Hi, I have heard in another forum that some people notice that alot of datafeed affiliate programs offer datafeeds that still include products that are sold out on the merchants site. It thought that this didn't matter to much as longs as there were only a few. But after today, I have checked my stats and followed some of the clickthru urls to see what products my visitors clickthru to from my site only to find that once I went to the merchants site the product that my visitors where interested in were actually sold out. Now, how I see it is that the merchant still gets the visitor, but loose on the sale. But the other site that actually uses that datafeed then they loose out alot more. This is because if alot of products are listed that are actucally sold out then the visitor may never return to your site and your site will be very annoying to the visitor plus you are sending the merchant traffic and don't end up getting a sale as there is no product in the first place. I think they really need to sort this out in a big way as they are not being fare to any of their affiliates. It seems that it is just a ploy to get some free traffic from affiliate program promoters and in return the affiliate gets no money for their efforts.
On the other hand, the affiliate also gets a lot of content to play with, at no cost. I think there are always 2 ways of looking at things. What do u say ?
Yes content is good, but I would prefer not to have the content if my visitor only ends up clicking on a link to a sold out product. If most of my pages had 20 products on each and everytime a visitor clicked on the 20, if 5 of them went to sold out products then my visitor is likely to just go to one of my competitors and never return to my site again. I like to build content, but I am not one of these who prefers to just have content and no quality. I prefer to have some content and alot of quality. I think quality of service comes before content. Even if it does add to your content it doesn't gain you much. For example, if a visitor clicked through to a product page of yours from Google and then clicked on the product as they are really interested, it will redirect your visitor to the merchants site and then they will be annoyed as it is sold out. So because it is sold out then they may just leave my site and go else where as they may think that quite a few of the products that I have to offer are also sold out.
Are you sure you lose the sale? If a visitors visits a site througha referral link then the affilaite should get credited with ANY sale that is made on the site. I wouldn't joing an affiliate programme that didn't do this.
Merchants and affiliates BOTH need to keep datafeeds up to date. Typically when I see problems it's because the affiliate is using an old feed and they have not updated. That can also show wrong pricing which is almost more of a problem with consumers. Many merchants redirect to a general category link when a product is out of stock so the hope is the consumer will still buy. Smart merchants replace the out of stock product with a page that lists suggested alternatives or comparable products. So in those cases you still have a good chance of getting a sale. I'm not saying all merchants provide the best feed options. Many do not. But above are some of the ways smart merchants do it, to optimize sales opportunites for themselves as well as the affiliates. Send your merchants a link to this thread and to my article about doubling conversion rates with affiliate datafeeds. Actually thats an old article. I now believe that datafeeds can quadruple affiliate conversion rates if done properly. Yours truly, the Datafeed Queen
We jumped on the "datafeed bandwagon" a couple of months ago with Linkshare's Merchandiser. I make sure the feed is updated weekly. If anyone accepts the feed through LS and would like to critique it, feel free.
Yes you do loose the sale! A visitor comes to your site and then clicks on a merchant link as they have read about a product on your site and they like it. When they get to the merchants site they then find that it is sold out. This means that your visitor is just likely to leave and not bother buying anything at the merchants site. Don't forget the main reason why they went there is to buy the product that interested them. If they have not got it then they will not buy. I know that there is a few people that may be directed somewhere else on a merchants site and get interested in other products, but what I show on my site I would like them to be available. I have also noticed about a few merchant datafeeds not being updated on a regular basis. Most of their prices don't match my prices. It looks like they just can't be bothered sometimes. Also, my datafeeds are automatically updated on a daily basis, so it is nothing wrong with what I am doing. I do know that some people don't bother using datafeeds that are not updated regularly and also show alot of out of stock products. This is because they want to actually show the products to their visitors with the correct prices and also products that are not out of stock. That is one reason why most people update their datafeeds database on a daily basis. This is to get new products, correct prices, get rid of outdated products, etc.
Yep you are right John. Lots of merchants just can't be bothered to update and maintain their feeds. Crazy! Once they automate and get a system in place it's quite easy, but many of them just don't. Sounds loiek you have a cron job or something set up to keep feeds up to date on your end, and thats the way to go. Affiliates that arent very tech savvy and don't set up crons are the ones many times with old feeds on their end because they just don't get around to updating feeds very often especially if they have lots of feeds.
Yes that is true that some data feed merchants are not doing a good job updating their file(s). But actualy there are more than 1 party to blame here. Remember the data feed file has to be updated by the merchant, then uploaded to the affiliate network, then the affiliate downloads them, then the affiliate process the file to put it into their database and finaly display the data..... That is a long process..... I believe merchants should provide data feed files directly to affiliates to shorten the time between updating the affiliate networks. Or the merchants should at least make sure 3rd party affiliate tool providers such as our company DataFeedFile.com, http://www.DataFeedFile.com has access to the latest and greatest data feed file. Our company, DataFeedFile.com actualy get a good portion of our data feeds directly from the merchants therefore eliminating the affiliate networks delays. We provide shopping content, price comparison content using Javascripts, XML, XML+PHP, XML+JSP, etc... As affiliates, we all need to stand together and request the appropriate merchants and make sure they understand that data feed accuracy is becoming very big issue. I hope my insights has help.... Thanks Andrew @AT@ DataFeedFile.com http://www.DataFeedFile.com Total data feed solutions for Affiliates.