Merchants on the LightSpeed / SEOshop e-Commerce platform will benefit directly from the full integration with DataFeedWatch. Connecting your web shop and building and optimizing your data feeds has never been easier.

App

DataFeedWatch is available in the Lightspeed App store. Installing the App is easy and enables DataFeedWatch to download all your product data. Because DataFeedWatch uses the API interface of LightSpeed it downloads more fields than using the regular google base export from LightSpeed. This offers you the ability to create better data feeds.

Channels

DataFeedWatch offers an extensive but intuitive data feed management tool with which you easily manage data feeds for more than 1.000 shopping channels and marketplaces in over 45 countries. Using our many templates you quickly build a high-quality data feed that meets the specifications of the relevant channel or marketplace.

Instead of using a template you can also choose to build a Custom Channel, a data feed that you can compose according to your own wishes and specifications. A very powerful functionality that offers unprecedented opportunities.

DFW-Analytics

With DataFeedWatch-Analytics you can view the performance and costs of every individual product and channel. You can easily delete poor performing products from your feeds. This way you can optimize on costs, CPA, ROAS or whatever you want. When you use our ‘Feed Merge’ option you’re even able to add, for example, financial data and filter on margin or highest yield per sale.

Get started

Follow the steps below to build your first data feeds within 5 minutes.

Choose ‘Add shop’ to add a new shop to your account.

Set a name for your shop and select ‘LightSpeed (SEOshop)’ in the ‘select – source’ dropdown.

Fill out the necessary fields for language, region, shop-id and shop-url. You’ll find your shop-id at the left top corner of your LightSpeed / SEOshop account.

Specify in the ‘Update schedule’ how many times and when DataFeedWatch has to download the input feed from your webshop. Click on ‘Create shop’ to save your settings and your shop is added.

Click on the ‘Install’ button of your new shop in the ‘My Shops’ view.

I am the shop owner

Are you a merchant or do you have access to the LightSpeed / SEOshop account then click on ‘Install’.

Log into your LightSpeed / SEOshop admin account and click ‘next’.

Install DataFeedWatch by clicking ‘grant access’.

I am not the shop owner

If you don’t have access click ‘Get details’ to contact and inform the account owner about the necessary actions he has to take.

Copy the link and the token and send it to the shop owner.

Wait for the shop owner to install DataFeedWatch. Once it’s done the “Install” button will change to the “Channels” button.

Now you’re ready to build your first data feed! More on creating data feeds with DataFeedWatch you can find right here.

The DataFeedWatch app is now available in the LightSpeed / SEOshop App store in the United States, United Kingdom, and The Netherlands.

Want to know more about the data feed management tool of DataFeedWatch, request for a live demo now!

About DataFeedWatch

DataFeedWatch is data feed management software that enables merchants onMagento,Shopify,Volusion,3Dcart, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, OpenCart, and numerous othershopping carts to optimize their product data feed for Google and 750+ Shopping Channels in 40 countries.DFW-Analyticsalso shows the performance data for every individual product on each channel, so merchants can boost their RoI by quickly identifying and removing unprofitable products.

The post LightSpeed/SEOshop: Create and optimize your data feeds appeared first on DataFeedWatch.

Sell more by advertising fewer products. Exclude the unprofitable, seasonal, out-of-stock and low-price products from your shopping feeds and your revenue goes up.

The quality of your feed is what makes or breaks your PLA campaigns.

A lot has been written about the importance of always improving the quality of the data feed and we go as far as saying that it’s the first place where you should start looking for improvements if you want to optimize your campaigns.

Today we discuss how excluding certain products from the feed will have a major impact on its quality. It may sound counter-intuitive, but you can sell more, by advertising fewer products. All you need to do is filter out the ones that are wasting your advertising budget and focus on the ones that are bringing you the most bang for the buck.

Exclude unavailable / out of stock products

Having the availability up-to-date is important for all merchants, but for multichannel merchants is crucial. An updated availability across multiple shopping channels will avoid that you advertise for products out-of-stock and thus your advertising budget will be spent more wisely. Not to mention, that your clients will have a better shopping experience.

Exclude Seasonal Products

Filtering out products that are out-of-season is necessary if you want to keep your conversion rate high and make your ad spending more efficient. Sure, you might get some sales if you advertise for skis in the summer or flip-flops in the winter, but that budget will be better spent elsewhere.

Exclude products with a low price

Some of the products are better left out of your feed because their price is so low that most likely the CPA is going to be higher than your gross margin. Filtering out from the feed the low price products is something that is necessary and will take you just a couple of seconds to setup a condition that will exclude them.

