Explanation of product feed

Why create a product feed? 

Product feeds are mainly used to work with price comparison publishers but more generally with all affiliates who make comparisons. 

This can be via generalist affiliates but also via affiliates on specific themes.

Structure of a product feed

The product flow is based on the source flow communicated by the brand (product catalog with all product information by product sheets).

This file contains the essential elements for affiliates using a product feed. 

Here is the main information required and recommended: 

• Unique Product Identification (EAN); 
• Product Name ; 
• Product Description;
• Product URL; 
• Price;
• Sale prices; 
• Shipping fees
• Image link (Multiple recommended, 1 per column);
• Stock;
• delivery time
• Additional attributes (e.g. color / size / etc.)
• Type of product; 
• Brand;

This list is not exhaustive, the more information you provide in the file (EAN, manufacturer code, category, model name), the better your listing will be for your offers on these comparators.

• Tips : Create two feeds, a source feed that will be updated daily, a secondary feed that will be updated weekly (segmented).
• Tips 2 : Be clear, concise, explicit when creating your product description. 
• Tips 3 : Feel free to add categories and subcategories to better categorize your products properly. 

The different feed aggregators 

A Feed Aggregator , also known as an RSS reader, is an IT tool or online platform for bringing together various web content into a single interface. 

All in all, the feed aggregator is a handy tool for easily accessing a variety of content in one place.

It can be used in marketing but also by banks, travel sites, etc. 

It therefore allows you to: 

• Create and manage articles from a product feed;
• Optimize your product feeds;
• Categorize your products and segment them;
• Automate your information automatically and daily in accordance with your source flow.

Here are some feed aggregators (paid and unpaid): 

In addition, to synchronize your source feed with the tool you have chosen, it is important that you can connect your product catalog from your e-commerce solution (Prestashop, Magento, Shopify, etc.)

Thus, the choice of this aggregator is really important! 

The formats of a product feed

Affilae allows you to manage two formats: 

• .csv
• .xml
• .json

These formats provide dynamic access to your product catalog. 

It is essential that it is under a dynamic link and not a static .csv or .xml. 

Otherwise, the changes relating to your products will not be taken into account.