sell, seasonality, how much they cost, and other criteria. You can use the product feed and make an ad campaign. You will be happy to segment products by custom labels and bid strategically on ads.

3. Data Synchronization

Data Synchronization is very important for enhancing the eCommerce business development activities. If you upload your data to a marketplace or shopping channel, then your data has to be continually updated.

Data feed management lets you provide precise data to customers on an ongoing basis whether you add or remove products, change prices, refresh stock, replace old images and detail, making any other change.

Data synchronization is useful to keep the priceless competitive. You can consider the example that merchants selling precious metals must update the prices every so often to account for fluctuations in the metal market.

4. Order management

Order management is one of the main things associated with data feed management. Effective data feed management solutions successfully streamline the order fulfillment process by automating the order data transfer from various channels to the eCommerce systems and back.

This approach helps a lot to reduce the possibility of shipping errors, poor customer experiences, and data inconsistencies. This applies only to marketplaces, not to advertising channels.

Bottom Line

Different methods to manage your data feed may confuse you at this time. You can manually make all the optimization rules yourself or use the apps designed to send product listings to other channels devoid of any optimization or data transformation.

Applications are usually unreliable and known for their nature to offer limited customization and some channel integrations without the best technical support. You can prefer and use the data feed management solutions at any time you like to succeed in your business sector.

Say goodbye to data chaos and embrace the power of PIM/MDM to supercharge your business growth!