Ecommerce marketing channels are constantly evolving, which means that your product feeds need to be highly responsive and accurate to adhere to the ever-changing standards of different channels.
Without proper validation, optimization, and compliance, you run the risk of having unresolved issues and inaccurate product listings that will ultimately hinder your store’s overall performance and a bad reputation among customers that will ultimately choose your competitors instead of you.
Partnering with a knowledgeable technical partner will provide you with the accuracy and efficiency you are looking for, so your product feeds are compliant and optimized for each platform.
Let’s take a look at how eCommerce Channels stay compliant and get all the tips for enhanced product feeds optimized for success.
How Different eCommerce Channels use Compliant & Optimized Product Feeds
Finding a robust platform that streamlines the optimization and compliance process of your product feeds for different channels is a game-changer. Here’s why optimized product feeds are so important for you to be compliant with all channels requirement:
- Shopping Ads & Remarketing Ads
When it comes to either shopping ads or remarketing ads, optimized product feeds allow your products to be properly targeted, improving your reach and visibility. - Distribution & Retail Channels
With distribution and retail channels, product feed compliance and optimization means they can quickly update your product listings and start selling new products due to the submission of accurate product information that is ready to market. - Marketplaces
In different marketplaces, producing optimized feeds means always having up-to-date product information without compromise. - eCommerce Solutions
Optimized product feeds are beneficial with other third-party tools for eCommerce, such as built-in site search systems, rate and review systems, and even improving your store’s checkout flow with shopping cart abandonment services.
Manually fetching rich data can be extremely time-consuming. Retailers, distributors, marketplaces, and other eCommerce tools require optimized feeds for the best performance.
The Highstreet.io platform gives you the tools to support compliance and optimization efforts, as well as troubleshooting capabilities so you can eliminate the need to manually fix and troubleshoot various issues.
Google Merchant Center Feed: Optimization Techniques & Compliance Rules
Dealing with compliance issues can be a full-time job if you don’t know all of the requirements Google has for both your website and your product feeds. Moreover, Google Merchant Center has strict requirements for product data feeds, making your job a lot more challenging when it comes to submitting accurate data. They require specific data attributes that help identify the unique characteristics of your products and leave little-to-no room for error or inaccuracies with this data.
A cloud-based feed management tool helps resolve errors that will ultimately lead to disapproved products. On top of that, Highstreet. io-specific integration with Google Merchant Diagnostics API helps you address issues by automatically alerting customers when major issues are found.
Google Merchant Center Feed Compliance
Understanding the rules for each of your product listing channels is essential to preventing disapproved products. This is especially relevant to platforms like Google Merchant Center.
Lesser-known GMC errors that may prevent you from advertising on Google Shopping:
- Inappropriate Language
If your product feed mixes languages, then Google Merchant Center will likely flag your feed, which can ultimately lead to account suspension. Avoid mixing languages to avoid the headache altogether. - Specific Checkout Requirements
A bad user experience, specifically at checkout, can not only run the risk of becoming a deterrent for the end-user but will subsequently be flagged by Google Merchant Center as having a poor UX, and therefore will neglect running your ads. - Google Bots
When crawling your webpage, if a bot discovers any sort of error, be it robots.txt, 404, slow renderings/high latency, or any navigational hiccups within your sitemap – Google Merchant Center can and will disapprove your ads.
More popular GMC compliance errors that are easier to fix:
- Invalid value [availability] /or/ Missing required attribute: [availability]
- Missing shipping information
- Limited performance due to missing identifiers [gtin, mpn, brand]
- Invalid value for category [price]
- Missing value [description] /or/ Text too short
- Image too small /or/ Low image quality [image link]
When these errors occur, you run the risk of disapproved products across multiple channels. With a centralized tool at work, these errors and disapproved products are immediately and automatically addressed behind the scenes, avoiding further issues with your product feeds so you can continue selling your products online with ease.
Here’s the full list of Google Merchant Center feed requirements
Google Merchant Center Feed Optimization
Once your campaigns are compliant then it’s time to optimize your product data in a way that will get the most interest from users.
Lesser-known techniques you may want to consider:
- Product Highlights
This recent feature is based on short bulleted lists to present the most relevant features of the seller’s products. Follow the rules for max size and max number of bullet points. - Use Unit Pricing when appropriate
It may be useful to define the measurements and dimensions of a product to allow users to understand the exact cost per unit of a product. - Optimize for Smart Campaigns:
– Choose landscape images
– Use videos
– Use headlines
– Description text is very important
More popular techniques that should be part of your basic GMC optimization:
- Monitor the Number of Shopping Offers
The objective is to monitor the number of shopping offers at different stages.
– submitted offers
– suspended offers because of a suspended account
– pending offers (review state)
– disapproved offers
– out-of-stock offers
– targeted offers because on a shopping campaign
– offers with impressions
– offers with clicks
- Monitor Duplicate Titles
Unique titles help consumers identify the product before they click. Duplicate titles indicate that titles are not descriptive enough or are missing important variant attributes. - Ensure Product Descriptions are Complete
Make sure they have enough content and are unique. Incomplete descriptions may have an effect on product keywords that Google Merchant Center extracts from feeds.
Ensure GMC Feed Optimization & Compliance with Highstreet.io
You’ve learned how to prevent GMC product disapprovals while staying compliant by following the above Essential Feed Optimization Techniques In addition to this, you can leverage the Highstreet.io platform capabilities as it allows you to:
- Optimize your product data using rules and look-up tables
- Consolidate information from multiple sources into one channel-specific feed
- Validate the feed for compliance before it’s submitted to your marketing channel of choice
- Use our managed service to proactively prevent ongoing compliance issues before they become problems
Have peace of mind knowing that your product feeds are submitted to your preferred channels following strict requirements, by using the correct formatting to reach the best possible outcome.