Exclude unprofitable products

The Pareto principle applies to your shopping campaigns and only 20% of the products will make you money, while 80% will cost you money. If you’re selling on multiple channels, identifying the individual performance of your products is something almost impossible, because most channels won’t provide you with product level data.

And even in some of the cases in which you manage to get the performance at an individual level, excluding those products at all from your feed is not the best decision. What happens is that most of the times products perform in a different way on different channels. A pair of trousers may skyrocket your sales on Facebook, but may have a lousy performance on Google Shopping.

The best solution is to identify the performance on product level on each channel and remove only the products that don’t perform well on those channels.

Exclude a list of unrelated products from your feed

Let’s say you already identified which products you want to filter out from the feed and now you want to start creating the rules to exclude them. If those products don’t have many attributes in common, then creating rules for each of them is going to be time-consuming.

What you need to do is to review your product feed and put all those products in a separate list and then create a rule that will filter out whatever is on that list, based on the IDs.

Exclude products with multiple conditions

Now, what if you want to combine some of the rules detailed above and create a super powerful condition that will focus not on one but on several attributes? You probably guessed it, and yes you can do it.

The idea behind filtering out products from the feeds is to direct your budget where it has the most impact and brings you the most conversions.

Don’t make the deadly mistake of creating the feed and forgetting about it. Always keep an eye on your feed!

About DataFeedWatch

DataFeedWatch is data feed management software that enables merchants on Magento,Shopify,Volusion,3Dcart, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, OpenCart, and numerous other shopping carts to optimize their product data feed for Google and 750+ Shopping Channels in 40 countries. DFW-Analyticsalso shows the performance data for every individual product on each channel, so merchants can boost their RoI by quickly identifying and removing unprofitable products.

The post How To Exclude Products From The Feed The Right Way appeared first on DataFeedWatch.

e-Retailers all know the frustration that comes with having your feed rejected by Facebook. It slows down your sales efforts and creates problems with your workflow. How can you prevent this from happening?

In this blog we will examine 6 of the most common feed errors in your Facebook DPA’s and how you can avoid them in the future.

Wrong GTIN codes: Property GTIN is incorrectly formated

A GTIN code (Global Trade Item Number) is a unique bar code that identifies your product.

The code will vary in the following countries:

• In North America it’s commonly known as a UPC number and has 12-digits
• In Europe it’s commonly known as an EAN number and has 13 digits
• In Japan it’s commonly known as a JAN number and has either 8 or 13 digits
• An ISBN code is reserved for books and has 13 digits

It’s very important to have the correct codes mapped in your feed so spend a little extra time when setting up your feed and make sure you have the correct codes matched to all your products. Likewise, if your products are missing GTIN codes, your feed will also be rejected. The quickest way to check this is to download your feed in a csv file and do a quick run-through. The only time you won’t be required to add a GTIN code is if your feed includes custom-made products. If you can’t find the GTIN, you can always contact the product’s manufacturer to ask for it.

If you’d like more information on GTIN codes, read our blog post: Finding GTIN’s for your products

Missing required fields: Property missing

Facebook has 9 required fields as shown in this feed example below. Make sure they are all mapped correctly. They are:

ID, Availability, Condition, Description, Image Link, Link (url), Title, and GTIN code.

Invalid values

Sometimes it may seem challenging when utilizing values to optimize your feeds.

But if you apply incorrect values, your feed won’t make any sense and it will get rejected. A common mistake many e-retailers make when mapping their feeds is to list custom labels individually as opposed to having them grouped together. For example, all price variations should be grouped in 1 custom label, while promotional items should all be grouped in another. You may have several different price ranges, but you will group them all into 1 custom label by creating rules that separate them from one another, as seen in the example below.

DataFeedWatch offers 7 basic values (besides regular expressions) that you can use to optimize your feeds, as shown in the image below:

Image size too small

It’s important to note that Facebook’s recommended resolution for all images is 600×600 pixels. Any smaller than that and your image starts to look bad. While having a smaller image might not completely disqualify your items, it will affect your feed’s performance and it won’t look good in the ads.

This is the warning you will receive if your images don’t conform:

How to overcome this issue: 

* In your mapping section make sure you have selected the biggest image from the source possible.

* Pro tip for Shopify users: sometimes, even though you may choose image_large_1 from your Shopify source, this warning might still occur. To prevent this make sure to use your biggest image possible and apply this hack:

Missing Google categories

What on earth do the Google categories have to do with Facebook anyway, you may ask? Well, Facebook uses Google taxonomy to categorize items, and although this field is optional in Datafeedwatch, if not mapped it will give you warnings in the Business Facebook account. Fact is, it’s always good to categorize your items properly to increase their visibility. If your own feed is already mapped to Google’s categories, simply connect your input field google_product_category to the optional output feed google_product_category that you will create. However, if you have already mapped all your Google sub-categories in your Google feed, you can save yourself a lot of time by utilizing the “Copy From” functionality in DataFeedWatch to copy it across to your Facebook feed.

