Is your product feed not delivering the results you've expected? Or have you just created a feed and want to know if it'll do well? There is always room for growth, so it's never too late to optimize your product feeds.
A properly designed feed positively affects the visibility and effectiveness of your listings, regardless of whether you're showing them on Google, Facebook, Awin, or elsewhere. Because if your feed has an incorrect structure, your items may never fully reach their intended audience, or, even worse, they could be rejected from the channel altogether.
In this article, we'll walk you through simple, actionable steps to strengthen your feed for top performance. We'll also briefly discuss how to optimize your Shopify store and what direct impact this can have on your feed's success.
What is a Shopify Product Feed?
Before we delve into the exciting practical part, we must quickly recall what a product feed is. Because it's impossible to optimize product feeds, let alone do it productively and effectively, without even knowing what those are.
A Shopify product feed is a text file that contains an organized list of your current offers. When merchants decide to present their products on some sales channel, they can use this file to add and update information about many goods simultaneously.
The required and recommended product data that the feed should contain heavily depends on the channel you choose to sell on. But most commonly, the must-have attributes are the product's identifier (ID), title, description, price, stock status, link to the store's product page, images, and category.
Further on we assume you already know the fundamentals of product feeds, but if you don't, we suggest you first read our product data feed management article to catch up on the basics.
Why Optimize Your Shopify Product Feed?
Looking for a short answer to this question? Lots of high-profit sales. Ultimately, these are every seller's goal, and an optimized feed will bring you exactly that. But if you want an extended answer, here's a list of additional benefits that come bundled with a strong product feed:
- Higher positions in searches. The details from the feed help search engines see that your offers are relevant to the user's query, thus pushing you to visible top spots.
- Targeted reach. Extra information also lets your products show up in filtered results and get in touch with people who will be much more likely to purchase those specific items.
- Solid brand reputation. Visitors will appreciate the effort you put into the feed's extensive well-written content and will consider your store a reliable place for shopping.
- Increased conversions. A neatly structured and informative feed may become another decisive factor for shoppers as to why they should buy particularly from you.
- Effective ads. With an optimized feed, your ad campaigns will better pay off, regardless of whether you promote your store on Microsoft Ads, Google, TikTok, or anywhere else.
Can't wait to claim all these tempting perks for yourself? Then let's finally move on to polishing your product feed by implementing the industry's best practices in it.
Best practices for optimizing a Product Feed for Shopify
The practices we'll cover next are, certainly, not the only ways how you can improve your feed. There also exist numerous other market-specific and advanced techniques that are beyond the scope of this article. Nevertheless, below are the optimization essentials that every Shopify product feed owner, regardless of their business type or experience level, should know and use on a daily basis:
Give your goods a professional photoshoot
You've probably been told to use high-quality images plenty of times. It's no wonder this advice is so common: shoppers judge you and your offer by your product's photos. Customers want to see and feel the item before buying it, and if your images can't help them satisfy these desires, they will simply walk past you.
Your goods must come with two types of photography: the product itself and the lifestyle your product can bring. There are no strict guidelines on the specific number of such images, though, but we recommend you have at least 4 product photos and two or three lifestyle ones.
When you take the product photos, you should shoot all angles of your item and close-ups of its significant features. Let your product be the center of attention: place it against a plain background and remove everything else from the frame.
The lifestyle photos serve a different purpose: they tell an engaging story of how a customer can incorporate your product into their life. Remember that you're selling not just a product but also an experience it can provide, so be sure to promote them both. For example, if you have tableware, you can show how to aesthetically set a table for dinner with it.
Compose titles and descriptions wisely
Many also stress a lot the importance of good titles and descriptions, and that's no surprise either. These two attributes are among the first ones people look at. They are the main hooks that invite shoppers to your store and help them determine whether your offer is what they're after. Therefore, you absolutely cannot afford to spoil these key elements.
Mention here all the standout features of your product — briefly in the title, and in all details in the description. Additionally, put yourself in the customer's shoes and come up with words you'd use to describe and search for your item. Then, naturally mix in these keywords in your copy.
For those who want a deeper dive into title perfecting, we've prepared some great structure templates and even more product title optimization hacks in our other article.
In descriptions, praise not only the product's features but also its benefits. After all, your description must convince customers to purchase your offer. Answer here two questions: why should someone buy this product, and what advantages would it bring them?
