July online spending hit record levels for 2010 as UK shoppers spent GBP5bn online, the most in any month this year. Reinforcing the consistently high levels growth levels predicted for the remainder of the year, retailers need to be fully prepared to take advantage of this booming marketing through improvements in their existing product feeds.
A retailer we have been working closely with for the past month or so has seen visits to their site increase by 50% in just one month alone, simply by reviewing and amending their product listings to ensure they match all the requirements set out by the sites that they provide their products to, thus minimising the likelihood of rejection and boosting their visibility.
In fact, the results delivered to date already indicate that the system they implemented to manage this process has already provided them with a significant return on their investment, making it a very profitable and effective means of capitalising on the lucrative Christmas trading period.
After the internal marketing team recognised the need to review the way their product listings were working on the web, they enlisted our help to ensure their product feed strategy was working to it full potential.
We implemented a system which brought their various product output feeds together and ensured they were repackaged for the specific requirements of each output site, be it, Google, Affiliates, shopping comparison websites and so on.
Since implementing Feed Manager™ in June 2010, the client has seen sales revenues grow strongly across all channels, with visitor numbers continuing to climb even during the relatively quiet summer period.
Even by my standards, the results have been literally astounding. But it proves why sometimes, it is far better to outsource specific functions than to lose many more valuable in-house hours. The mass of product listing sites and differing requirements can be challenging for many internal departments to manage in addition to their existing responsibilities.
The great thing about product feed strategies is that the ROI is clear and more than repays the initial investment in outsourcing the function to a specialist provider.
As I’ve said many times before, the problem I often find in my line of work is that many retailers have all the information available to update their product feeds, but simply didn’t have the ‘thing’ that could feed this information out to the web and where it needed to go.
Automated ‘intelligent’ product display feeds are proven to save retailers and agencies days or weeks of management and development time to set up and maintain listings on product comparison sites and help get products in front of more online shoppers quickly and effectively.
So with all this talk of booming online sales, ask yourself if your products are performing to the optimum. And if not, I highly recommend you do something about it, and fast.