Ho-Ho-Ho! 🎅
As the year is just about to wrap up, we’re rolling out diversity of enhancements that will help you start the New Year with a real eCommerce bang and scale the success of your business.
From greater control over your account and feeds, to new ways of handling product variations, to emerging advertising opportunities to reach new audiences.
Although this is no doing of Santa - there’s a treat waiting for everyone. So, grab a cup of hot chocolate and dive right in! ;)
Enhanced Feed Review Functionality
working with error-reports gets more intuitive
Exclude Associated Variants
higher degree of control over the advertising product portfolio
Sub-Accounts - expanded sub-user options
Pinterest RSS Feed
Enhanced Feed Review Functionality
For those of you who haven’t had the pleasure to use this powerful functionality yet - here’s a quick recap on how it can make your work with feeds much easier. And, where to find it in DataFeedWatch.
Leveraging the Feed Review for faster troubleshooting
Why fix the Google Merchant Center errors or another channel errors if you could avoid them in the first place?
DataFeedWatch Feed Review is a separate tab in your Channel Mapping Interface, where you can diagnose your products and make necessary adjustments before fetching your final feed:
The review will check your feed for the following:
- Missing data: checks whether the required and optional fields have been populated
- GTIN validator: checks if your GTINs are valid
- Uniqueness validator: do your unique identifiers, SKU, UPC, have duplicates?
- Pre-defined fields validator: certain feed attributes operate exclusively on a set of predefined values; are they set up correctly?
Troubleshooting issues prior to submitting your feed will spare you the back and forth between DataFeedWatch and Google Merchant Center or another channel of your choice.
Make sure to give it a go before rolling out your next feed!
The newer, better Feed Review
If you’re already familiar with the functionality - you know that The Feed Review provides you with a detailed report to help quickly fix any irregularities in your output feed.
Our latest updates aim to make the entire process more user-friendly:
- Results sorting enabled: sort by issue severity, field type etc. to get a clearer overview of all issues and number of occurrences
- Advanced filters for the report: choose which issue types and products affected you’d like to review in the report at a given time
With the new enhancements, working with error-reports gets more intuitive and enables Retailers to take action on the outstanding feed issues much quicker.
More on how to make use of the Feed Review report here.
Return to top of page or Get your Complete Guide to Data Feed Optimization here.
Exclude Associated Variants
‘Exclude Associated Variants’ is now available to use for all DataFeedWatch users - after adding the ‘item_group_id’ field.
Mapping Item_Group_ID will now be a single step and a part of the standard configuration process of your shop.
Why care about associated variants?
A common issue that many Retailers face, especially those in the fashion industry, is that even your best-selling products have variants that sell better than others. Once sold out on your winning variant - the sales goes down quite significantly.
Let’s look at a couple of practical examples to understand how ‘Exclude Associated Variants’ relates to issue and how you can squeeze the most out of it.
Example 1:
- Scenario: Let’s say you sell shoes in several sizes: from 6 - 11, and the sizes 8 & 9.5 account for 80% of the total sales.
- Challenge: After you’ve sold on the variations in the highest demand, it’s only natural that the ads budget invested in the remaining sizes will not get you the ROI you’re looking for.
Example 2:
- Scenario: Moving away from the apparel category for a moment. What if you’re selling wall paintings of various sizes and each size comes at a different price.
- Challenge: If the cheapest variant goes out of stock and the others continue showing, it may become difficult to grab the attention of a shopper. Especially if presented with better prices in the shopping carousel, coming from your competitors.
The Solution:
What some of you might be thinking now: Sure, but is there really a solution to this?
Absolutely! In fact, there’s a simple fix that will allow you to shift your advertising budget away from the unprofitable product variations. And focus on those that give you the biggest bang for your buck.
The best part is - it will take you 5 minutes to implement :)
Excluding product variations through Associated Variants
In the ‘Include / Exclude Products’ section of the mapping panel, you can easily filter out the remaining variations from your feed if sold out on specific variations. That is - just until you restock on your high-achievers.