Still, don't go overboard with the length of both titles and descriptions and place the most important facts at the beginning. The reason is that titles should usually have 150 characters maximum, of which users will see and carefully inspect only the first half. As for descriptions, the limit is wider (about 5,000 characters on average), but the buyer's attention doesn't expand as much: shoppers usually look through just the first 500 characters.
Specify a unique ID for each item
An identifier, or ID for short, is like a passport: it lets retailers, shoppers, and sales channels easily and unambiguously find a specific product. Thanks to IDs, channels can update your listing correctly, write down its history, and assort it to its designated place. But everything breaks down when another product tries to copy that passport.
You should check that each item in your feed, including product variants, has its own personal, case-insensitive ID. Manufactured goods usually come with an MPN or GTIN which you can safely specify as an ID. In case you're selling unique things, like handmade or antiques, or if you simply don't have any standard IDs on hand, use your custom SKU.
Be careful to not blend multiple types of IDs randomly. If some of your products have several different IDs available, choose only one type for all such items across the feed.
And above all, whenever you modify something in the feeds, keep the ID intact. If your item's ID changes, then it'll become a completely new product for the sales channel, and your previous one will be erased.
Use your sales channel categorization
Sales channels frequently have their own category hierarchy, and chances are your Shopify store speaks a different category language. Without a translator, your items-foreigners won't make it to the channel's default product catalog, or, in the worst case scenario, won't even appear on the channel at all. So, as the saying goes: when in Rome, do as the Romans do.
Browse the category tree of your sales channel and add those categories to the feed instead of your own. Sometimes the channel's merchant platform may have a category mapping tool, and you might be tempted to use it. However, this will significantly delay the release of your items on the channel, which is why we insist that you change categories before uploading the feed.
When there are several suitable destinations for your product, choose the closest most descriptive category with multiple layers of depth. For example, if you wanted to sell tuxedos on Google Shopping, the right category would be "Apparel & Accessories > Clothing > Suits > Tuxedos". But beware of overlapping categories: remember that each path must be unique.
Fill in optional fields
As we've said earlier, shoppers love extra details that have structured answers to all their questions. Especially when the information on the sales channel matches what's in your store. Visitors take this as a sign of a trustworthy retailer who cares about their job. And even if one doesn't buy from you, they will still think highly of you and positively recommend you to others.
To see what optional attributes you can add to the feed, read through the feed specification of your desired channel. Obviously, the ones suitable for you will be dictated by the products you're selling. Nevertheless, some of the most popular universal fields are the item's condition, brand, color, material, pattern, age group, gender, size (or dimensions), weight, and shipping info.
Many channels also allow sellers to share their special deals along with the products. Check if your channel supports this feature and use it to the fullest, as it's great for capturing bargain-hunting shoppers. For example, you can tell not only the item's sale price but also the duration and terms of a sale. Or you can even give a discount coupon with its conditions.
Study your channel resources
Following on from the previous tip, sales channels may have other helpful documentation for sellers in addition to feed requirements, such as knowledge bases with setup walkthroughs and, you guessed it, hints on how to optimize product feeds. Because, after all, the one who knows best how to tailor the feed for a given channel is that channel itself.
For a start, browse your chosen channel's official website, help center, and FAQ sections to learn some general information and recommendations. It's important to take your time and check that you hit all the basic points first because later on you can extremely easily get lost in researching advanced topics and forget about something simple yet vital.
After that, we suggest you visit the desired channel's blog and dive into articles similar to the one you're reading now. If your channel has any social media activity, such as YouTube videos, explore there too. Another good idea is to get in touch with the channel's support team and gain invaluable insights on the latest best practices firsthand from the experts.
Role of Feed Management Tools in Product Feed Optimization
Wonderful, you've discovered how to optimize your product feeds and now know what needs to be improved! But you're not going to fix the feed manually, are you? Painstakingly editing each entry in your file by hand is time-consuming, error-prone, and difficult, especially if you've got a large catalog. Plus, you'll have to redo this hard chore every time the feed changes.
Here's an alternative: product feed management tools. They will help you automate and speed up all feed-related tasks, including creation, updating, uploading, maintenance, and optimization. Such software packs dozens of handy features into one intuitive interface and can deal with product feeds for many sales channels at once, making it ideal for everyday work. What's more, these tools can process catalogs with dozens, hundreds, and even thousands of products equally well, so you won't have to change your workflow as you grow: the tool will scale alongside your store.
But finding the right feed management tool for your business may be just as challenging as doing everything in the old-fashioned manual manner. Your perfect product feed software should combine these key features:
- It has feed templates for various popular international channels, which are ready-to-use, optimized, and customizable at the same time.
