If you’re selling on marketplaces like eBay and Amazon, a product data feed is no stranger to you. Coming in the form of a spreadsheet with information about your products, you must never underestimate its power. The mantra for offsite selling goes: your product data feed is the core of your product listings. 

From the week of 21 August, Australia Post revealed that during Victoria’s 6.0 lockdown extension, online shopping grew by 14.5 per cent week on week. Brands have found sanctuary in shifting selling online throughout the pandemic, especially as marketplaces carry high traffic volumes of shoppers ready to buy. But they face a constant challenge: the battle for the spotlight on their products. 

1. The invisible problem in your product data feed

Your first step is ensuring your products are showing as they should. Up to 80 per cent of a brand’s products are invisible on key digital sales channels because of a poor-quality product data feed. This is often because the feed is: 

• Incorrect: Not in the right format and not meeting feed requirements
• Incomplete: Not having complete attributes in your feed makes it highly inaccurate 
• Inconsistent: Having different forms of attributes in your feeds, makes it harder for shoppers to find more of your products, e.g., using “size M” and “size 14”
• Incomprehensible: Having colour attributes that are understood internally won’t mean a thing to shoppers. Your attributes need to be normalised and understood externally, e.g. “killer whale” being used instead of “gray”

Not conducting effective product feed management means your products will appear in the wrong search results and categories, or simply be disapproved. That’s low exposure or zero impressions you’re generating, as shoppers simply cannot find your products. 

Feed providers are pivotal here, as they give you the tools to get their product data feed into shape and in the correct format per marketplace. So, your requirements are met, products are approved, and these will show in product search results and categories. 

2. Experimenting on your product listings builds relevance and engagement

Once you’ve covered the invisible problem, here’s where the quality of your feed provider makes a difference especially when it comes to product titles. Optimising your feed means manipulating the data to make your product listing content more relevant to what buyers are looking for. Afterall, you want them to click on you over your competitor. Some optimisations you may want to test can be to: 

• Localise attributes in product titles to better meet consumer search terms, e.g., do “thongs” work better than “flip flops” if you’re trying to sell cross-border.
• Capitalise off key events through seasonal terms, e.g. adding in “Valentine’s gift” in your product titles to make your product fit the bill.
• Restructure the attributes in your product titles, e.g., does size, colour, brand or even product type at the beginning have an impact? 
• Improve the relevance of the attributes you’re using to see what’s more meaningful and encourages engagement.
• Drive clicks through product images at difference angles, e.g. measurements.

At Intelligent Reach, our platform has a dedicated Content Experimentation module for brands to use A/B and multi-variant testing on product titles, product images and product types. Our clients essentially use this to test their ideas and see what does and doesn’t work. 

What difference can a word make? Plenty! One client split their products into balanced groups and conducted an A/B test on their Ebay product titles, to see if “Classic Watch” or “Classic Wrist Watch” performs better. Over the 30 day test period, it had +75 per cent impressions, +104 per cent clicks and +134 per cent last click venue. 

3. To maximise visibility and drive sales, you need a winning combination

If you’re wondering why you’re not performing well on marketplaces, covering these basics can help improve your performance against your competitors. By ensuring your products are showing and optimising product content for better relevancy, these together are powerful in getting your products exposure and better engagement. 

And if you’re looking to get an extra edge with some extra room in your budget, investing in promoted listings on Ebay, getting your products on the Deals page on Amazon, or even placing sponsored ads, can give you that extra push you need to boost the spotlight on your products and store. 

Need help selling on marketplaces? Explore how our platform can make it easy for you to grow your marketplace selling.