• Home
  • About
  • Best Practices
  • Webinars
  • Resources

ShareASale Blog

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • ShareASale
  • Merchants
  • Affiliates
  • Trending
  • New & Notable
  • Alert!
  • Around the Office

Product Datafeed Best Practices

February 5, 2014 by ShareASale 5 Comments

If you work as an Affiliate Manager for a retailer on ShareASale, you’ve probably seen the word “Datafeed” before, and may be wondering … What is that!?

Datafeeds account for a full 5-10% of all conversions tracked on ShareASale… which means that if you aren’t providing your Affiliates a detail-rich datafeed with which to work, you are leaving sales on the table.

So what is a Product Datafeed?

The easiest way to explain it is that a datafeed is just a giant excel spreadsheet with line-by-line product descriptions and data (such as price, image, category).

But, why are they so important? For 2 main reason:

1. They allow Affiliates to target specific products when sending you traffic.   If a blog features a post about washing machines, for example, you want them to link directly to the washing machines on your retail site… not a generic home page.   Conversions go up!

2. You get listed in a bunch of ShareASale tools that Affiliates use – namely our “Make A Page“, “Widgets“, “Videos” – and you are more easily found by potential Affiliates who search for programs based on products as opposed to Merchants.

Datafeeds are critical to the overall success of a retail based Affiliate Program. They allow Affiliates to market specific products or sub-sets of products with up to date and rich data.

Brian Littleton

Download the following free “Best Practices Worksheet” on how to create, and upload your datafeed to ShareASale – and once you do I think you’ll start to see the benefits of adding in one of the key elements to any retail Affiliate Program.

Filed Under: Best Practices, Merchant Tagged With: best practices, merchant resources, merchant timesavers, product datafeeds

ShareASale

ShareASale

Comments

  1. paul says

    February 13, 2014 at 12:39 am

    so where is the documentation for your feeds ?

    Reply
  2. Holly says

    March 5, 2014 at 4:58 pm

    Your system wants a zip file instead of the excel file when I try to download my datafeed. HELP!
    Where is the documentation for your datafeed?

    Reply
    • Brian Littleton says

      March 7, 2014 at 4:05 pm

      Holly – yes, you will need to zip that file up in order to upload – the full instructions are at https://shareasale.com/m-productmanagement.cfm

      Reply
  3. John says

    February 11, 2016 at 1:01 pm

    If we have a datafeed of apparel with different SKUs for each size, would you recommend uploading 10 different products, which are essentially the same product but different sizes? Or would you recommend just shortening the SKU and uploading one product and eliminating the sizes? Thank you!

    Reply
    • Brian Littleton says

      February 12, 2016 at 10:59 am

      Thanks for your comment – we will reach out to you with some ideas on the datafeed.

      Reply

Leave A Comment Cancel reply

Interested in Hearing More from ShareASale?

To receive our latest news and email communications, please opt-in to our Blog Newsletter below.
* = required field
Tell us about you:



Events Calendar

«January 2021»
SunMonTuesWedThuFriSat
     
1
2
3
4
5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12
13
14
15
16
17
18
19
20
21
22
23
24
25
26
27
28
29
30
31
      

Merchant Catalog

ShareASale 2014 Summer Catalog

Tags

#BestOf #BuildingBlocks #HowTo #LessonsLearned #Q4Prep #TheInterface affiliate affiliate resources affiliate summit affiliate timesavers affiliate tips around the office bfcm2016 black friday blogger tips blogging Brian Littleton client services conferences conference tips content tips cyber monday Featured fun friday general news gift guide gift guides gift guides 2016 interface merchant features merchant focus merchant programs merchant resources merchants merchant timesavers merchant tips month of the interface must have merchants new and notable new merchants product datafeeds q4 reports technology tip of the day

About Us

ShareASale has been in business for 16 years, exclusively as an Affiliate Marketing Network. Our technology receives accolades for speed, efficiency and accuracy - and our reputation as a fair and honest business is well known within the industry.

Navigation

  • Home
  • About
  • Best Practices
  • Webinars
  • Resources
  • Affiliates Posts
  • Merchants Posts
  • Trending
  • New & Notable
  • Around the Office

Contact Us

SHAREASALE@SHAREASALE.COM
(312) 321-0487

  • Twitter
  • Facebook
  • Pinterest
  • Google+
  • LinkedIn
  • ShareASale