Before you even get started on feed driven retail, what kind of state is your feed in? Do you need a solution? How good is the data? And once you've got the continual rinse and repeat of data quality, what channels can you check out that you may not already be on? Given at SMX East, Oct. 24, 2017.

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Feed-Driven Retail Search Beyond Google and Bing
SUPERCHARGING YOUR RETAIL
FEED
& SOME LOCAL HIGHWAYS

2. #SMX #13C @ebkendo
 11 years in the search industry
 PPC, Social, SEO, Analytics, Content
 Speaker: SMX Adv/East/West,
Mozcon, Searchfest, State of Search
 Author: Lynda.com, All in One Web
Marketing for Dummies, ClickZ
 And…
Elizabeth Marsten,
CommerceHub Senior Director, e-Commerce Growth Services

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Avid wagon-gater
Image: @ebkendo

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NORTH AMERICA’S LARGEST RETAILERS,
MARKETPLACES AND SEARCH ENGINES
DEMAND GENERATION
ASSORTMENT EXPANSION
WAREHOUSES, STORES, DROP-
SHIPPERS,
BRAND MANUFACTURERS
DELIVERY
NATIONAL CARRIERS, REGIONAL
CARRIERS, LOCAL CARRIERS
Image: CommerceHub

5. #SMX #13C @ebkendo
Feed Size Solution Guideline – Small to Medium
Solution Best For Product Catalog Size Guideline
Google Spreadsheet SMBs, small catalogs, static products
offered, infrequent promotions,
stable inventory
Small (3k or less)
Excel – manual upload SMBs, small catalogs, static products
offered, infrequent promotions,
stable inventory
Small (3k or less) or Medium (50k or
less)
Image: CommerceHub

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Feed Size Solution Guideline – Medium to Enterprise
Solution Best For Catalog Size
Tool provider (FTP, API) • Static or constantly rotating
inventory
• Fast changing inventory and
prices/promotions
• Need to isolate groups of
products quickly, at scale
• Poor quality product information
Medium (50k), Large (100-500k) or
X-Large (500k+)
Image: CommerceHub

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Keep in Mind
 Technical difficulties – ability to get a feed out of the backend/cart
 Inventory levels – if you only have a handful of each of the items and sell
out often, sending incremental feeds
 Promotions – do you have a lot that only affect certain products? Or are
complex (like buy one, get one) or even just want to show off in the SERP
all your different offers?

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How to tell if you’re “complex”
 You need connections beyond search and social
 Retailers
 Marketplaces
 Site content widgets (ex: Fit Analytics)
 Business rules – compliance, validation (especially at scale)
 Inventory – competing channels, decrement speed/safety stock
 Data transformation – product information coming out of the site is missing
information, formatted funny or needs considerable work to be compliant or even
legible

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Evaluate Data Quality
 Product Data
 Missing information
 Formatted poorly (we love to insert ™ or HTML characters)
 Incomplete info (two words is often not enough for a product title)
 Creative information (is the color “Jubilee” pink, white, green or
blue?!)
 Is the info being used in other places?
 How many other channels
 Website

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What Matters Most - Search
 Product Titles
 It’s the name of the product after all
 It’s also heavily used by all channels in determining what the item is
 Incomplete info (two words is often not enough for a product title)
 Product Category
 GTIN, UPC, UPI – required most of the time

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MARKETPLACE FEEDS
Image: Pixabay

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Marketplace Feeds
 Attributes – less required to go live on Amazon (ASIN, condition, price
and inventory)
 A new ASIN typically requires a UPC, can be exempt if you are the
brand owner – which means Brand Registry (similar to Google
Manufacturer Center)
 Less feed requirements because of other sources like ASIN to fill in the
blanks.
 Takes advantage of multiple sellers on the same SKU, however not
always a 1:1 transfer

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Ouch
Image: Amazon.com

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Perfect data takes practice
Image: Getty Images

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Marketplace Feeds/Settings vs. Google
 Shipping Differences
 Settings in Merchant Center vs. ShippingTemplates in
Seller Central/Portal
 Tax Differences
 Settings in Merchant Center vs.Tax code in the feed (the
type of product can vary the tax rate)
 Where the item is “sold” makes a difference

