About 12-24 million eCommerce stores are operating online and increasing rapidly. However, the failure rate for online stores is around 90%.
In the bustling world of eCommerce, standing out from the crowd and delivering a seamless shopping experience to customers is vital for success.
You need to research niche/products, target market, and audience, develop a proper eCommerce website, and have an effective marketing strategy in place.
WooCommerce is a powerful WordPress plugin that has the tools and features to build and run a robust eCommerce store. And the plethora of third-party plugins built for WooCommerce is what makes it the champion.
But you still need to bring traffic/visitors to your store. You can do paid search or social marketing, or even content marketing, all of which will require time and money.
One mighty effective yet unknown to many methods of promoting your products across multiple channels is product feed marketing.
In this comprehensive guide, we delve into the world of product feeds and explore how they can revolutionize your WooCommerce store.
We will also walk you through the steps to using a WooCommerce product pro plugin to create and connect product feeds.
Let’s get started.
What Is a Product Feed?
A product feed is a structured file or data stream that contains detailed information about the products available in an online store or eCommerce platform. It typically includes attributes such as product titles, descriptions, prices, images, availability, categories, and other relevant details.
The purpose of a product feed is to provide consistent and standardized data to various marketing channels, comparison shopping engines, affiliate networks, and other platforms that display or promote products.
By using product feeds, businesses can efficiently distribute and update their product information across multiple channels. This can help them reach a wider audience and increase their online visibility.
Product feeds are also used in online advertising campaigns, especially in the context of dynamic remarketing or product listing ads. They enable advertisers to showcase their products with up-to-date information, targeting specific audiences based on their preferences and behavior.
In simple words, you can list and promote your WooCommerce products on marketplaces like Amazon, eBay, Etsy, etc., and price comparison engines like Google Shopping, Idealo, PriceGrabber, etc.
You can promote your products on social media engines as well, such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.
Product feed files are also essential for you to run shopping ads on platforms like Google Shopping, Bing Smart Shopping, Snapchat dynamic ads, etc.
Product feed in WooCommerce generally comes in formats like CSV (Comma-Separated Values), XML (Extensible Markup Language), or JSON (JavaScript Object Notation).
What Are Attributes in a Product Feed File?
Different channels have different attributes and guidelines for generating their feed file. You need to follow these guidelines while creating your feed file for those specific channels.
Every channel will give you guidelines for what attributes to insert in the feed. Now, what are attributes?
Attributes in a product feed file refer to the specific pieces of information or column headers in plain language that describe the products being listed. These attributes provide detailed information about the products and their characteristics.
The attributes may vary depending on the platform, industry, and specific requirements, but here are some common attributes found in a product feed file:
- Product Title: The name or title of the product.
- Description: A brief description or summary of the product.
- SKU (Stock Keeping Unit): A unique identifier or code assigned to each product.
- Price: The price of the product.
- Currency: The currency in which the price is listed.
- Availability: Indicates whether the product is in stock or out of stock.
- Brand: The brand or manufacturer of the product.
- Category: The category or classification of the product.
- Product Image URL: The URL of the image representing the product.
- Product URL: The URL of the product page on the website.
- EAN (European Article Number): Unique identifiers for the product.
- Weight: The weight of the product.
- Dimensions: The dimensions of the product (e.g., length, width, height).
- Variants or Options: Attributes that describe different variations or options of a product, such as size, color, or material.
- Additional Attributes: Other specific attributes relevant to the product, such as age group, gender, material, features, etc.
These attributes provide comprehensive information about the products, enabling platforms, marketing channels, and other systems to understand and display the products accurately to potential customers.
How To Set Up a WooCommerce Product Feed
You can use any spreadsheet software like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets to create a WooCommerce product feed. You can learn the attributes of a particular channel and organize them as column headers and finally copy-paste your WooCommerce product data underneath them.
However, this process is completely manual and prone to errors, especially when you have a long list of products.
Also, let’s say you have a busy store where you constantly add new products or make changes to the current ones or offer different promotional offers. You will need to update the feed every single time you do any of these.
This will require a lot of time and effort to manage feeds for all your channels. Also, this will increase the chance of errors in your feed files. Any wrong information in a feed means you put the wrong information on a channel.
For example, if you somehow forget to update the price of a product from a discounted value to your original value, the channel will still display the lower price. When customers come to your Woo store, they will see the price is high. Ultimately, you will lose the faith of your customers, your reputation, and conversions for just one mistake.
