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What is Shopify Product Data?
In a nutshell, the Shopify Product data is a spreadsheet in an XML format. This spreadsheet allows the merchants to include all the relevant information around their products that helps Shopify organize and showcase it to the users.
Still, confused? Let’s give it another shot!
Your Shopify product data is a form of product table that comprises all the information around individual products stored in your eCommerce store. Your product data includes information like product type (what exactly your product is, is it a shoe, cloth), title, color, gender, and some other relevant attributes like the variants, price, and size of the products.
The Shopify product data works similarly to the Google feed, allowing the users to keep it updated around all the changes around the eCommerce store via an XML file upload.
While this was a definition of product data, most users often fail to understand its significance. Therefore, we have listed some of the major reasons why you need to optimize your Shopify product data in the next section. Have a look:
Why Do You Need to Optimize Your Shopify Product Data?
Optimizing your Shopify product data is advantageous, in ways more than one! Check out how:
It improves the overall ad spend budget, ultimately improving profit
Let’s face it, when you are running your ad campaigns with several products, not every product that is included in your portfolio will bring in a positive return on investment.
Therefore, one of the best tips to optimize Shopify Product data is to optimize the products in your ad campaign. To make the most out of your present or future ad run, keep a keen eye on how your products perform (preferably after a span of 15 days). Now, all you need to do is exclude the products that do not bring you the expected profit margin.
This way, you are one step closer to maximizing the returns of your ad spend and improved sales over your Shopify store.
Tip: If you are a store owner who deals in electronic appliances (especially air conditioning units), it is advisable that you remove them from your ad campaign during winters. This way, you only show relevant ads besides spending your budget in a better way.
Increased relevancy of your store
Now, we all know how Shopify’s algorithm wants you to follow a specified structure and provide information with all the relevant details in your store.
When you provide the eCommerce platform with all the necessary details around your store, it keeps them updated in its database and shows the most relevant search results.
However, when you are confused with certain steps or say you miss out on updated prices or product variations, the chances are that Shopify won’t be able to show relevant results and highlight your store over search results.
The success of your Shopify store is related to how your product data is structured and maintained. If you don’t have proper product types, or you don’t keep your data uploaded, chances are that you might fail to come up with a good campaign structure.
If you’re missing out on updated prices, you can’t use the promotions.
If you’re missing variants of a product, you can’t center your bids around product variation.
Yes, you might have got the point by now, your Shopify product data is everything!
Improved segmentation
The other most important aspect of Shopify product data is to improve the segmentation of your products. When you divide and subdivide your product into different categories, based on their type, color, or variants and gender, doesn’t running multiple campaigns become easier?
However, even when you aren’t running multiple campaigns simultaneously, segmenting your products allows Shopify to understand the different products across different categories present in your store.
This way, it can easily extract all the necessary product information to create a feed for your products.
Now that you have understood the significance of optimizing your Shopify product data, it’s time to look at the crucial product data of your Shopify store that you must optimize at the earliest!
Important Shopify Product Data to optimize
Title
Your product title is one of the most significant parts of introducing your product to your visitor. The reason behind the same being that they are one of the few pieces of information that are made available over the SERP. Highlighted with a blue hyperlink, your product title is more than just a name.
Your product title is an ideal representation of the most generic information around the product that is supposed to entice them to read further. Considering its impact on the visitors, we advise you to develop a short, informative, and crisp title that can describe the product in the first few characters itself.
The reason why we say so?
When any user inputs a search, Google doesn’t show all the 150 characters (the general character limit of setting up product titles) written in the title; instead, it shows the first 35 characters. Therefore, it is essential to optimize your Shopify product data’s title precisely, including all the relevant keywords in the first half of it.
Looking at the significance that it will put on your sales and relevance, it would be safe to say that your product’s title plays a significant role in driving sales.
Description
The next big thing in your Shopify product data is your product description. Now, doesn’t that make sense?
Your product description is the second hyperlinked line, just after the product title on your feed. Considering the product description that carries equal significance to the title, we are sure you would want to optimize it as well.
Your product description is every information around a specified product. The description is responsible for educating the visitor about the product, including color, dimensions, features, variants, and terms of use.
Interestingly, even your descriptions are treated the same way as your title, i.e., only a significant portion of your product description (say 150 characters) is visible over the results page.
Therefore, while you are curating product descriptions for your Shopify product data, you should focus on making the description informative, short, and keyword friendly for allowing SEO. Yes, we know that there’s a 5,000 character limit for your descriptions. However, a majority of the users don’t even care to go through all of it.
Google Product Category
Your Google product category has got nothing to do with the work that goes on the front-end of your Shopify store. It is more of a backend attribute used by the search engine’s algorithm while populating search results for Google Shopping.
Now, when you aim to advertise your products, your product category is an attribute that you surely can’t miss.
Why?
Because your product category is what makes your products eligible for an ad. The category of your product selected by the Product Taxonomy, or GPT by Google, allows you to segregate and subdivide your product to over 6,000 types.
Product categories are an integral part of your ad relevance.
Don’t get confused; let’s understand it a better way with an example:
Let’s say that you are the seller of superhero merchandise. For selling your product, don’t go with the traditional format of – Superhero Merchandise > Toys.
Instead, try using a different technique, something like:
Toys & Merchandise > Merchandise > Kids & Toddler Merchandise > Kids & Toddler Superhero merchandise & costumes
Remember, the clearer you define, the better!
Image link
As a graphics-based platform, images play a significant role in your Shopify store as they are a major source of enticing your customer to sales. Therefore, it is normal for users to use either a single image or a carousel of images to give a more detailed view of the product.
