The National Association of Retail Technology Standards (ARTS) has embarked on the Unified Data Feed Standard Project. The standard aims to unify the data feed templates used by all the shopping comparator sites.
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The problem is that merchants looking to be included in these engines need to handcraft a data feed of product information and price for each shopping portal. The work adds a considerable overhead since each of the shopping portals has a widely different template for the data feeds. |
But an overview of the data feed standards at Amazon and Google Base shows each has considerable investment in disparate systems. Unifying data feed standards will require considerable investment, and disruption of current partners and affiliate networks for all shopping portals, and price comparators.
In the mean time, many merchants are currently opting to outsource generation, optimisation and submissions of data feeds for their ecommerce site to specialist players like Enclick Online Solutions.
[Disclosure: EUCAP Partners is invested in Enclick Ltd – data feed provider and its shopping portal]