How to create a product data feed for marketplaces

Before selling your products on marketplaces, you must generate a products feed – a version of your catalogue that will go online. This feed must be created according to criteria requested by the marketplaces you intend to sell through.

To create a products data feed you must:

• Follow the required format. This may be a .txt or .csv format, in which case the headers should be carefully drafted; or an .xml format, more relevant and accurate, but which demands technical skills that may require a developer’s helping hand.
• Comply with the attributes requested for each of your products. Generally, these attributes are the following: a title, an ID (or product code), a description that contains keywords for optimization, a price, a picture, a category or a group, product details (size or colour), available stock, terms of delivery, etc.
• Carefully choose the products you want to incorporate into your flow. To do this, you must acknowledge your marketplace’s positioning (whether general or specialized, discount or premium, etc.), your targets and your margins depending on your acquisition costs. And be sure to follow your marketplaces regulations regarding origin and type of products sold.

By creating your products feed you should avoid duplicate content, out of stock products, and formatting errors. Finally, remember to update your feed as often as possible!