Now, when you are using multiple images in your Shopify store (the obvious selection), you need to ensure that you are not setting up a single image as default or skipping the variant_image attribute. This way, when you use an individual image, Shopify might show a similar picture of a product when a user is trying to search some other specific query (say a color-specific product).
Therefore, it is always advisable to use the additional_image_link attribute when you are dealing with multiple images. You should also try to align your image requirements with that of the Shopify platform (preferably 800px x 800px) or higher for better clarity.
Ideally, your product image needs to be shot in a white background, and you also need to avoid using any form of logo, information, or extra text in the image; that surely won’t work!
Lastly, while optimizing your product images, look at the images provided by current drop shippers and try providing something different to stand out of the crowd. Say, taking images from a different angle.
Price
Your product price is the most obvious part of your Shopify product data, as everything is incomplete without your products’ price.
While optimizing your product prices, make sure you use the product price + currency as an attribute over all the products listed in your Shopify store. When you provide prices to the store, make sure your product’s price matches the country’s currency that you are creating your feed for.
Further, you also need to input VAT in your product prices while optimizing it (excluding the USA, India, or Canada).
Lastly, the final step in optimizing the price of your product data includes a cross-check on the price at which your competitors are selling; you need to be at par with them.
GTIN
GTIN refers to the unique number that helps identify a product in a feed. Also referred to as barcodes, the GTIN needs to be optimized for your Shopify store as well. However, you need to maximize your GTIN according to the country that you target.
Check it out here:
UPC: A twelve-digit number that you need to optimize to be able to sell your products in North-America
EAN/UCC: 14, 8, or 13 digit number that is majorly used outside the boundaries of North America
JAN: 13 or an 8 digit number that should be used for sale in Japan
ISBN: This is the unique identifying number/ code for books in your product data
For more information on GTIN and fixing its errors, visit this blog.
Now that you have come across all the possible tips to optimize Shopify Product data and understood every bit of optimization that needs to be done around your feed, we are quite sure that you would like to take on the next big thing as well.
Yes, we are talking about the Google Shopping platform that works seamlessly with Shopify. Want to know how to optimize your Shopify product data for Shopping ads? Well, here it is:
How to Optimize Shopify Product Data for Google Shopping?
Optimizing your Shopify product data can be a mammoth task, especially when you deal with multiple products. Managing numerous product data can be a time-consuming process.
Therefore, we suggest using AdNabu for the Google Shopping app in the Shopify App Store.
Why do we suggest the Adnabu app for Google Shopping?
The answer is simple; this application simplifies the process of optimizing product data with its product-specific recommendation feature. Further, this application rates every product present inside your store (out of a total of 100), marking improved results with high scores.
However, that’s not it; let’s have a walkthrough of the different ways the application helps you optimize Shopify product data for Google Shopping.
i. Title
Optimizing the product title is one of the essential parts of improving your product data as Google’s algorithm considers your product title to populate results for a search query.
Therefore, While you are implementing SEO friendly keywords over the first half of your title character limit, make sure that you use high-density keywords and avoid using any form of promotional text.
Now that you have made the changes on your end, it’s time to check the score of your store’s Title attribute that is listed under the “full analysis” tab.
ii. Description
Your descriptions define your product. Don’t use up all of the threshold limits to write your product description; instead, focus on dedicating the significant part of the content to the first half. Further, same as what we did for the title, avoid using promotional texts!
Now, it’s time you check the score of your product description and amend the changes necessary. Further, you can also calculate the total value under the “full analysis” option.
iii. Google Product Category
Being a backend attribute, the Google Product category helps you define your ad’s relevancy. It makes it easy for Google to populate your shop for specific queries.
After you have entered your product category (Example: Toys & Merchandise > Merchandise > Kids & Toddler Merchandise > Kids & Toddler Superhero merchandise & costumes), the application rates you out of 100.
iv. Image Link
While it is always a smart solution to provide relevant, high-quality images for your product feed, your suggested images should also be matching the product description.
The AdNabu app helps you optimize your image link by analyzing if it is paired to the relevant homepage link and later giving it a score. However, you can always check the complete analysis under the ‘full analysis’ tab.
v. Price
The price+currency attribute needs to be clearly defined to sell your products in different targeted countries.
The application analyses the price+currency attribute, and it suggests a relevant score, the details of which can be checked under the analysis tab.
vi. GTIN
GTIN or the Global Trade Item Number helps Google Shopping with the relevancy of the product.
Similar to the other attributes, the application provides a score after you have entered the attribute. It is also used for different tests, and you can find the complete analytical result under the given tab.
Track the changes you make and finetune your optimization process till you get that 100% mark. Once there, improved sales and ROI are only a matter of time!
Conclusion
Ecommerce stores like Shopify carry a great potential to scale a business when used correctly. Considering the significance of Product data, we bet you want to optimize the same for improved results. We wish you all the best for your Shopify journey ahead!
Key takeaways
- Shopify Product data is a spreadsheet in an XML format. This spreadsheet allows the merchants to include all the relevant pieces of information around their products.
- When you provide the eCommerce platform with all the necessary details around your store, it keeps them updated in its database and shows the most relevant search results.
- Your Google product category has got nothing to do with the work that goes on the front-end of your Shopify store. In fact, it is more of a backend attribute.
- Your product title is an ideal representation of the most generic information around the product that is supposed to entice them to read further.
- The AdNabu app simplifies the process of optimizing product data with its product-specific recommendation feature that rates your product data (out of a total of 100).
