A product feed is a  database that contains all the information about the different products of your online store, including data such as the product description, inventory, stock, or main characteristics. The product feed file can be in various formats, such as XML, CSV, or TXT.

Depending on the sector in which the company is dedicated, the information included in the feed will be different. For example, size is essential in clothing e-commerce, while technology e-commerce will have sections for the size of the screen or the amount of memory of a device.

The primary function of a product feed is to send the information of the products in the catalog to different internet sites, such as marketplaces, price comparators, or online advertising tools. Having all the information centralized and automating the shipping process saves a lot of time and avoids possible errors.

Advantages of Using a Product Feed in your Ecommerce

Automate your Marketing

Having a product feed makes managing your e-commerce much easier. Instead of constantly updating different catalogs, you must import your product information into the tool and create the other meals for each channel. The device will automatically update the different channels whenever there are changes.

Manage Large Catalogs With Ease

As e-commerce begins to grow, it becomes increasingly complicated to manage. Catalogs with hundreds or thousands of products, multiple marketing, and advertising channels, and web pages in different languages. Managing all this by hand consumes a lot of time and company resources. Instead, you can save a lot of resources to spend on other, more profitable aspects of your business with a product feed.

Better manage product information

A product feed is nothing more than a database, which means it offers many features to filter your products however you like. For example, you can select only the effects of a specific category or those with a particular characteristic.

In addition, product feeds also facilitate data optimization, for example, adding information, enriching the texts, or modifying the titles.

How to Create a Product Feed on Facebook

Facebook Catalogs can advertise and sell products on Facebook, Instagram, and WhatsApp Business in an integrated way.

To create a  product catalog on Facebook, you must first be an admin of a Facebook Business Page and have set up a Business Manager. Then follow these steps:

Go into Business Manager and go to the catalog manager.

  • Click on “Create Catalog.”
  • Choose the type of catalog you want to create: e-commerce (for products sold online), travel (hotels and vacation properties, flights or destinations), real estate (rental properties and real estate listings), or automobiles.
  • Choose how you want to upload your products. There are two different options: add them manually (the option is called “Upload product information”) or connect the e-commerce platform that you use regularly. If your venue is integrate with Facebook, you will be able to import the products automatically.
  • Choose the account from which you want to manage the catalog and give it a name.
  • Click the “Create” button, and voila! You can now see the catalog you just created.

How to Create a Product Feed on Google

Before you can advertise and sell your products on Google, you must create a product feed in  Google Merchant Center. Let’s look at making the two main types of Merchant Center feeds.

Create the Main Feed

Primary product feeds are the primary data source that Merchant Center uses to access product data and display it on your channels. You can use them to add or remove products, set up language and country targeting, and set feed rules for your product data.

To create the main product feed, follow these steps:

  • Go to the “Feeds” section of the Merchant Center “Products” page. Click the button with the + icon and follow the prompts.
  • Add the country of sale or leading country in which the products in the feed are sold. The products included in the feed must meet the requirements of the selected country.
  • Add the language in which your product data is.
  • Choose one or more destinations to determine which Google features the products in the feed can use.
  • Choose the name of the feed.
  • Tthe input method: Google Sheets, Scheduled Fetch, File Upload, or Website Crawl.
  • Add the file name.
  • Click Continue. You can now view and manage the feed you just created.

Create a Companion Feed

Supplemental feeds provide additional information to one or more main meals. They cannot be used to add or remove products or be used independently but are instead a secondary data source used to provide additional product attributes that are not in the main feed.

You must have previously created a main feed to use a supplemental feed and link both with the ID attribute. Additional dinners can only update product data if they have an ID that already exists in the main meal.

We have regional product inventory feeds within the supplemental feeds, which can override product data from the main meal to show different prices or the availability in a given area. You can use them to create location-targeted marketing offers.

How to Use a Feed Manager

Different marketplaces have different specifications for product feeds. For example, in Merchant Center, you have to include if the product is new or used as part of the feed attributes, while in other platforms, this field is not essential.

If you sell on different platforms, you have to adapt your feed to each of them. Doing this process by hand is very inefficient, and the whole point of having a meal is to automate and simplify. How can we automate and streamline this process? With a  feed management tool.

Conclusion

Product feeds are CSV, TXT, or XML files containing the product information used by marketplaces, shopping engines, and social commerce channels to display product listings.