OK, so you know how to do a datafeed. You’re ready to go. This is quite exciting. By using a datafeed to create Froogle catalog product entries, you are expanding your market substantially.

The real story here is not so much that Froogle can perhaps double your potential market. The real story here is that this is an incredibly cost-effective way to expand your market on the Web. Froogle was free in Beta and it’s apparent since it’s been out of Beta that Google is committed to keeping Froogle a marketplace that’s free to retailers. Deals like this don’t come along very often, and if you don’t seriously consider doing a Froogle datafeed, you will miss out on a potentially substantial increase in your sales. Keep in mind the datafeed itself is simple, quick, and convenient if you use the right auction management service.

And now I want to raise a serious question. Several auction management services as well as eBay Stores claim that they do an automatic Froogle datafeed. If they do, is it effective? As you look at the criteria for the Froogle datafeed (see Details below), it makes you wonder. Without asking you to provide it, how do the auction management services and eBay Stores manage to get the specific columns (data) required by the Froogle datafeed? If you haven’t input data specifically into such columns, either your auction management service or eBay Stores has to create the proper columns out of what you have input. And therein lies the mystery. What exactly do the auction management services do to in this regard?

Your concern here is that you get the full benefit of a competent Froogle datafeed, not a haphazard placement by a systemic scheme that may not work uniformly well for all retailers and all products. The devil is in the details, and you will want to know the details. Ask.

Executive Summary

What might be needed here is a new format for doing eBay ads. Instead of one space to put in your entire eBay ad, there should be two spaces. The second space would be for your entire eBay ad. The first space would be for an executive summary of your eBay ad. It would be the summary that would be transmitted with the datafeed to Froogle to become the description in the Froogle product catalog entry. (The description is allowed about 13,000 words, but Froogle includes only the first few dozen characters of the description.) With this kind of an arrangement, you would have total control over what happened on both eBay and Froogle. The executive summary would also be good for other datafeeds such as Yahoo Shopping or a comparison shopping directory. An executive summary would also be good for eBay ads. An eBay ad should be long and contain a lot of product information, particualarly for expensive products or products with recurring sales. An executive summary at the top would serve the purpose of making it easy for prospective buyers to quickly decide whether the product was right for them. If so, they would go on to read the entire ad. If not, they would continue shopping.

Thus, if you provided an executive summary for an eBay ad, it would be helpful to eBay buyers and also serve as the description for the Froogle product entry. It would be in a separate column (in your database) from the eBay ad.

Because of the above considerations, I don’t have full confidence in automatic datafeeds to Froogle and other datafeed marketplaces. Rather than have your auction management service or eBay Stores mishandle this process, you should be given the capability of creating your own Froogle datafeed and adding another column (field) in your database specifically to hold the Froogle description. This would enable you to do a custom datafeed. Of course, this means that you would have to take some action yourself using the requisite software procedures in order to do the datafeed. But better to do it right than to have some kind of a systemic scheme convenient to the vendors (and eBay) that doesn’t do it properly.

Of course, if eBay Stores did provide for entering an executive summary, what I have said here would have less importance and urgency. So, stay aware of what’s going on with datafeeds and lobby with both your auction management service and eBay Stores to establish a datafeed process that makes sense and works well to optimize your sales.

Use the Current Scheme

One way to use the existing scheme to your advantage is to start out (write) your auction ad with an executive summary, in effect. That executive summary might be two or three sentences—the first two or three sentences. These are the sentences that will appear in the Froogle catalog entry.

Although it’s too early in the history of datafeeds to tell, it is my prediction that custom datafeeds, not automatic datafeeds, will be the most effective. For instance, suppose instead of providing an automatic datafeed, your auction management service enabled you to create additional columns in the listing database to provide precise Froogle datafeeds (and other datafeeds). And it also enabled you to do the Froogle datafeeds whenever you needed to. It seems to me that this would prove to be a more effective means of ensuring a high-quality Froogle retail presence than an automated scheme. But only time will tell how datafeeds will come to be used effectively. There is a lot to be said in favor of automation if it works.

