Consumer behavior, seasons, products and more all are constantly changing so when I hear someone ask “why should we regularly optimize?” The answer is fairly obvious. Merchants are constantly adding new products, which means there are new products to be optimized, categorized, and reviewed. There are a few things to consider when setting a cadence for optimizing.
New Product Frequency As new products are added and old products are removed, your shopping feed is in constant flux of changing data. By knowing when your products are updated, you can set an optimization schedule to review updates that need to be made. Or if you are using a feed management system like Feedonomics to simplify the process of optimization, then this task is merely reviewing the new products to make sure the product optimization logic that was applied makes sense for the attributes of the product that it was applied to.
Stock Fluctuations Understanding your inventories levels is important for many reasons. First, you may want to set a threshold for when levels get too low so that these products aren’t included in your updated feed so you don’t have a chance to accidentally show an out of stock product. Next, knowing when there are major swings helps to make sure you’re sending an updated feed on a more regular basis to avoid out of stock disapprovals. Lastly, understanding how inventory fluctuates not only helps with optimizing product Feeds but being strategic with bidding on those campaigns. For example, if inventory levels are higher and need to move more of those products, then adjusting bids higher to gain more impression share and ultimately drive more product sales on those overstocked products.
Testing This is probably the most obvious reason to continually optimize. Consumer behavior changes which is evident by keyword trends. Especially in the retail space, consumers may start using different synonyms for words or input queries in a different order and more. This even changes by the engines consumers use. Thus staying abreast of trends as well as setting up optimization tests within product data is beneficial to overall campaign performance.
PLA/CSE Feed Requirements The world of Product Listing Ads and Comparison Shopping Engines is still changing, evolving, and being refined. Staying aware of these changes and keeping the product data in compliance with these Engines ensures your products will be visible.
Brian Roizen is the Cofounder and Chief Architect of Feedonomics, a full-service feed optimization platform that optimizes product data for hundreds of channels. He has been featured on numerous podcasts and eCommerce webinars, and regularly contributes to Search Engine Land and other industry-leading blogs. Brian graduated summa cum laude from UCLA with both a Bachelor’s and Master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering.
