What Is a Product Feed? A Complete Guide for E-Commerce Success

Product feeds influence your e-commerce store’s sales more than you realize. They are often the backbone of a strong e-commerce marketing strategy, playing an important role in determining how your products appear across advertising platforms and sales channels. Brands that build high-quality product feeds and support them with a solid marketing strategy tend to dominate marketplaces and shopping ads.

If you haven’t worked with product feeds before or don’t know how to create them for your e-commerce store, don’t worry. This blog will help you. Through it, we will be covering: 

1. What product feeds are 
2. What they contain (such as product information, image URLs, attributes, etc.) 
3. The importance of product feeds (how they help with e-commerce syndication, creating advertising campaigns, etc.) 
4. How to create one for your e-commerce business 
5. Best practices to follow, common mistakes to avoid, and tools for product feed creation and management

So, without any delays, let’s dive straightaway into the specifics. 

What is a Product Feed?

A product feed is a structured file that includes a list of all items that you sell, along with their essential details, such as titles, descriptions, product identifiers, etc.

These feeds are mainly used to: 

1. Maintain your inventory data at a centralized location
2. Share and distribute product data between different systems.
3. Listing and advertising products on different channels. 

Types of Product Feeds

You can categorize product feeds based on their file format, delivery method to the sales channel, and intended marketing purpose. 

By Format

These formats define how product data is structured and shared: 

1. CSV: A simple format in which values are separated with commas. It works well with spreadsheets. 
2. XML: XML is a structured data format in which product data is organized in a clear hierarchy. Many marketplaces accept XML files because they are easier for their systems to process. 
3. JSON: A text-based format that is mainly used in API or real-time integrations. 
4. TXT: A basic text format used for simple feed setups. 
5. XLS or XLSX: These are spreadsheet formats, and within them, the data is arranged in rows and columns. 

By Marketing Purpose

Product feeds can also differ from each other in terms of the specific marketing or operational purpose they serve: 

1. Standard Product Feed: This is your main product feed, which includes a list of all items and their attributes. It follows general product data requirements and serves as a base feed for most channels. 
2. Custom Product Feed: A custom product feed is tailored to meet the requirements of a particular platform or sales channel. It includes only the products, attributes, and formatting required by that particular channel. 
3. Local Inventory Feed: Data feed files that retailers use to share the availability of products in their physical store with any particular sales channel (such as Google). With this feed, you can show nearby shoppers which products are available at your local store at the moment they search.
4. Dynamic Remarketing Feeds: Some CSEs also allow you to upload dynamic remarketing feeds. These feeds include your products (or services) along with other key details such as IDs, images, etc. These are primarily used for showing personalized responsive ads to users who have earlier interacted with your business. 
5. Manufacturer Feeds: Specialized feeds that are only available to branded manufacturers, brand owners, and brand licensors. These feeds help share detailed and rich product information with a sales channel that standard product feeds may not capture. Using the information from manufacturer feeds, the particular sales channel can better understand your products and improve the quality of product-based ads shown to users.

Note: The types of product feeds shared above are not exhaustive and can vary based on the sales channel. As per the intended length of the blog, we have only shared the most important types. All marketplaces and comparison shopping engines may not support local inventory, dynamic remarketing, and manufacturer feeds.

By Delivery

This category explains how product data is delivered to a platform.

• Static Feeds: Feed files that merchants create manually in formats such as CSV and then upload directly to the sales channel to submit product information. 
• API Data Feeds: These are created through API integration between your online store and the respective marketplace or CSV.  

What are Product Feed Attributes?

Product feed attributes are the individual data fields that describe each product in your feed. These fields help marketplaces and CSEs interpret your product data so they can display your items accurately to shoppers across their platforms.

Essentially, you can think of product attributes as the building blocks of your product feed. When they are well-structured, accurate, and consistent, your products are more likely to gain better visibility and drive more sales for your e-commerce store. 

Most sales channels categorize product feed attributes into two main groups:

1. Required attributes that are mandatory and you must add for all products in all cases, or else your products will not be approved by that sales channel. 

Some examples of required attributes include: 

• Product ID (or ID) 
• Title
• Description
• Price 
• Availability 

2. Optional attributes that are used to enrich product data and improve the performance of your ads. 

Some examples of optional attributes include: 

• Product Category
• GTIN
• MPN
• Material 
• Gender

Note: Depending on the channel you are uploading your products to, the attribute (field) names and priority may change. As a best practice, always review the official product data specifications of the specific marketplace or CSE before creating or submitting your feed.

