Explanations of Product Flows

Why create a product flow?

Product feeds are mainly used to work with price comparison publishers, but more generally with all affiliates who make comparisons. This can be via generalist affiliates, but also via affiliates on specific themes.

Product flow structure

The product feed is based on the source feed provided by the brand (product catalogue with all the product information per product sheet). This file contains the essential elements for affiliates using a product feed.

Here are the main information requirements and recommendations:

• Unique product identification (EAN) ;
• Product name ;
• Product description;
• Product URL;
• Product price
• Sale prices;
• Shipping costs
• Image link (Several recommended, 1 per column);
• Stock; Delivery time
• Delivery time
• Additional attributes (e.g. colour / size / etc.)
• Product type;
• Brand Name;

This list is not exhaustive. The more information you provide in the file (EAN, manufacturer code, category, model name), the better your offers will be listed on these comparators.

• Tips: Create two feeds, a source feed that will be updated daily, and a secondary feed that will be updated weekly (segmented).
• Tips 2: Be clear, concise and explicit when creating your product description.
• Tips 3: Don’t hesitate to add categories and sub-categories to categorise your products correctly.

The different feed aggregators

A Feed Aggregator, also known as an RSS reader, is an IT tool or online platform that brings together a variety of web content in a single interface. In short, a feed aggregator is a practical tool for providing easy access to a variety of content in a single place. It can be used in marketing, but also by banks, travel sites, etc.

It allows you to :

• Create and manage items from a product flow;
• Optimise your product flows;
• Categorise and segment your products;
• Automate your information automatically and daily in line with your source flow.

 Here are a few feed aggregators (paid and unpaid):

What’s more, to synchronise your source feed with the tool you choose, it’s important that you can connect your product catalogue from your e-commerce solution (Prestashop, Magento, Shopify, etc.) So the choice of aggregator is really important!

Product flow formats

Affilae can handle two formats:

• .csv
• .xml

These formats provide dynamic access to your product catalogue. It is essential that this is a dynamic link and not a static .csv or .xml file. Otherwise, changes to your products will not be taken into account.