More Than Data

There is more to datafeed marketing than just getting an item on a catalog webpage. Indeed, you may need to price the same item differently in different marketplaces. You also have to integrate the sales from each new datafeed marketplace into your retailing system and provide shopping carts, checkouts, and the like. That’s where capable auction-management software can really prove its worth. Let the software handle these details. Otherwise, you will have to take the time to handle them.

Details

Below are the details of the Froogle datafeed. A little bit of technical knowledge can go a long way toward understanding how digital schemes work and what the implications are for business.

The Data

The necessary Froogle datafeed columns are as follows:

1. product_url
2. name
3. description price
4. image_url category

Below are the explanations of each column (field):

Column 1: Contains the Web address (URL) of the webpage where the product is for sale.

Column 2: Contains the name of the product (up to 80 characters, same as an eBay title).

Column 3: Contains a description of the product (no HTML is permitted - up to 65,536 characters - about 13,000 words). Note that Froogle includes only the first few dozen characters of this description.

Column 4: Contains the price (fixed price required).

Column 5: Contains the URL of the product image.

Column 6: Contains the Froogle category in which the product is placed. There are also additional columns you can use if you need to run a more complex selling operation. You can find more details on the requirements at https://www.google.com/froogle/merchants/ feed_instructions_new.html.

Changes

Note that Froogle has made changes to its datafeed requirements in the past and presumably will do so in the future too. You need to refer to Froogle for the latest datafeed requirements.

The Froogle datafeed is a normal tab-delimited data file (database text file) that you can export from any database. First, you register your datafeed. Then you simply upload the file to Froogle, and that’s your datafeed. Your auction management service should be able to do this effortlessly for a wide range of datafeed marketplaces including Froogle. If it doesn’t, find another auction management service. If you need to engineer this datafeed yourself, Froogle provides detailed information on how to do so at the Froogle URL cited above.

For more information on datafeeds in ecommerce and for Froogle, look at some of the following resources:

CartKeeper, http://www.cartkeeper.com/froogle.htm Subia, http://www.subiainteractive.com/froogle.html K.Soft, http://www.dummysoftware.com/froogie.html osCommerce, http://www.oscommerce.com/community/contributions,2000/category,all/search,froogle

SiteAll, http://siteall.com

Solid Cactus, https://www.solidcactus.com/yadm/Default.aspx

Always depend on Froogle itself, however, for the latest Froogle datafeed information.

The Business Requirements

Google doesn’t let just anyone participate in Froogle. You must meet certain requirements. The requirements are mostly relevant to your merchandise, not to you. The following types of ecommerce websites are not permitted:

• Affiliates

• Multi-Level Marketing (MLM) • Comparison Shopping

• Mirror

The following products are not permitted:

• Auction items, unless they have a fixed price • Services or memberships

• Travel tickets

• Vacation packages • Illegal products

• Products that include service agreements • Customizable products without a fixed price • Real estate

• Free products

If you are accepted to open a Froogle account, you may submit your datafeed as often as once a day and must submit it at least once a month to stay in the Froogle system. For current information, go to https://www.google.com/froogle/merchants/policies_new.html.

Results

You will want to observe the results in Froogle of any datafeed whether it be automatic or one that requires a custom set-up. It’s the results that count. In other words, how do the product entries look? If an automatic Froogle datafeed gives you good results in Froogle, that’s great. If it doesn’t, you may find that a custom approach gets better resuts.

What are the desired results? As one well-known wag says, ninety percent of success is just showing up. If your Froogle product entry is complete and contains the requisite information and photograph, that’s a good result. If it doesn’t appear or if it’s incomplete, that’s a bad result.

Keep in mind that this is potentially a very important marketplace for you. You will want to monitor the results of your Froogle datafeed periodically to make sure it’s working.

Quick Check

For a quick check of all your Froogle catalog entries, type the following into the Froogle search window on the Froogle webpage:

store:username

The user name is the one you register when you sign up to be a Froogle merchant.

Cost-Effectiveness Review

It doesn’t get any better than this. This is one way to expand your sales in a grand way with little expense or effort. This is not something that you want to overlook. I could go on and on about Froogle, but the first two sentences say it all.

There’s one caveat here. If your auction-management software cannot provide the processing infrastructure to handle sales in other marketplaces as it does for eBay, you may have to spend time managing the sales processes in such marketplaces. This could waste your time.