How to Create Product Feeds? 

You can create a product feed for your e-commerce store using any of the following methods: 

1. Manually 
2. Using a Product Feed Management Software 
3. Using APIs

Let’s discuss all three methods in detail below. 

Creating a Product Feed Manually

To create a product feed manually, you can follow these steps: 

1. Choose a sales channel: Start by deciding which marketplace or CSE you are interested in selling on. 
2. Check the channel’s feed requirements: Go through that particular channel’s help center or reach out to their support team and check their specific product feed requirements. 

Make a note of the required and optional attributes, accepted file formats, and any other important guidelines. 

3. Download the specific channel’s feed template: Most marketplaces, CSEs, or advertising platforms (e.g., Google Shopping, Meta) provide product feed templates in CSV, TSV, or spreadsheet formats. This is to help merchants understand what type of product data they should submit on that platform. 

Download it, as you can easily adapt your feed data to match it. 

4. Collect product data from your store: Then, gather all the important product details for all items in your inventory. By this, we mean that you should gather product titles, descriptions, identifiers (such as GTIN, MPN, ASIN, etc.), prices, stock levels, etc., and other attributes required by that specific channel in one place.
5. Fill in the template: Then fill in the template with your actual product data. Ensure that the formatting of the file is compliant with the specific channel’s requirements. 

For example, if you are preparing your feed for Google Merchant Center using Google Sheets, add each individual product to a separate row. Within that row, make sure you place each attribute under the correct column header. So, titles will come under ‘title’, descriptions under ‘description ‘, and so on.

6. Follow formatting rules and product data specifications correctly: Make sure that the product attribute values that you add for each item are also in compliance with the specific channel’s requirements. 

For example, if you are preparing a Facebook product feed, your titles should ideally be under 65 characters, and descriptions should be between 30 and 9,999 characters. 

7. Check for any missing or incorrect values: Look for any inconsistencies, such as missing required attributes, duplicate values, etc. Rectify them. 
8. Save the file in the accepted format: Save or export the finished feed as CSV, TSV, XLSX, or another supported format.

That’s it. Your product feed file will be ready, and you can upload it to the channel where you want to advertise your product. 

Creating a Product Feed With Data Feed Tools 

To create a product feed by using a data feed software, follow these steps:

1. Choose a feed tool: Begin by selecting a feed management solution. Choose a tool that supports your preferred marketplace and is affordable. 

For this blog’s reference, we will take AdNabu as an example to create our product feed. It is a ‘Built for Shopify’ app that helps Shopify merchants optimize their products for different marketplaces such as Google Shopping, Meta, Snapchat, etc. 

2. Connect your store: Install the app/tool and connect your e-commerce store with it. 

As a part of this step, we will install AdNabu from the Shopify app store. 

3. Import product data: Allow the tool to import products and their data from your store. 

In the case of AdNabu, once you install the app and set it up, the app will automatically start to import your Shopify product data into its interface. 

4. Customize data: Then, using your data feed solution, customize your raw product data to meet the specific requirements of each channel. 

Most feed solutions import product data from your e-commerce store in a way that automatically maps the raw data to the relevant channel-specific field based on your chosen marketplace.  

For example, in our case, when we import Shopify products into AdNabu, the Shopify product title is automatically mapped to Google Shopping titles. In such cases, all you need to do is further enhance your product attribute values, if necessary. 

Pro tip: Utilize your feed tool’s optimization features to the fullest. Many of these features are advanced and allow you to optimize your feed in bulk, helping you save time and boost feed performance.

5. Finalize your feed and publish it on the specific sales channel: After optimizing your product feed, you must push it to your chosen marketplace or advertising platform. Your feed tool will provide you with different ways to sync data, depending on its features.

In most cases, you will have two options:

1. The tool automatically syncs information to the channel.
2. You download your product feed in CSV, XML, or any other format, and manually upload it to the platform. 

In AdNabu, if you want to push your product data to GMC, the app’s algorithms can do it automatically. However, for other marketplaces such as Meta, TikTok, X, etc., you can either copy feed URLs and use them as data sources or download XML files and upload them manually. 

