Product Feed Management: Best Practices to Boost Sales & Efficiency

If you want to sell more, it's time to optimize your product feed management. 

How exactly does product feed management help you sell more? 

Well, a Salesforce study found that 89% of consumers are more likely to buy from you again after a positive shopping experience. To create that kind of experience, your product feed needs to be well-organized and easy to navigate. 

Unfortunately, if your product data is messy or incomplete, potential customers may never even see your listings, let alone make a purchase.

This guide will walk you through the best practices for product feed optimization so you can improve product visibility and increase sales.

Why Is Product Data Feed Management Important?

Product data or product feeds are, generally speaking, product listings with all the product attributes, such as product titles, images, descriptions, availability, price, web address, etc. 

In other words, it's a structured dataset that allows products to be displayed across different marketplaces and channels. These feeds are usually formatted as an XML or CSV file.

The benefit of having a well-managed product feed extends far beyond basic organization. 

Here are other benefits of product feed management that make it a worthwhile investment: 

• Well-structured product feeds help search engines and marketplace algorithms better understand and index your products. In turn, your products appear higher in search results.
• As your business expands across different marketplaces and platforms, having a centralized, well-managed product feed ensures consistency and saves countless hours of manual updates across channels.
• Clear, detailed product listings help customers find exactly what they want. This, plus the detailed product data, reduces confusion and builds trust with your audience.
• A well-managed feed helps you maintain accuracy and avoid costly mistakes like displaying outdated prices.

The Best Practices for Product Feed Optimization

Updating and managing product feeds will not be the most exciting part of running your business. 

However, getting it right will make a huge difference (think more trust from customers and eventually more revenue) for your business. 

These 7 best practices will help you reap the advantages of improving product feed management.

1. Use data feed management tools

Having the right data feed management solution is the number one thing that will help you improve efficiency and properly manage all product data.

The data feed management platform provides a centralized place for organizing all the information about your products. 

Whether you're starting your business or want to optimize your product data, you can easily input all the necessary information in the product feed management solution, organize it, and manage it as needed.

If you're yet to build a product feed, some tools, such as Feedink, provide crawlers to let you download all product data from your store. 

Key features to look for in a product feed management platform:

• Multiple data format support
• Automated data mapping
• Product drop protection
• Rule-based data management
• Real-time preview & test mode
• Integration with marketing channels
• Image resizing and optimization
• User activity logs and history

2. Perform keyword and competitor research

Study search patterns to identify product features, benefits, and use cases that matter most to your target audience.

Also, examine how competitors structure their product information, what type of product images drive conversions, and which product attributes they emphasize. This information will help you:

• Structure product information in ways that match the buyer preferences
• Present product visuals that highlight key selling points
• Identify gaps in competitor offerings that you can address
• Adapt your feed strategy based on proven market successes

3. Polish your product feed

Data quality is one of the most essential factors to the success of your sales efforts. No matter how good your marketing is, if the data on your website is messy, poorly organized, and of bad quality, it will make your customers leave for the competitors.

In fact, some tests have shown that users quickly abandon websites when confronted with confusing, hard-to-navigate product listings.

Here's how to organize your product data to avoid losing your customers because of complicated listings:

• Use high-quality images. This is so critical because 75% of consumers rely on images to decide whether to buy. More importantly, high-quality product photos drive 94% higher conversions than lower-quality photos
• Optimize product titles to make them descriptive. Also, include relevant keywords to improve search visibility
• Include detailed descriptions to provide comprehensive product descriptions with key features, benefits, and specifications
• Maintain consistent formatting across all listings to avoid errors and improve data quality
• Add rich content such as product reviews, ratings, and videos to enhance product listings. You can later use them in digital marketing channels
• Use Catalog Ads to promote multiple products at once in a visually appealing format. These ads pull product data directly from your catalog, allowing you to display personalized and engaging recommendations to potential customers

4. Update your product catalog regularly

Like most ecommerce stores, your product lineup will always experience changes. New items arrive, others sell out, and specifications change. 

Displaying outdated or incorrect product information will only frustrate customers and damage trust. 

Imagine the disappointment a customer would feel if they were to receive something different from what they ordered all because of outdated product data. You risk losing not just that sale but their long-term loyalty.

Updating your catalog is especially vital if you're selling across multiple channels. Each marketplace, social platform, and online store needs to reflect the same accurate, up-to-date information. 

5. Measure time and save costs with automation

Even the best feed management tools can't magically update all your product descriptions or handle every repetitive task.

While you can't completely automate every aspect of product feed management, you can track where you spend your time and make smart decisions about what to automate. 

Here's how you can improve data feeds by tracking your product feed management process:

• Spot those frustrating, manual tasks that eat up hours of your day. These are perfect candidates for automation
• See if your automation tools are actually delivering on their promises of saved time and better efficiency
• Free your team from endless feed updates so they can focus on strategic improvements that deliver bottom-line growth
• Catch the rushed updates that lead to errors before they hurt your business
• Back up your workflow decisions with solid data, not just gut feelings

The right time tracking software, such as TimeCamp, can offer detailed performance tracking, which can help you see what's happening with your data feed optimization. 

6. Integrate your product feed platform with your other work tools

Think about all the pieces of software your team uses daily. There's your inventory system to keep track of stock levels, project management tools to track the team's tasks, and the marketing platforms used to push out campaigns. 

Getting all these tools to talk to each other can help you:

• Stop the endless copy-pasting between systems by having your inventory data flow automatically into your product feeds
• Save hours of manual updates by connecting your product information management(PIM) system to automatically sync product descriptions, specifications, and images across all your marketplaces
• Catch problems early by setting up alerts between systems. For example, receiving a Slack notification when inventory runs low
• Create powerful automation workflows, like automatically pausing ads for out-of-stock items or updating product pricing across all channels when costs change

The beauty of integration is that each connection multiplies the value of your existing tools. Instead of juggling multiple systems, you create one smooth workflow where data flows exactly where it needs to be. 

7. Monitor and optimize your feed performance 

We can't talk about product feed management best practices without mentioning performance monitoring. After all, you can't make better what you don't measure.

These are just a few of the things you should be keeping an eye on within your product feed:

• Watch for feed errors or disapprovals and analyze patterns to prevent future issues
• Stay on top of competitor pricing and positioning to make sure your products remain competitive in the market
• Listen to what your customers are saying about your product information and make adjustments as needed
• Monitor your team's workflow efficiency and identify opportunities for process improvements
• Pay attention to which product attributes drive the most conversions

Conclusion: Boost Sales with Better Product Feed Management

An optimized product data feed will improve product visibility and make it easy for customers to find what they need when they need it.

This will quickly translate into higher click-through rates and conversions.

But for you to get these benefits, you'll need to prioritize efficient data feed management and work with a product feed platform that allows automation.

If you couple that with the product feed management best practices we just shared, you'll start to notice improvements in your product rankings and bottom line.