What is a Data Feed?

A data feed is a way of delivering structured data from one system to another. This could be for specific information, news, social media feeds or ecommerce marketing and advertising.

The application that receives the data often sets the requirements for the format of a data feed. A feed is most often in the form of a file which contains information structured to meet these requirements. These type of file can vary but often comprise of formats such as:

XML-icon

Extensible Markup Language (XML)

CSV-icon

Comma Separated Values (CSV)

JSON-icon

JavaScript Object Notation (JSON)

TSV-icon

Tab Separated Values (TSV)

Each product is listed with a unique identifier (an ID or SKU) and for each product, the title is listed, as well as the price, product URL, color, size, images and anything else that is relevant:

Title

Price

Description

Stock

Category

Plus many more

What are the role of Data Feeds in ecommerce?

In an eCommerce context, the data feeds of online stores are sent to sales and marketing channels like Amazon, Google and Facebook to instruct them how to display their product listings correctly. 

And in a basic sense, that's all there is to it. If your main priority is just to get your product data from one place (your online store) to another (your sales channels), all you need to do is make sure the feed is in the correct format.
feed-formats

Why is it called a data feed?

It is called a data feed because the file is being updated frequently (every day or every hour); this way the product info is constantly fed (uploaded) into other systems, like shopping channels.

Updating the file frequently is very important, because the product information in an online shop changes constantly, for example:

Products get sold and are eventually sold out (out of stock)

New products are added to the shop

Some products will be discontinued.

It is important therefore, for the retailer not to advertise products that aren't available: interested consumers will click on his product ad (the retailer pays for each click) only to be disappointed when they find out that this product is sold out.

Why are Data Feeds important?

Each eCommerce sales channels will take a look at the product data in order to establish when and where it should be displayed to match shopper queries and interests. If businesses regard the data feed not as a means of getting data from A to B, but to help their shoppers find the relevant products, there is more that can be done. 

Data-Feed-Management

It's therefore important to have an accurate, up-to-date data feed that has the addition of relevant queries to match your potential customer's searches.

The second you want to share data outside the Website it is a an online representation of your product, and you are often paying for the performance of said product, and ranked on quality against your competitors. 

How can you improve the performance of a Data Feed?

Schedule regular updates.

Include all the fields for every product, including those that are not compulsory for your sales channel.

Write unique and informative content for fields like product titles and descriptions.

ecommerce product title

A well-managed and enriched data feed will lead to more people seeing your products. This gives you the opportunity to increase traffic to your website and convert them to buyers.
For more info check out our intro to Data Feed Optimization.

About WakeupData

WakeupData is data feed management platform, which helps merchants on Magento, Shopify, WooCommerce, Prestashop and more to optimize their product data feeds.

We support you every step of the way to set up integrations for your Google product feed, Amazon feed, Facebook feed and hundreds of other sales channels worldwide.

Apply for a free trial

We offer a user-friendly interface, intuitive design and a Customer Success Team to deliver ROI through feed management and optimization through effective Data feed management.  

Download our FREE Product Feed Audit Guide or book your live demo and free evaluation today.

Wakeupdata allows me, a person with no programming background, build the feed by myself from scratch and customize it as I go, which definitely has the potential to be a big time-saver.
Joni Helminen, Senior Specialist at OMD Finland