Here’s how example rules could look like:
- Exclude all the products if a percentage of the variants is out of stock:
- Exclude all products if the bestselling variant(s) is out of stock
Enjoy the higher degree of control over what types of products they want to keep in your feed. And spend your money where it will produce profit, boosting your ROI in the process.
Return to top of page or Get your Complete Guide to Data Feed Optimization here.
Sub-Accounts
For those of you who share the DataFeedWatch account with your colleagues or even Clients, we’ve got a few updates in store for the Sub-Accounts. And we’re quite confident you’ll find them to your liking, so let’s get straight to it!
Admin Permissions for Sub-accounts
What is true for many marketing Agencies cooperating with DataFeedWatch is that the main account holder is not always the person who works with feed optimization hands-on.
While sub-accounts enable all team members to comfortably work on client feeds within one Agency account, the sub-user access is not always sufficient to perform the desired actions.
In order to improve the user experience in those cases, we’ve decided to introduce an option to add an extra user with admin permissions to your DataFeedWatch account.
That way, the main account holder won’t have to get involved, when the administrator permissions are required, for example, while:
- Upgrading and downgrading the subscription plan
- Enabling add-ons
- Handling payment settings
- Closing the account
The person who’s actually in charge of your feed-related-matters can now be granted full administrative access, make the workflow easier within your team.
Notification Settings
Previously, the main account holder was the only one deciding what kind of notifications his team members receive.
Starting now, it’s possible for each sub-user to decide on both the form and the type of notifications they would like to stay up to date with.
Users can turn any notifications on and off, and adjust accordingly to their preferences by entering Notification Settings.
This small but relevant improvement will significantly reduce the time spent in the application on checking account status in the case of sub-account users.
Change History Available
When working on your customers’ feeds with your entire team, keeping track of all the changes that have been applied becomes an impossible task.
To answer this issue we’ve introduced the possibility of viewing change history for individual sub-accounts.
The account admin will now be able to view a report with the history of changes made by the sub-users. Other users with admin permissions will also have access to this feature.
The new option will prove useful especially if you’re looking to reverse the recently applied changes. Or, when identifying the key feed adjustments that have significantly influenced the campaign performance.
Generating the report in DataFeedWatch is as simple as visiting Account > Change History, and specifying the scope of data:
- Shops;
- Channels;
- Users;
- Dates
That’s it!
* Please note that this functionality is still in Beta Version, so it might take a while for the report to be generated.
Return to top of page or Get your Complete Guide to Data Feed Optimization here.
Pinterest RSS feed available in DataFeedWatch
This update will likely catch the eye of any Retailer looking to expand their advertising in Belgium and the Netherlands!
A new advertising feature recently made available on Pinterest allows users to connect a website RSS feed and auto-post product ads to a Pinterest board. Directly from your shop's items.
With today’s increasingly fickle consumers it becomes crucial to reach your audience early on. Before they get a chance to make up their mind about what to buy and who to buy from.
Since a considerable number of its users come to the platform to consider future activities & purchases, Pinterest is the perfect place to spark consumers’ interests in the early phase.
Merchants can add as many RSS feeds as they want, as long as there’s a match with their claimed website. It’s also possible to create a separate feed for each board.
Considering that 77% of Pinners discover a new brand or product on Pinterest (according to 2019 insights), this emerging advertising opportunity is something every e-Retailer should look into. Sooner rather than later!
Return to top of page or Get your Complete Guide to Data Feed Optimization here.
Conclusion
That’s it for the December news digest! We hope you’ll find the updates to your liking and soon enough they will make their way into your daily feed-work, making it even more enjoyable :)
Also, during this special time, we’d love to express our sincere appreciation for the trust you have placed in us and send you best wishes for the Holidays.
Wishes of peace, joy, and prosperity throughout the coming year.
Happy Holidays from the DataFeedWatch Team! 🎄