And that’s about it. By following this simple process, you can easily create a product feed within any data feed solution. 

Pro tip: After syncing your product data to any specific channel with the help of a feed solution, do check the diagnostics section of that particular sales channel for any errors or warnings concerning your product data. Also, if the tool supports, enable the auto-sync feature. That will ensure that whenever you update your product data, those changes are automatically synced to that respective channel.

Creating Product Feeds with API 

You can also create product feeds through APIs. Many platforms, such as Meta and Google, offer API connections that enable you to send product data directly from your store to these channels and create product feeds with ease. 

Here’s the step-by-step process that you should follow to create API product data feeds:

1. Start by deciding which marketplace you want to sell on. 
2. Review their API documentation. Check details concerning endpoints, payload formats, limits, etc.
3. Then, create a developer account on the sales channel and generate API keys or tokens. These will facilitate the integration between your store and that particular channel (which will help sync product data, create feeds, etc.)
4. Then map your store’s product data fields to the sales channel’s required and optional attributes. 
5. After that, either yourself or with the help of a developer, set up the actual integration between your store and the target platform. This means creating scripts that help send product data to the target platform’s API.
6. Implement product data update logic. This means defining rules regarding how often your product data should sync. For example, every time you make updates to your product data, or every 30 minutes. 
7. Next, if possible, test your integration in a sandbox or test environment. This is to ensure that the API accepts your data without errors. 
8. If you didn’t encounter any errors in the previous step, you can proceed to live mode and start sending product data to the sales channel. 

And with that, your API product data feed will be ready.

Note: The process we covered above is about sending your product data to a sales channel through APIs. When we say “create feeds with API,” it simply means the data you send is used by the platform to build your feed automatically. In other words, the product data you sync through the API becomes your feed on that channel.

Why Product Feeds are Important in E-Commerce? 

Earlier in the blog, we briefly touched upon the importance of creating and managing product feeds. Let’s now discuss that topic in detail and understand why product feeds matter in e-commerce.

1. Centralized Management: By creating a product feed, you can store all your products and their attributes in a single location. This centralization reduces confusion around inventory data and ensures you maintain an accurate, organized record of each item and its details.
2. Multi-Channel Visibility: A feed will enable you to list your products on different marketplaces and comparison shopping search engines, such as Amazon, Google Shopping, Meta (Facebook and Instagram), etc. 

It works as a single source of truth, which you can easily duplicate, customize as per each sales channel’s product data requirements, and upload directly. With this simple process, you can easily expand to new sales channels and drive more revenue for your e-commerce store. 

3. Run Shopping Ad Campaigns with Ease: Product feeds and their data are an essential requirement for running Shopping ads or other product-based ads across many platforms. CSEs like Google Shopping rely entirely on your feed to match your relevant products to a user’s query. In case you don’t have a feed, then you will not be eligible for these ads, limiting your ability to promote and reach the right audience.
4. Accurate and Up-to-Date Information Across All Channels: Using a product feed, you can also keep your product data consistent across all channels. 

When your feed is hosted on your server or another source, you can submit its URL to one or more sales channels. Further, by enabling scheduled data feed uploads or fetches that many platforms allow, you can allow that particular channel to pull updates from your feed at set intervals automatically. This keeps your product information updated and consistent across all platforms without needing manual updates.

Common Product Feed Errors and How to Avoid Them 

Let’s now learn what some of the common feed errors are and how to fix and avoid them. 

1. Missing Attributes: If your feed misses crucial attributes that a channel or platform requires, then it will not be approved. For example, in the case of Facebook, you will need to ensure that your product feed includes attributes such as ID, Title, Description, etc. 

If any of them are missing, your feed will not be in compliance with Facebook’s product data specifications. As a result, Meta will disapprove it.

Therefore, always review a platform’s product data requirements in advance and create feeds that comply with them.   

2. Duplicate Entries: If your feed has duplicate items or attribute entries, you will most likely encounter errors when uploading it to any channel. To prevent that, always ensure that all items and their attributes are unique in your feed. 
3. Adding Poor Quality Product Data: Oftentimes, merchants only provide the bare minimum details that are required to create a feed. While it helps them to get their feeds technically accepted on a platform, it never really helps them bring meaningful results for their business. This is because incomplete or vague attribute values make it harder for platforms to understand your items, which in turn weakens how they’re presented to shoppers and reduces their appeal.

