The foundation for a shopping comparison engine is product data. Anyone involved in the industry can explain how many dilemmas emerge when listing products derived from different sellers. Serving up relevant products is one challenge. Matching like products to each other comes next, and of course putting this together in an engaging and consumer friendly format is par for the course. Usually channels attempt to simplify the product feed to allow products to be easily digested and displayed by the engine’s infrastructure. However, recently there has been movement to a more detailed data feed format first pioneered by Amazon, and then later brought to comparison engines by GoogleBase’s innovative design. The latest company to courageously put forward a complex and intricate catalog feed format is Shopping.com.
Overview of the New File Format
Shopping is releasing the new data feed format so that it can be adopted by merchants by June 1st. The typical format options are all present such as SKU, Brand, UPC, Product Name, etc. These are all part of the 'Classification Attributes' group as detailed in the product feed specification. The feed can be delivered in the usual ways and in the usual formats, such as .CSV, .TXT, and .XML.
Product Attributes
What really makes this new e-commerce feed format stand out, is a section of the shopping feed specifications that Shopping refers to as 'Product Attributes’. Since this feed format is not in production yet, it’s only possible to speculate on how all these facets will come together. However, here are the highlights, and they are intriguing:
Product Bullet Points 1-5: This looks like it will operate in a similar method to Amazon's feature list, which gives an itemized, heads-up display to the consumer of short points about the product. This type of format should help in allowing consumers to easily browse through products for additional details, without having to read the entire description.
Product Type, Sub-type, Style, Gender, Department, Age Range, Material, Format, ...etc: And, it keeps going! There are numerous attributes, too many to mention here. All of these attributes are aimed at helping place products into subgroups existing below the category level taxonomy. These subgroups will appear as options in a navigational bar on the site, and allow for further drill down into relevant product assortments.
Color: It's still early to spell out exactly how this will operate, but on many items and searches, there should be a color search option. Shopping will display colors available based on items within the result range. Indications are that Shopping will match more granular color choices to more basic options (such as matching ‘maroon’ to the color red). Like.com has implemented a similar color attribute.
Custom Attributes 1-100: Yes, up to 100 separate product attributes. This is where things get really interesting, and kudos to Shopping for opening up this much ability for merchants. Each field name is to be assigned by the merchant and then populated with matching values. Only Google has opened up this much customization ability until now, by allowing merchants to choose what information is best suited for the consumer. As with some other components, there are many possibilities with this tool, so it’s hard to give advice or know with certainty the exact affect these variables will have.
New Possibilities
Ultimately this new catalog feed format will open up new opportunities on Shopping.com. To accommodate this feed format and the data points it offers, Shopping will be progressively updating their site. To get an idea on how this will play out, visit the Shoe category on Shopping.com: http://www.shopping.com/xDN-shoes. Ideally, this will give merchants a whole new range of options to better match their products to what consumers are searching for. This will allow for more detailed searches and results, which are needed when having an inventory of millions of items.
On the merchant side, this will also open up the door to more creative data construction, without the limits of only a few basic data points. With new possibilities, does come increased risk as well. If these data points are not completely filled out, then a merchant’s products could disappear as consumers click into progressively more detailed product groups. With proper product feed integration, this can be overcome. For example, in Mercent Retail, these additional data points could be populated via content rules to ensure a robust product feed even if the product data is not initially available. Overall, with proper testing and feed management, merchants will have the entire summer to get ready for Q4 2009.
Tagged: Data Feed Product Attributes, CSE Trends, Channel Marketing Management