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Images
Google
 Only one image
 Google Manufacturer Center (alternate images, video)
Amazon
 Requires only one – but can have up to 6 images – Amazon
eBay –
 12 per listing, so you pick your variations
 Can submit stock photos from eBay

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Other Stuff
 Videos – only through enhanced content on Amazon
 No videos on eBay (no active content) recently retired
 No videos onWalmart
 Jet is API only, there are no manual actions in the UI other
than viewing. Feed template mimicsAmazon.
 Feed frequency – can be processed every 5-15mins to chase
the lowest price
 Incremental feeds for price and inventory updates also

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SOME “LOCAL” HIGHWAYS
Image: Pixabay

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Walmart – Sponsored Products
Image: Walmart.com

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Walmart – Sponsored Links & Display Media
Image: Walmart.com

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Walmart & Google Express
https://www.engadget.com/2017/09/25/google-home-walmart-shopping
Image: Google Express
 Link Google account with
Walmart account
 Uses Merchant Center

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Walmart & Google Express
“The two companies said Google would start offeringWalmart
products to people who shop on Google Express, the company’s online
shopping mall. It’s the first time the world’s biggest retailer has made
its products available online in the United States outside of its own
website.”
-Daisuke Wakabayashi and Michael Corkery, 8/23/17
New York Times
https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/23/technology/google-walmart-e-commerce-partnership.html?mcubz=3

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eBay – Fast Facts
 Roughly 80% of items sold are new(1)
 Adopted AMP in 2016(2)
 Increased fees on poor rated sellers(3)
 Increased spend on marketing/advertising to drive new sales(4)
 No longer running ads that re-direct visitors to other sites(5)
(1) https://www.ebayinc.com/stories/news/ebay-celebrates-20-years-introduces-new-app-experience
(2) http://www.ebaytechblog.com/2016/06/30/browse-ebay-with-style-and-speed/
(3) http://www.ecommercebytes.com/C/blog/blog.pl?/pl/2017/2/1488296012.html
(4) https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2017/04/26/how-is-competition-impacting-ebays-average-spend-per-user/#534a12136026
(5) http://pages.ebay.com/seller-center/seller-updates/2017spring/listings-visibility.html

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eBay Promoted Listings
 Boost product visibility by 30%
 No charge unless someone that clicks buys in 30 days
 Debits from final sale price – set an ad rate
Image: eBay

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Pinterest – Shopping Campaigns
 Shopping Campaigns now
available to everyone
 97% of search terms on
Pinterest are unbranded(1)
 85% on mobile devices(2)
 Mmmm…TasteGraph
(1) https://business.pinterest.com/sites/business/files/a_new_take_on_search_0.pdf
(2) http://www.adweek.com/digital/search-lens-pinterest-home-feed/

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Pinterest – Promoted & Buyable Pins
Promoted
 Ability to edit or designate which
products are promoted in bulk
 Feed spec mimics Google
Buyable
 Buyable requires a partner to
handle the transaction
Image: Pinterest

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Polyvore
 A social / commerce site
 A high AOV channel for luxury
apparel retailers
 Owned by Yahoo
 Accessed by users primarily
through a mobile app
 84% female users
 70% female users of whom 50%
of are under 34 (“Millenials”)
Source/Image:Polyvore

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Connexity
 Pricegrabber, Become and
Shopzilla
 Social Influencers program
 Low Avg CPC
 Bid by category
 Fewer optimization options
 Slower to process/ingest
changes
Image:Pricegrabber

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Other Feed Driven Places
 Yahoo Dynamic Product Ads
 eBay Commerce Network a/k/a Shopping.com
 FindGift
 Wishpot
 International feeds:
 Kelkoo, LeGuide, Ciao, Shopbot
Image: Pixabay

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LEARN MORE: UPCOMING @SMX EVENTS
THANK YOU!
SEE YOU AT THE NEXT #SMX

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Resources
• eBay Promoted Listings Get Started Guide
• Walmart Advertising
• Pinterest Buyable Pins Guide
• Polyvore Feed Specs