Therefore, providing accurate information in all your feed files is essential, and updating them accurately is equally important.
The purpose of a product feed is to list and promote your WooCommerce products to multiple channels with ease. The manual process, however, can’t fulfill that purpose properly.
Your best solution is to use a WooCommerce feed plugin. A product feed plugin for WooCommerce can generate product feed files for different channels with minimum effort and update them regularly and automatically.
The best WooCommerce product feed plugin for the job is the CTX Feed – WooCommerce Product Feed Pro.
CTX Feed is a freemium WP product feed manager plugin that can revolutionize your product feed marketing efforts. The plugin offers features and functionalities that can greatly enhance or transform your product feed marketing strategies.
This product feed pro for WooCommerce plugin supports more than 130 channels, including popular online marketplaces, price comparison engines, and social media platforms. It has built-in templates for these channels.
The templates of this WooCommerce product feed manager pro have integrated all guidelines and channel attribute requirements. Your task is just to select the channel template, and the plugin will do the rest.
The WooCommerce product feed pro plugin will automatically populate all the necessary attributes and collect all your WooCommerce product information accordingly. Finally, when you press the generate button, it will generate the feed file to download or connect to your channel.
The update and connectivity features of CTX Feed are its most notable features.
Whether you add any new products or make any changes to your current products, whatever the change is, CTX Feed will fetch those changes and update all your feed files automatically at your set intervals.
This WooCommerce product feed pro plugin lets you connect your feed files through URL/FTP/SFTP/HTTP methods.
For example, you can create a product feed for Google Shopping. CTX Feed will give you a feed URL for the file. You can copy-paste the feed URL to connect to the Google Shopping platform through its Scheduled Fetch option.
When you connect through a URL, you no longer need to download and upload feed files manually. The plugin will collect all your product updates at your set intervals, and Google will fetch and update those changes through the URL. And the whole process will happen automatically, thanks to CTX Feed.
Key Features:
- Supports 130+ channels, including Google Shopping, Bing, Snapchat, Idealo, etc.
- Offers pre-made templates for all channels.
- Allows you to create unlimited feed files.
- Lets you create feed files for unlimited products.
- Allows you to create completely custom products.
- Supports 6 file types (XML, CSV, TSV, XLS, TXT, JSON)
- You can also apply different conditions or exclude certain products from the feed.
- Allows you to update files automatically.
- Lets you add various custom fields on WooCommerce product pages.
- Supports creating multilingual and multi-currency product feeds.
Price:
The free version is available in the WordPress repository. The CTX Feed WooCommerce product feed Pro packs a lot of advanced features. It comes in different packages, including a lifetime license.
Annual Cost:
- Single Site – $119.00
- 5 Sites – $199.00
- 10 Sites – $229.00
How To Generate a Product Feed Using the WooCommerce Product Feed Pro Plugin
Login to your WordPress admin panel. Go to Plugins>>Add New and find the free version by searching.
Install and activate it. If you have purchased the WooCommerce product feed pro version, then upload and activate it as well.
CTX Feed creates its own separate menu on the left panel. From there, select Make Feed.
This is the new window.
From the Template, you can select your desired channel. For example, we want to create a product feed for Google Shopping.
You can also change the file type.
The moment you select the channel, the plugin will automatically populate all the necessary attributes it requires at the bottom. All that is left for you to do is, click the generate button.
The WooCommerce product pro plugin will automatically collect all your WooCommerce product information and generate a feed file for the channel.
Advanced Features of the Plugin
Let’s look at some of the advanced or pro features of the plugin.
One of the most important aspects of product feed management is to remove the out-of-stock products from the feed files at the right time. When you generate feed files manually, it will require manual labor to find the stock-out products and remove them one by one.
Fortunately, this WooCommerce product feed pro plugin lets you do this in splits of a second by simply choosing a filter.
When creating the feed, besides the attributes, you will also notice Filter and Advanced Filter tabs. Through these tabs, you can apply different conditions or create specific product feed files.
You can select to remove certain products, including out-of-stock products. It lets you create feeds for specific product statuses, IDs, or categories.
Different channels require some attributes that WooCommerce doesn’t have built-in on its product pages. For example, Brand, MPN, GTIN, EAN, etc.
We already know that WooCommerce is very flexible and allows you to add custom fields through coding or plugins like ACF. However, that requires some technical skills, which most store doesn’t have.