Thus, always ensure that you are also enriching your feeds to improve the visibility and sales of your products. 

4. Incorrect Encoding or Data Format: If your feed isn’t saved in the correct encoding or file format, then the sales channel or marketplace may reject it. 

For example, Google Merchant Center supports UTF-8 encoding. If your product feed file has invalid UTF-8 characters, then your items will be flagged and disapproved with the “Invalid UTF-8 encoding” GMC error. 

To avoid this, ensure that your feed is always in a supported format and encoded properly. In addition to this, double-check your product feed for special characters, broken symbols, or incomplete fields. 

Pro tip: Most platforms support feed files in: CSV, TSV, XML, or JSON formats. UTF-8 encoding. Keep this in mind when preparing your product feeds.

5. Missing or Invalid URL links: Always ensure that you add the product landing page, image, additional image, and all other important URLs in your product feed. 

Also, while adding values for these attributes, ensure that the links are valid. If they are broken, include too many redirects, or lead to the wrong page or file, then your products will be disapproved. 

To avoid this, always test URLs in advance to ensure they lead to valid destinations and adhere to RFC 3986 URL standards. 

Best Practices for Optimizing Product Feeds

Creating a product feed is just the first step. To get the best results from it, you need to ensure that it is optimized. That way, your products will have maximum visibility, and you will get a higher RoAS on your ads. 

Here are some best practices to follow for optimizing your product feeds: 

1. Use Clear and Keyword-Rich Titles: Include essential details such as brand, size, color, and variant information in your product titles. Well-structured titles help shoppers immediately understand what you’re offering, making your listings more appealing and easier to browse.
2. Provide Detailed and Informative Descriptions: Your descriptions should highlight the key features, benefits, and highlights of your products. They should help customers understand why your product is the right choice for them and encourage them to make a purchase. 

Pro tip: Whatever information doesn’t fit in your titles, include it in your product descriptions.

3. Make the Most of Optional Attributes:  Don’t limit your feed just to the required attributes of a particular platform. Enrich it with optional attributes. These attributes will help you provide additional details of your items to both the platform you wish to sell your products on and customers. This will help improve the visibility of your products and sales for your e-commerce store. 
4. Keep Feed Data Fresh and Consistent Across All Sources: Optimization isn’t just limited to your feed’s content. It is also about maintaining the accuracy and consistency of product data with other sources. 

There are many platforms that are stringent in terms of ensuring that at any given time, your feed’s data should match your website, structured data, and other sources. Any inconsistency can result in the deactivation of your products from that platform and a hiatus in your advertising operations. 

Thus, always make sure your feed is updated in real-time and reflects accurate details that match all other touchpoints.

Pro tip: To ensure consistency between your feed and store data, use the scheduled fetches that many platforms offer. These fetches let the platform retrieve information from your server or hosted file at regular intervals. This helps your feed reflect the latest product details, such as price and availability, without manual updates.

5. Use a Feed Management Software: Manually creating, editing, and optimizing your feeds can be prone to errors and time-consuming. Thus, we recommend that you use feed solutions. These tools are great for:

• Automating feed optimization using AI.
• Bulk-edit attributes in your feed in one go.
• Meeting channel-specific requirements and also 
• Syncing product data updates to multiple channels instantly.

Tools for Managing Product Feeds

As we discussed in the previous section, using product feed management tools to create and manage your feeds can be very beneficial. The question then is, with so many options available in the market, which tool should you use for your business? 

Don’t worry. We will make it easier for you. Below, we will discuss some of the best feed management tools for managing your product feeds. 

AdNabu

AdNabu is a feed management software for Shopify merchants. It has the prestigious ‘Built for Shopify’ badge, which signifies the highest standards of quality, performance, and speed it meets. 

Using the app, you can: 

1. AI-optimize your feeds for different channels like Google Shopping, Bing Shopping, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Snapchat, TikTok, and X. 
2. Bulk edit product and variant attributes within seconds. 
3. Sync product data to GMC instantly. 
4. Generate accurate and platform-compliant data feed URLs for different marketplaces that always reflect the latest product data from your store. 
5. Create multicurrency and multilingual Google Shopping feeds. 
6. And do much more to simplify and improve feed management.