- It allows you to freely build up a custom product feed structure for any channel you want, not just for ones from the supported list.
- It includes a big feed editing toolset with many advanced optimization tools, such as product filters, conditional data, and AI category mapping.
- It natively supports the Shopify system, ideally working directly in the Shopify admin and owning the "Built for Shopify" status.
- It comes with an experienced support team that is always available and can help you create a high-performing feed for no additional cost.
At Mulwi, we've developed a tool that checks all these boxes and has much more. Our Mulwi Shopping Feeds app offers a friendly feed management experience and hassle-free connection to new sales channels for everyone, regardless of their technical skills. You can get an optimized feed in mere minutes thanks to our preconfigured templates for over 200 international channels. And with Mulwi's vast customization options and detailed feed quality feedback, you can be sure that your product feeds always match your brand's voice, stay in top shape, and bring maximum results.
If you're ready to see for yourself just how easy and enjoyable product feed optimization can be, then head over to the Shopify App Store and give Mulwi a try today!
How Shopify product page optimization impacts your feeds
We've already optimized the Shopify product feed, but what if you could make the source of that feed's data — the product pages — more efficient too?
Think about this: instead of repeatedly cleaning up your feeds from messy input data every time you update them, you can improve the structure of your product pages just once and give your feeds already good data. As a result, you'll cross out some repetitive steps and simplify the feed creation process. What's more, your optimized product pages will overall perform better as well.
Intrigued? Then here's a bonus for you:
Tips on how to optimize a Shopify store
These three simple tricks will turn your Shopify product pages and the data feeds you build from them into magnets for interested customers and new orders:
Follow a consistent style
Optimizing a Shopify store is hard if you don't have a single style. If your brand speaks in several different voices, your followers won't be able to easily distinguish you from others. In addition, the sudden change of identity between your offers will puzzle visitors too, especially if these items are tightly related.
Stick to one tone that represents you the best and update your website's content to reflect this tone everywhere. But avoid using jargon and complex terms, since a big bouquet of unfamiliar niche lexicon only scares customers away.
The consistency rule can also apply to something as non-trivial as the image amount, the description size, or the absence of optional attributes. If some products have more photos or a much longer description than other goods, shoppers may get the impression that you favor these items more. So, to prevent this misunderstanding, give each of your items equal attention.
Clean up product variants
When you offer several variants of a product, your customers should clearly see the uniqueness of each option. This means that every variant must have its own title, description, and images that tell about that option and not the product in general. Even if the change is simply the color of the decor, you have to highlight it to avoid duplicate content and confusion.
While we're on the topic of color, let's also talk about the names of variant options. Unusual naming for colors, sizes, and other variant attributes piques curiosity more, indeed. But shoppers will likely search for a "small dark blue" or "small navy blue" dress rather than a "petite moonlight shadow" one. As a result, your items with intricate variant names will be less visible.
To find a perfect balance between creativity and simplicity, pick more specific option names that include or are entirely made up of common words. For instance, "outer space blue" and "salmon pink" colors sound fun, but customers still understand that those are shades of blue and pink thanks to the last word. And we emphasize once again: you must explain the meaning of your variant options with corresponding images.
Inspect the technical aspects of your images
What's in the photos, undoubtedly, matters the most. But the technical parameters of your images are just as important, even though they're not always seen by customers.
First of all, check if your image can be compressed without losing quality. Smaller images not only take up less space on your website's limited storage, but they also load faster. And the loading speed of your media directly affects user experience and your SEO ranking.
Speaking of SEO, you should check your image's name. Yes, even such a seemingly minor thing as a file name can play a big role in enhancing your SEO. It's another place where you can sprinkle in relevant keywords, which, as you know, help search engines recommend your listings more accurately.
And of course, don't forget about the alt attribute. If you want to improve your SEO and user experience even further, you definitely need it. Here, you simply describe your photo in plain language, as well as throw in some more keywords. So then when your image isn't rendered properly and can't make an impact on your customers, alt text will appear and do that instead. Alt text will help search engines determine whether your image is appropriate for the query too.
Summary
Optimization is a key part of a product feed's lifecycle for a reason. The market is changing non-stop, thus your feeds must also constantly grow and adapt to it alongside your business. But the tips we've shared with you today will never go out of fashion. They will help you quickly transform your product feed into a powerful sales-channel-conquering tool that presents your offers in the best light and attracts sky-high profits. Doing this will be even easier and more pleasurable if you arm yourself with specialized product feed software.
