Product Attributes and Data Feed Marketing

By Glen Hamilton

We've been getting a lot of inquiries about our recent press release on Mercent's TrueAttribute™ Technology.  Given that, I thought I'd share a bit more about product attributes and how Mercent thinks about them.

Let’s start the discussion with a few common questions:

What's a product attribute?

Sometimes we take the basics for granted. A product attribute provides an important detail of a retail product that facilitates comparison and classification with similar products. A few examples of product attributes are: size, color, material, weight, display size, battery life, power rating, age range, processor speed, etc.

Where do product attributes live?

Product attributes often live in a retailer’s information systems as values within structured product attribute fields.  Alternatively, they may be embedded within general content such as product descriptions or feature / benefit / specification lists.

Product attributes that live in defined database fields are referred to as structured attributes. Those that are embedded in general product content are called unstructured attributes and those that describe the variations between related products (such as variations in the size and color of a sweater) are called variations (or sometimes 'permutations').

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Cool Factoid » Product attributes come in three flavors: structured, unstructured and variations.

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What’s the difference between a product attribute and a product specification?

Product specifications are often product attributes or they are strings of text that contain attributes. That being said, not all the product specifications on retail product pages are necessarily attributes. It’s not uncommon for specification lists to contain product features and marketing text that extol the benefits of a product, rather than describing the actual attributes of it.

Why are product attributes now so important in data feed marketing?

The simple answer to this question is that the comparison shopping engines (Google base, Bizrate / Shopzilla, Shopping.com, NexTag, MSN Shopping, Yahoo! Shopping, etc.) are becoming more like the leading online marketplaces (Amazon.com, SHOP.com, etc.).

Online marketplaces where the transaction occurs within the marketplace, such as the third-party seller program at Amazon, have had robust product catalog specs (typically in the form of product catalog XSDs specific to each top level product category) for years now. These schemas typically support full product attribute variations and also rich descriptive attributes and specifications.

On a transactional online marketplace it’s important to give the visitor enough information about the product to make a purchase decision while on the marketplace site. For example, SHOP.com has spent much effort on their ‘perfect content’ initiative to make sure that the content they get from retailers is as rich and attribute detailed as the content presented on the retailer’s own product page.

Historically, the comparison shopping engines (CSEs) have lagged behind on product attributes for at least a couple reasons:

1. Revenue per visitor: Comparison shopping engines have every incentive to get the visitor off their portal and onto the merchant’s product page to do their research. Each click off the CSE means revenue. Multiple clicks to multiple merchants mean more CSE revenue. Typically, the CSE visitor will buy the target product at a high conversion rate (because of the high purchase intent inherent in CSE visitors) but the CSE does not get paid as much if the consumer does most of their research on the CSE site. Hence the CSE’s focus has been on matching like products by part number and category, developing their keyword-based search engines and offering merchant reviews.
2. Consumer Electronics focus: In the early days of CSEs they were the domain of the consumer electronics world (i.e. the early C|Net Shopper.com, Pricegrabber, NexTag, Junglee, CompareNet, BottomDollar and others). The CSEs would typically source their product attribute content independent of the retailer. For non-consumer electronics CSE categories simple product attribute variations were usually sufficient (size, color, material, etc.) if even that was required.

Google base helps drive the product attribute frenzy

Google indexes product content on a retailer’s web site. Google base indexes the product content in a retailer’s data feed. Now, if a retailers’ data feed content and page rank are good enough, Google is including it in its ‘natural’ search engine results pages (SERPs). Even more specifically, the Google base product content may appear in the coveted Google One Box area at the top of a search results page. Beyond this, the new and exciting buzz is that Google is including attribute based product search refinements in its natural search results.

This all means that product attributes are now very important for data feed marketing. MSN Shopping also has an open product attribute schema and more comparison shopping sites are, or will, follow suit.

The CSE’s now have a powerful competitor, not in what was Froogle… and no, not in Google Product Search… but in Google SERPs. As product attribute driven Google search engine results pages fully roll out, every CSE will feel the increasing pressure to enhance the value of their portal in respect to product content and guided product attribute-based navigation and search results. Those retailers who can master the art and science of publishing attributes to Google base and other CSEs will have a competitive advantage.

Enter Mercent’s TrueAttribute™ Technology

In 2002 the Mercent team, prior to spinning out from MorseBest Innovation, was contracted to write the first merchant facing documentation and specfications for the Amazon.com Merchants @ third-party seller program.  From that several hundred page effort came much of the inspiration for Mercent Retail with its product attribute focus and ability to map, extract and transform attributes from a retailer’s content and back-end retail systems.

The TrueAttribute™ philosophy is to know every attribute for every product and allow each attribute to find its true home on the growing number of channels that support extended product attributes. For more information feel free to contact Mercent.

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