If you still have to map all categories from scratch and your input field doesn’t contain this, then you can simply connect easily with our Google pre-mapped sub-sub-categories, as follows:

Missing currency 

An error that we have picked up time and time again in Facebook feeds is the missing currency. While Google accepts feeds with or without the price currency, Facebook insists on it so you need to remember to include this. For example, instead of 15.00 you need to specify 15.00 USD. With our nifty DataFeedWatch tool you can add your currency as your suffix in your field mapping area, as the example below shows:

Facebook also offers a valuable Product Feed Debug Tool that allows you to paste your feed up and get it validated for errors and warnings.

By paying attention to these common errors and applying the solutions which we have outlined in this blog post, your feeds will not be rejected and you won’t waste any downtime while trying to figure out what the problem is with your feed and why Facebook is rejecting it.

Feel free to leave comments and other ideas in the comments section below.

By Amour Setter

About DataFeedWatch

DataFeedWatch is data feed management software that enables merchants on Magento, Shopify, Volusion, 3Dcart, BigCommerce, WooCommerce, OpenCart, Demandware, Lightspeed/SEOshop and numerous other shopping carts to optimize their product data feed for Google and 1000+ Shopping Channels in 40 countries. DFW-Analytics also shows the performance data for every individual product on each channel, so merchants can boost their RoI by quickly identifying and removing unprofitable products.

The post 6 Common Feed Errors in Facebook Dynamic Product Ads appeared first on DataFeedWatch.

With our Amazon order management, Magento merchants can sync their orders on Amazon with their Magento store. This means every item sold on Amazon will instantly show up in the Magento store, just like all the items sold directly from the store.

Now your stock positions are updated constantly and you can process and fulfill your Amazon orders just like the other orders. Let’s elaborate on the advantages:

Stock Status always up-to-date

Magento Shopping Cart and Amazon Marketplace don’t integrate and this is a source of frustration for many shop owners. Especially for merchants using several channels to sell their products, it’s a challenge to keep their stock statuses always up to date and make sure they don’t sell products on Amazon that are out of stock.

All order fulfillment in 1 place: your Magento store

You see all orders coming from Amazon in one place and you get an immediate overview of their status and this makes fulfillment and shipping easy.

If you’re selling on Amazon in several countries from your Magento store this option will make your life much easier.

One tool for Amazon management

Because of the lack of integration between Magento and Amazon up until now, merchants had to rely on more than one tool to keep their online store running. With the Amazon order management feature, you get a 2in1 service: data feed and marketplace order management

How does it work?

Here’s how you can start using order management as of today and make your life much easier.

Amazon Order Management is FREE for all Magento users that have the Amazon Marketplace add-on installed. Read more if you haven’t installed it yet.

You will need to first install the order management in your DFW account from the Marketplace Orders and you need to select the date from which you want to start synchronizing the orders.

If you have been manually syncing your orders between Amazon and your store, or you have used a different tool: Select today’s date. This will prevent you from submitting duplicate orders.

Order Management Flow

The order management process consists of five steps:

1. When somebody buys one of your products on Amazon the complete order information is downloaded into DFW.

2. DFW synchronizes the orders received on Amazon with the products that are in your Magento shopping cart. The Amazon orders that you need to fulfill are now showing up in your shopping cart, just like any other order booked directly in your shop would show up:

Creating orders automatically updates the quantities of the ordered products.

If for whatever reason, the product for which you just received the order is not in your shopping cart anymore, the sync fails the order is not created.

The orders that are managed through FBA will be visible in DataFeedWatch, but will not be synced with the shopping cart.

3. DataFeedWatch downloads the new product feed with the updated quantities. In DataFeedWatch this update happens automatically every 24 hours, but each merchant with the Agency Plan subscription has the possibility of scheduling multiple daily downloads. We strongly advise doing multiple daily downloads, especially if you have a lot of daily transactions.

4. DFW uploads the product feed with the updated quantities to the marketplace.

5. Whenever the merchant updates the status of the order in the Magento shopping cart the order is immediately updated in DFW and the marketplace.

Do you have a feature in mind that we have not yet developed?

At DataFeedWatch we are always listening to our customer’s requests so please drop us an email with your suggestion and we will take into consideration.

The post Amazon Order Management for Magento Merchants appeared first on DataFeedWatch.