What is Shopping Feed Management and how can it help your e-commerce website?
If you’re an active ecommerce merchant, you’ve heard the term Shopping Feed Management tossed around a few times. So often, in fact, that you probably have a good idea of what it might mean. But in the game of ecommerce, mights and maybes don’t cut it. With thousands of other competitors out there vying for top spots in dozens of comparison shopping engines, your key to success is knowing exactly what shopping feed management is, and how it can help you.
In less than a few seconds you might be able to name off a few major CSEs operating today … Google Shopping, eBay Commerce Network, Shopzilla, Bing Shopping, Amazon, and more. All of these CSEs have a similar goal: to bring in more click-happy visitors who make conversions, so that you, the merchant, will list your products with them.
It’s a simple equation, on paper, but if your eye is on optimal return on investment (and it should be), making the most out of any or all of these CSEs becomes a whole lot more complicated.
This is where shopping feed management comes into play.
The Goldilocks of Ecommerce
It’s easy to get overwhelmed with all the CSEs out there. Who do you list with? How invested do you get with A vs. B? When it comes to managing your ecommerce portfolio, it’s important to assume the role of Goldilocks, the fairytale character who was obsessed with getting everything “just right.”
An inexperienced ecommerce merchant might throw all his eggs in one basket and throw his entire budget toward Google Shopping. Why not? Google is a powerhouse, and everyone’s using it, right?
Even if that were so, more visitors do not mean more conversions.
Let’s repeat that: more visitors do not mean more conversions.
What do we mean by this? Well, your goal isn’t to get the most amounts of people to click on your product listing ad. In fact, that could be counterproductive to your bottom line and kill your spending budget. You don’t care about clicks as much as you care about conversions. If 1,000 people clicked on your ad, but only 1 person made a conversion, was that PLA a worthwhile campaign?
Likely not.
But what if only 25 people clicked on your ad, yet 4 made a conversion. Would that sit well with you?
Probably so.
What a qualified shopping feed management company does is help you create a strategy and portfolio, based on your goals, your budget, your product inventory, the time of year, specific ad campaigns, and more. A Shopping Feed Management team helps you spread your reach, and spending budget, across a series of CSEs to improve your ROI.
The DIY Shopping Feed Management
Any business owner knows that the term do-it-yourself is sort of overplayed. As a business owner, you’re always going the DIY approach in order to save money, save time, or because you’re the best person for the job.
None of that applies with shopping feed management.
Unless you have a ton of free time each week, loads of experience sifting through data, and have nothing better to do with your workday, managing your own shopping feed is going to hurt you. It’ll cost you more money and headaches in the long run.
Why?
Every hour you spend managing your feed, you could be spending earning more business. In addition, each CSE has specific requirements and guidelines you must follow in order to be properly listed. Wouldn’t it be a shame to spend hours creating a feed for a CSE, only to learn that you did it wrong?
Use your time wisely, doing what you do best – running your business. Hiring a shopping feed management specialist will help you enjoy a higher ROI than you could ever experience on your own.
Want to learn more about shopping feed management? Contact OperationROI at 1-888-277-5429 or fill out our contact form.