Luckily, CTX Feed has all the custom fields integrated into its settings. Go to CTX Feed>>Settings and click the Custom Fields tab.
Here you can see the plugin has listed all the custom attributes different channels may require. Also, it has some additional custom fields in case you need any.
Let’s enable MPN and save.
Now go to one of your product pages and scroll down to the Product Data section. In the Inventory tab, you will find the plugin’s custom fields you enabled.
You can input your data here, and the plugin will insert them into the feed files automatically.
Connecting the Feed Files to a Channel
Now that you have generated a product feed file successfully, it’s time to upload/connect it to the channel.
Go to CTX Feed>>Manage Feeds. There you will find the list of your generated feeds.
Noticed the Update Interval and Auto Update features on the page?
Through these settings, the WooCommerce product feed pro plugin collects all the changes and updates the feed files. For example, if you set the update interval to 30 minutes, all your feed files will be updated after every 30 minutes.
The plugin gives you a number of settings for each file. If you hover over a feed, you will find options to edit, delete, view, regenerate, copy URL, and download the file.
Let’s check out how to connect the Google Shopping feed to the platform. Hover over the file and copy the feed URL.
Next, go to your Google Merchant Center account, and select the option Add Multiple Products At Once.
On the following processes, you will be given the option to choose through which you want to upload or connect the feed.
Select the Scheduled Fetch option, and in the next window, it will let you paste your feed URL. Google also allows you to set update intervals when you connect through a URL.
Therefore, when you use this product feed WooCommerce plugin, your task is just to select the channel, click generate button, and copy-paste the URL to Merchant Center. The plugin and the channel will take it from there, and your products will be displayed to millions of visitors automatically.
Benefits of Using Product Feed Pro for WooCommerce
Using a product feed for WooCommerce offers several benefits that can enhance your online store’s performance and streamline your operations. Here are some key advantages:
Efficient Product Management
A product feed acts as a central repository for all your product information. Instead of manually updating each product listing, you can manage your inventory, pricing, and other details in a single feed.
This saves time and reduces the likelihood of errors or inconsistencies across different platforms.
Seamless Multi-Channel Selling
With a product feed, you can easily distribute your product data to various channels, such as marketplaces, comparison shopping engines, affiliate networks, and social media platforms.
This enables you to reach a wider audience and increase your brand visibility across multiple sales channels simultaneously.
Improved Product Discoverability
If your WooCommerce product pages are search engine optimized, then your feed files will be optimized as well. This will increase the chances for potential customers to find your products when conducting online searches.
By including relevant keywords, attributes, and descriptions in your product feed, you can enhance your search engine optimization (SEO) efforts and increase organic traffic to your WooCommerce store.
Accurate and Up-to-Date Information
By regularly updating your product feed, you ensure that all your product information is accurate and up to date across different platforms. This includes product titles, descriptions, prices, availability, and any other relevant details.
This consistency helps build trust with customers and reduces the chances of selling outdated or out-of-stock products.
Automated Inventory Management
When integrated with your WooCommerce store, a product feed can automate inventory management tasks. It can monitor stock levels and update product availability in real-time.
It can even remove or hide products when they are out of stock. This prevents overselling and improves the overall customer experience.
Streamlined Product Listing Process
When adding new products to your WooCommerce store, a product feed can simplify the process by automatically importing product information from the feed. This eliminates the need to manually enter each product detail, saving you time and effort.
Enhanced Analytics and Reporting
Many product feed solutions provide detailed analytics and reporting features. You can track key metrics such as click-through rates, conversions, revenue, and ROI for different channels. This data allows you to evaluate the performance of your product listings and optimize your marketing strategies accordingly.
Personalized Marketing Campaigns
By leveraging product feeds, you can create highly targeted and personalized marketing campaigns. For example, you can use dynamic remarketing ads to display specific products to users who have previously shown interest in them. This level of customization can significantly improve the effectiveness of your marketing efforts and increase conversion rates.
Wrapping Up
Product feed strengthens and smoothens your chance of competing with your rivals and promoting your products on giant marketplaces. They are cost-effective ways to reach millions of traffic.
In price comparison sites such as Google Shopping, people come looking for particular products they need to buy. Therefore, when you list your products on these platforms, you are actually promoting your products to potential customers who are actively searching for your products.
Thus, your chances of increasing conversions and revenue grow manifold.
Hope this product feed pro for WooCommerce tutorial was of help to you. Let us know in the comments if you have any questions or suggestions.
