Product Feed Specifications
What is a Product Feed?
A product feed is a data representation of your product pages on your website. PricePanda requires certain data from you to be able to display your products and redirect customers to your site. Some of this data we require includes Product Name, Price, Product Page URL, Description and a few others that are set out below.
How does it work?
Once you have created a feed and have provided us with the URL indicating where it is located, PricePanda can start scanning your feed. A bot reads the data in your feed and PricePanda uploads and maps your products into their respective categories on the site. We rescan your feed daily to update any changes you may have made.
How do I create a Product Feed?
This usually depends on the capabilities of your shopping cart and your knowledge of it. Generally, a feed isn't hard to create but many merchants are unaware of how to go about it and need the expertise of a web designer or programmer to set one up. If you already provide a feed to other comparison sites it is possible that PricePanda can use it too. It would be worthwhile checking with your PricePanda Account Manager to see if your existing feed is usable before creating a new one.
If you don't have a feed set up you might want to try set it up yourself. Setting up a feed is a matter of extracting relevant data from your product database. Most shopping carts are capable of this through an 'export' function. This exports the relevant information from your database to file in a format that PricePanda requires. See the required fields and formats below. If you don't think you can do it yourself you will need to contact your web developer, ecommerce provider, or your shopping cart merchant. Tell them that you need a product feed created and pass on the specifications below. Most web developers have had experience creating feeds previously and should be able to help you set one up reasonably quickly.
Ecommerce
Most ecommerce platforms have this built into their admin systems already, for some there are modules available to add if you are not running their full solutions package:
- If you are a web provider and would like to assist your clients by creating a PricePanda feed generator and posting it here please email us at: ecommau@futurenet.com
- If you need some assistance in creating a feed feel free to email your PricePanda Account Manager at: ecommau@futurenet.com
What Format Does PricePanda Require?
The feed can be a:
- Tab Delimited TXT file
- Tab Delimited CSV file
- XML file
You will need to provide us with the location (URL) of where the feed is located so we can rescan your feed regularly. If you are unable to do this it is possible that you can email the feed to us on a regular basis.
If possible, it is better to create a dynamic feed – automatically updates when you make changes to the site. This will prevent PricePanda from showing outdated information of your products
IMPORTANT: If there are any changes or updates to the feed, its location or to your site, please let us know as soon as possible as this could potentially affect the scanning of your products. You must also inform us if you change the feed structure of your product feed as this may result in your feed not being updated correctly.
Tab Delimited File Requirements
- Plain text
- First line of the file must be a header containing the field names used in the field (described below)
- One product per line with no trailing tabs at the end of a line
- Please remove all HTML tags, new line characters, and carriage returns
- The Product URL's and Image URL's should be preceded by http:// - e.g. http://yoursite.com.au/camera.html
Tab Delimited TXT Requirements
We will need the following fields from you in the TXT Feed (format as tab delimited TXT) If possible please can this file be produced dynamically so that products will be automatically be kept up to date:
| Field | Requirement |
|---|---|
| Product Name | Required |
| MPN | Highly Recommended |
| SKU | Highly Recommended |
| Product ID | Required-ID must be numerical only |
| Short Description | Required |
| Category Name | Required |
| Brand | Required |
| Model | Required |
| Image Link | Required: The minimum image size is 250x250 pixels |
| Product URL | Required |
| Price | Required |
| Sale Price | Required |
| Shipment Costs | Optional |
| Size | Optional |
| Age (for children's toys, clothes etc.) | Optional |
IMPORTANT: If there are any changes or updates to the feed, its location or to your site, please let us know as soon as possible as this could potentially affect the scanning of your products. You must also inform us if you change the feed structure of your product feed as this may result in your feed not being updated correctly.
XML Requirements
Category XML (Optional)
| Field | Requirement | Description |
|---|---|---|
| Name | Required | This is the name of the lowest category before products are displayed on your site. If you have an upper category, we suggest you include this in the name. E.g.: TV_PLASMA where TV is the upper category and PLASMA is the lower category. |
| Link | Required | This is the url of the second XML script that will detail all the products that fall within this category. The category link must link to the product xml file which will only show products related to that category. |
Product XML (Required)
| Field | Requirement | Description |
|---|---|---|
| PRODUCT_NUM | Required | This is the product ID on your website (ID must be numerical only). |
| UPC | Required | Unique product code is an individual code for each product. |
| PRODUCT_NAME | Required | This is the name of the product. If you do not have separate values for the manufacturer and model, it is important to try and incorporate these into the product name. |
| DESCRIPTION | Required | This is the description of the product. |
| CATEGORY_NAME | Required | This is the product's category name. Choose the lowest tier category where possible (i.e action movie instead of movies). |
| MANUFACTURER | Highly Recommended | This is the name of the product manufacturer. |
| MODEL | Highly Recommended | This is the model number of the product. |
| PRODUCT_URL | Required | This is the path to the product page on your web server. |
| IMAGE | Required | This is the path to the product image on your web server. (The minimum image size is 250x250 pixels). |
| SHIPMENT_COST | Highly Recommended |
There are several ways to put your shippment information into the feed:
|
| PRICE | Required | This is the normal price of the item. Please note that 19 / $19 / $19.00 / 19.00 are all acceptable. |
| SALE_PRICE | Optional | This is the price of the product when discounted. Please note that 19 / $19 / $19.00 / 19.00 are all acceptable. |
| CURRENCY | Optional | The default value is AUS and at this stage unchangeable. |
| MPN | Optional | The Manufacturer Part Number of your product. |
| COLOR | Recommended | Red, Blue, Green |
| FEATURE | Recommended | The features or attributes that describe the product. Fabric for clothes, capacity for hard drives, etc. |
| ID | Recommended | The barcode |
| MODEL_NUMBER | Recommended | The model serial number of the product. |
| PRODUCT_TYPE | Recommended | T-Shirt, Skirt, Slim Fit |
| QUANTITY | Recommended | The number of items in the offer. |
| SIZE | Recommended | 9, Small, D Cup |
| AVAILABILITY | Recommended | "out-of-stock" or "0" will indicate a product is out of stock and prevent it from being displayed on site. |
Other fields that may be included for certain categories
| Category Name | Field | Requirement | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| Books | AUTHOR | Recommended | Author's Name |
| ISBN | Recommended | Unique ISBN code | |
| Music | ARTIST | Recommended | Name of band/artist |
| DVD | RATING | Recommended | G, PG, R, MA15+, etc. |
| Clothing | SIZE | Recommended | Size of garment e.g. S,M,L, 18DD, 32, 36, 10, etc. |
| AGE | Recommended | What age group it's for. | |
| COLOUR | Recommended | What colour the garment is. | |
| Toys | AGE | Recommended | What age group it's for. |
| Jewellery | CARATS | Recommended | Gold carats, diamond carats, etc. |
| Wine | WINE VARIETAL | Recommended | Merlot, Chardonnay, etc. |
| VINTAGE | Recommended | Year of wine's vintage. | |
| Games | RATING | Recommended | G, PG, R, MA15+, etc. |
| PLATFORM | Recommended | Xbox, PC, Playstation etc. |
The XML required by PricePanda is made up of two separate files. The first represents the lowest level of categories in your website and the second represents the products in any specific category.