All About Product Data feeds

Overview

• What is a Data feed?
• Why is a Data feed Important?
• Data feed Setup
• Uploading the Data feed
• Best Practices
• Data feed Maintenance
• Changing/Updating the Data feed

WHAT IS A DATA FEED? 

A data feed is an organized list of the products in your online store. A data feed typically includes product information such as name, sku, category, buy link, image, etc. A number of these fields are required in every AvantLink data feed, as detailed below.

WHY IS A DATA FEED IMPORTANT? 

AvantLink uses the data feed to populate product data in the Products Sold Report and the Products Sold Per Order Report.  Certain Item Based Commission (IBC) rules also require product data from the data feed.

Maintaining a high-quality data feed is also a great way to ensure that your product information is being accurately delivered to your affiliates. Affiliates need access to accurate, up-to-date product information in order to effectively advertise your products to their audiences. 

DATA FEED SETUP

There are several acceptable formats for your data feed:

• Comma-separated values (.csv) - preferable
• XML (here is a template to use) - preferable
• Tab-delimited (.txt)
• Pipe-delimited

The data feed must include all the required fields for every product (row):

Example of completed data feed with required fields:

AvantLink  data feeds have the ability to map many additional attributes, some examples are listed below:

 

HOW TO UPLOAD YOUR DATA FEED

AvantLink will retrieve and update the data feed on a daily basis.  Product updates in the data feed are the merchant’s responsibility. The merchant must keep the data feed updated to ensure the latest product information is available.

There are two ways AvantLink can retrieve the file:

1. Host the data feed

• Host the file on your internal server.
• Provide AvantLink the HTTPS download URL and from there AvantLink will import the map the data feed as long as data feed is configured properly.

1.  
2. Use File Transfer Protocol (FTP):

• If you have your own FTP server, provide the credentials to your integration rep after the file has been added.
• The name of the data feed document should remain static, changing the file name will break the integration. It is recommended to keep the format as simple as possible, and spaces should be replaced by underscores. For example: merchantname_avantlink.csv
• If you do not have your own FTP server, contact your integration rep for FTP credentials. 
  • If you need a FTP software, we recommend Filezilla.
    •  After downloading Filezilla, connect to the FTP location using the AvantLink FTP credentials
    • Place the data feed in the root folder and let your integration rep know after the file has been added.  See screenshot: 
      
      
       

Once you have your feed properly formatted and uploaded, contact your integration rep and we will take care of the rest! 

BEST PRACTICES FOR CREATING A QUALITY DATA FEED

Below are some tips to make sure your data feed is as effective and useful to affiliates as possible:

Include a Sale Price

Some affiliates search for and display only products that are discounted from their normal retail price. Including a sale price will ensure that your products are not overlooked by those affiliates, as well as provide them with a competitive price to display to their viewers.

Populate as many columns as possible

Generally, it's a good idea to provide as many of the "optional" columns as you can in your data feed. The more information is available to affiliates, the easier it is for them to build creative, targeted ads that are more likely to convert. GTIN/UPC are particularly useful additions, as they allow affiliates to compare products across data feeds.

Keep tabs on affiliate usage

It's a good idea to be aware of how many/which affiliates are actively using your data feed. If your data feed is minimally used, you may want to contact your Affiliates to find out how you can improve your feed for optimal usage. You can access this information from your merchant account under AdTools > Data feed Administration > Active Websites.

Create Specialty Feeds

Some merchants, especially those who carry numerous products, create "specialty feeds" that contain only a subset of their products. This can be useful for affiliates who are interested in displaying only certain types of goods. Specialty feeds may also help you organize a very large inventory into smaller, more manageable datasets.  You can create specialty feeds by logging into your merchant account, going to AdTools > Data feed Administration, and then click on [Create a New Specialty Feed]. You will be asked to name the feed and enter the SKUs of the products that you want to include. Then, just click "Submit".

DATA FEED MAINTENANCE

Once you have your data feed setup, it is a good idea to check in regularly to make sure that your data feed is updating successfully. 

To access your merchant data feed interface, navigate to AdTools > Data feed Administration from your AvantLink dashboard. 

• Check the "Last Updated" column in this interface. Updates should occur daily. When AvantLink’s system was able to pull a file.
• Check the "Last Actual Change" column in this interface. Updates should occur when changes have been made to the data feed. This date does not necessarily have to update daily if information in the data feed has not changed.  When actual information was changed or added to the file.

Our servers automatically process data feeds every night. If your data feed fails to process for some reason, one or both of these columns may stop updating. If you notice this, contact AvantLink.

CHANGES TO YOUR DATA FEED

Please contact AvantLink if any changes are made as it may break your data feed configuration.  Example of changes include: 

• Renaming the data feed
• Changes to the URL if the file is hosted by your internal server 
• Adding columns
• Moving columns
• Deleting columns
• Renaming columns

Please note: If you make changes to your data feed, it's very important to let us know! Once we pull your data feed, we have to make some transformations to it. If you have made changes that we are not aware of, the data feed may not update properly. 

If you want to immediately update your data feed with new products, you can trigger a manual update using the MerchantTriggerDatafeedUpdate module of the AvantLink API. You will need an API Key to make this request, so contact AvantLink if you have not yet been assigned one. For more information on using this API module, click here.