Pricing: 

• The app starts for free for up to 100 products, where you also get support for Shopify Markets and product taxonomy. 
• Its paid plans start from $39.99/month, where you also get a 14-day free trial. 
• You also get custom quotes for your specific requirements. 

DataFeedWatch 

DataFeedWatch is another prominent feed management tool in the market. It allows merchants to optimize and distribute their product feeds across 2000+ channels such as Google Shopping, Amazon, eBay, etc. 

Using the app, you can: 

• Leverage AI to optimize your feeds for multiple channels 
• Set up advanced feed rules to bulk update product details
• Easily A/B test different versions of your feed content to find the winning variation 

Pricing:

• DataFeedWatch’s paid plans start from $64/month, with a 14-day free trial available for all plans.  

GoDataFeed

GoDataFeed is a feed tool that enables merchants to centralize, optimize, and distribute product feeds across different channels. 

Using the app’s capabilities, you can: 

1. Consolidate product information from multiple sources (such as your store, PIM systems, etc.) into a single unified interface. 
2. Use pre-built feed templates for more than 200+ marketplaces to ensure your product data complies with a channel’s specific requirements.
3. Use dynamic rules to enrich your product data. 

Pricing:  

Their paid plans start from $39/month, and a 14-day free trial is available for all plans. 

Conclusion and Important Takeaways 

Product feeds are the foundation of successful e-commerce marketing. They help you store all products and their essential details in an organized manner. Moreover, they empower merchants to scale across multiple sales channels easily and effectively.  

The key takeaways from this blog include: 

• Product feeds are structured files that include a list of all products in your store along with their key details. These details include, but aren’t limited to, product titles, descriptions, prices, availability, etc. 
• They act as a digital catalog that advertising platforms, marketplaces, or CSEs use to display your products correctly.
• Feeds centralize product data in one place, making it easier to manage. They also help to expand visibility across multiple channels, support advertising, and keep information accurate for both sales channels and customers.
• To create product feeds, you can either:
  • Manually create a file and submit it directly on the platform
  • Use a feed management solution
  • Or use APIs
• Common product feed errors include missing attributes, duplicate entries, poor-quality data, and invalid formats. These mistakes often result in product disapprovals, limited visibility, or wasted ad spend.
• Whenever optimizing product feeds, follow best practices like writing keyword-rich titles, providing detailed descriptions, adding relevant optional attributes to enrich feed data, etc.  
• Use feed management tools like AdNabu, DataFeedWatch, and GoDataFeed to simplify feed optimization and distribution across different marketplaces. They save time, reduce errors, and help ensure your products reach the right audience with accurate data.

Good luck! 

FAQs

1. What is the meaning of a product feed?
   

A product feed is a structured file containing products and their details, like titles, descriptions, prices, etc.

2. How to create a product feed for a particular platform?
   

Start by checking the attributes and file formats supported by the platform. Most platforms provide feed templates, so download and follow one carefully. Add all the required and essential optional attributes like ID, title, description, price, image link, GTINs, MPNs, etc. Save the file in an accepted format such as CSV, XML, TSV, or JSON. Once complete, upload the feed to the respective sales channel or marketplace. 

The process shared above is for creating product feeds manually. However, if you want to save time, use a feed management software. These tools generate feeds automatically, keep them updated, and sync changes across multiple channels instantly.

3. How often should I update my product feed?
   

Update your feed whenever store data changes. Daily or hourly updates ensure accurate pricing, stock availability, and product details across all connected platforms.

4. How does a product feed help in advertising?
   

A product feed powers Shopping ads by supplying platforms with structured and accurate product data. It ensures ads display correct details like price, availability, and images. With optimized attributes, feeds improve targeting, match products to the right search queries, and increase ad visibility to potential buyers.

5. What attributes are most important in a feed?

There isn’t a one-size-fits-all answer to this question. The most important attributes depend on the platform and its specific requirements. In almost all cases, product IDs, titles, descriptions, price, availability, images, etc., are some attributes that you need to submit. 

Beyond these, the priorities vary based on what you sell and where you sell it. For example, if you are selling widely manufactured products that have GTINs, then submitting GTINs in your feed will be crucial. On the other hand, if you are selling custom or handmade products, then not providing GTINs is acceptable on many platforms, which allow exemptions in those cases.