Product feeds

A product feed is a detailed representation of a retailer’s entire product catalog.

Product feeds must be in a standard XML format, such as the Google Merchant Center feed format (which is what Voyado recommends) and must be directly accessible through an open URL.

The URL for a retailer’s product feed (or feeds) is entered into the Engage back-end, by their Voyado team. If the feed exists in different languages, a feed can be defined for each language.

The product feed is then downloaded at predefined intervals and used to update the article register in Engage. This article register in is created from the product feed as well as information taken from receipts. Since an end-user’s receipt, abandoned cart or abandoned browse often contains only the unique ID (the gtin) of an article, this can be matched to the data in the product feed in a process called enrichment.

This enriched, more detailed, information in the article register can then be used in, for example:

• Email send-outs
• Product recommendations
• Abandoned cart and abandoned browse

Using an external product feed allows the enrichment of articles to be updated as needed and also keeps the information sent on receipts as small as possible, since only an item’s unique ID needs to be sent.

Voyado recommends 800 000 items as the maximum in a product feed, to assure the best experience with Engage. If you need to have a product feed with more items, contact your Voyado account manager. Products of interest are connected to the article register and not the product feed.

Example of a product feed

This simplified example above contains one item node. An actual product feed will usually have all of a retailer’s products, which can be thousands or even millions of item nodes.

<rss xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0">
  <channel>
    <title>ExampleShop.dk - Example</title>
    <link>https://www.ExampleShop.dk</link>
    <description />
    <item>
      <title>Taljebælte til line Showmaster®</title>
      <link>https://www.ExampleShop.dk/hund/aktivering-traening/traening/taljebaelte-til-line</link>
      <description>Taljebælte med indbygget forlængelse, som dæmper ryk fra din hund. Benstropper forhindrer, at bæltet kryber op over hofterne. Justerbart mellem 75 - 130 cm.</description>
      <g:id>041213-10-00000</g:id>
      <g:product_type>Hund > Aktivering & Træning</g:product_type>
      <g:brand>Showmaster®</g:brand>
      <g:image_link>https://www.ExampleShop.dk/pub_images/large/041213-10-00000_1.jpg?timestamp=1618572964</g:image_link>
      <g:condition>new</g:condition>
      <g:availability>in stock</g:availability>
      <g:price>199.00 DKK</g:price>
      <g:gtin>7315470000683</g:gtin>
      <g:mpn />
      <g:item_group_id>20381</g:item_group_id>
      <g:google_product_category />
      <g:identifier_exists>TRUE</g:identifier_exists>
      <g:color>Sort</g:color>
      <g:shipping>
        <g:country>DK</g:country>
        <g:service>Standard</g:service>
        <g:price>0.00 DKK</g:price>
      </g:shipping>
      <g:additional_image_link>https://www.ExampleShop.dk/pub_images/large/041213-10-00000_2.jpg?timestamp=1618572965</g:additional_image_link>
      <g:custom_label_0>281</g:custom_label_0>
    </item>
  </channel>
</rss>

Read about using the product feed in email modules.

Importing a product feed

To import a product feed into Engage, the feed needs to contain all the products that can be purchased at all of a retailer’s locations (e-commerce web sites as well as physical shops) and it needs to be in a single master language.

It is recommended to let the PIM (Product Information Management) system generate the product feed XML file rather than the web shop.

When migrating historical transactions, the product feed won’t be able to add metadata, since the feed normally contains current data (the e-com does not need “old” data to be sent out to, for example, Google Shopping). Therefore, you might end up missing historical data. In some cases, a separate migration is recommended. Talk to your Voyado PM about the best approach.

Using product data in Engage

There are two ways to leverage product data in Engage:

• Using already purchased articles to segment and analyze a contact’s buying behavior
• Inserting product information when populating emails (read more about this here).