Last Thursday at the Shop.org merchandising conference in San Diego I participated on a data feed marketing best practices panel. All of the panelists offered great tips during our lively discussion, but Leigh Vosler from Sierra Trading Post went way above the call of duty and prepared excellent written notes as well.

Leigh’s graciously allowed me to post her 22 suggestions here.

Leigh cautions: These optimization strategies are suggestions and do not guarantee success. These are data feed optimization tactics I have used or others have suggested and which I think everyone should at least think about, if not test.

Leigh’s Tips for Cost Savings

1. Manage Bids either by category or by product
2. Remove poor performing/converting products
3. Remove sold out and out of stock products
4. Refresh and update/FTP data feed daily (if possible)
5. Daily click through random links [yours obviously] to insure the shopping engines are displaying your data correctly and to ensure links go to correct landing page.

Leigh’s Tips for Improving Conversion

6. Make sure you have the budget to keep your store running 24/7.
7. Use the MPN or UPC code to better compare with other merchants.
8. Write a product name that identifies the product by the common usage name (pants not dungarees, shirts not tops).
9. Request the product categories from each of the shopping engines. Take the time to map your products to the CSE categories for quicker and better data matching
10. Ensure your store profile is completed fully and up to date. Name, location, phone numbers, customer service hours & contact info, shipping information, return policy, etc
11. Request the feed specs from the shopping site, then include all relevant fields and product information in your data feed.
12. Use any and all optional relevant data fields. Don’t forget to include ALL possible product attributes — color, size, material, style, model, UPC
13. If you change your data feed, contact the shopping site, as a change may cause the feed to error out.
14. Include a tracking code or mechanism in your data feed to better understand conversion. If possible track at the product level.
15. Watch & Budget for the Q4 CPC price increase which occurs on nearly all engines.
16. If your data feed utility or 3rd party has the capability to add a unique column advertising discounts, sales and special events, include this column when building the feed. The column may remain dormant part of the year, but it is a revenue generator when you are offering something special. 2 -3 day shipping, 20% off sale, Clearance, Free Shipping etc

Leigh’s Tips For Evaluation and analysis

17. ROAS is not important if you are bidding too low to be found on the engine
18. Optimize / tweak the feed weekly if necessary
19. Compare both titles & prices to other merchants within the shopping engine
20. Change CPC within categories if possible and review sales / conversions
21. Manage high $$ products different than low $$ products due to ROAS impact.
22. Track all sales at product level if possible.

Many thanks, Leigh!