From Wiki

Introduction

Datafeeds are a great way to provide your product information to your affiliates.

These are the mandatory fields required:

• Product ID
• Product Name
• Description
• Price
• Image URL
• Deeplink (Product URL)
• Merchant Category

Affiliates promoting Datafeeds

There are several ways that an affiliate may use your datafeeds, commonly it is used via the Create-a-feed system, this allows affiliates to use a user-friendly interface to download full datafeeds, specific category feeds or a drill down to brand names. It allows them to dynamically drag and drop elements that they wish to include in the datafeed. They will then display these products on their site either as True Content or Comparison

Affiliates may also use your datafeed to grab keywords to use in their PPC campaigns. These affiliates may use the datafeed to Scrape keywords and use the following elements:

• Product Name
• Description
• Brand
• Deeplink URL

Another use of your datafeed is within ShopWindow toolset, this provides partners with a live feed shopping engine that can be embedded within any site with the minimum of effort.

It uniquely enables users to search Affiliate Window’s database of over 3 million products from over 600 retailers ranked by popularity. We analyse every sale our affiliate partners generate over a period of time and look at sales trends in the market. We use this data to rank the product search results.

This means that the results displayed from a ShopWindow search takes into account the product price, availability, the merchants’ reputation and the confidence of the buying public. ShopWindow is therefore the first product comparison tool that truly sorts data in the interests of consumers.

Affiliate can also use the Content Widgets application to create smaller media rich templates to promote a smaller subset of your products. This method is also far easier to integrate, as Affiliate Window provides the implementation code.

Benefits of using Datafeeds

Using datafeeds allows affiliates to save time coding individual product links manually from scratch. Datafeeds can replace 1000's of product links with just a few lines of code.

For affiliates, the use of datafeeds can potentially increase their conversion rates, sometimes by double the amount or more. Showing products with descriptions help increase the chances of selling it to the customer, so it's an invaluable tool for merchants and affiliates alike.

Updating Datafeeds

Affiliate Window can update its feeds every 24 hours, however this is solely dependant on the program and your wishes.

If you have any queries about datafeed please do not hesitate but to ask - Merchant Support Ticket

It is common for sales to be lost if prices offered on affiliates' site are different to those on the merchants' websites, therefore we advise for datafeeds to be regularly updated every 24 hours. The same applies for product availability as it is common for product lines to disappear and reappear depending on the market. Updating your datafeed to reflect these changes will ensure affiliates provide accurate information that is up-to-date with your merchant website.

With an up-to-date datafeed, you have a better chance of delivering an increased conversion rate and generating more sales.

Datafeed Standards

Submitting your Datafeed

Affiliates using datafeeds & the ShopWindow technology may automatically feature the content of your datafeed on their websites. There are over 2000 affiliates using the ShopWindow technology and these include branded partners. Therefore the content of your datafeed must adhere to certain standards, in order to allow affiliates to implement your datafeed with confidence.

Datafeed Quality

The quality and information within your datafeed should reflect the standards of your own website so it is important to ensure the information is present & correct. Missing and incomplete fields may result in the item, or the feed being excluded from Datafeeds & ShopWindow.

Categorisation

Categorising your datafeed is incredibly important for Affiliates & ShopWindow Affiliates as it will enable them to relay the relevant results to customers. It is essential that your datafeed is correctly categorised to allow ShopWindow affiliates to implement your datafeed. Extensive incorrect categorisation may result in your feed being excluded from ShopWindow.

Adult Content

If including adult content within your datafeed it is mandatory that it is correctly categorised as “Adult”. Adult products incorrectly categorized may result in an affiliate promoting an obscene product without their knowledge. Therefore, merchants with incorrectly categorised adult content will be classed as “adult”. Affiliates have the option to block all merchants classed as adult; this means that the affiliate will not promote any items within your datafeed. All branded Shopwindow partners exclude adult merchants to prevent inappropriate content appearing on their site.

There are 2 types of adult content:

• Type 1 incorporates any products clearly aimed at an audience over the age of 18, and any product with obscene images, product titles or descriptions.

• Type 2 incorporates any items that may be viewed or deemed as inappropriate for all audiences. This could include some academic material and items unsuitable for children & youths. Type 2 can be subjective so please speak to your AW contact regarding any queries on this and your products can be reviewed by the ShopWindow team.

Creating a Datafeed

A product data feed needs to be supplied to us in either CSV or XML format. Listed below are the fields that we can accept in the file that you provide us. The fields do not need to be in any specific order, so long as the order of them remains consistent every time a new file is generated.

NB. Please ensure that all text in the feed is plain text except for the description, promotional text, specification and warranty fields which can contain only the following basic HTML tag < br >, < p >, < ol >, < ul >, < li >.

The more columns you provide which match our structure, the more usable your product feed will be for affiliates. Adding refine by information is important as it ensures your products can be featured in all our product data driven affiliate tools.

CSV file formatting

Comma Separated Values, this can use the comma (,) or pipe(|) delimiters within the file. We can only import certain values into our system, please see below for more information.

• Column Separators, (delimiter) these are used to separate sections of the datafeed. You are able to use the following delimiters:
  • Semi-colon (;)
  • Comma (,)
  • Pipe (|)

If the descriptions that you use or any other field contains the delimiter character (e.g. the comma) then that field must be enclosed by "double quotes". Similarly, if a field contains quotes, those quotes can be escaped by using double quotes "".

Please ensure the encoding of the file is UTF-8 otherwise the feed may not import.

CSV Example

Green Mens T-Shirt,A bright green T-Shirt with the words Hello embroidered on the chest.,1.99

A field that contains embedded line breaks must also be enclosed by double quotes.

For example:

"Green Mens T-Shirt","A bright green T-Shirt with the words 'Hello' embroidered on the chest.

Available in sizes M,L,XL.

Also available in red and blue.","1.99"

The first line of data in the file can contain field names. You will need to specify that the file contains field names when uploading the file.

4.2 XML file formatting

XML Extensive Markup Language, this allows you to send us data in 1.0 XML version. You should also ensure the file matches to the DTD file below.

http://www.affiliatewindow.com/DTD/merchant/datafeedupload.1.3.dtd

• Prologue – header of the XML document and is a required field. This also contains the Character Encoding. The XML parser needs to know the encoding on the file in order to correctly parse the letters and symbols within the document.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>

This is the character set that must be applied for the XML feeds.

XML Example

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<!DOCTYPE merchant SYSTEM "http://www.affiliatewindow.com/DTD/merchant/datafeedupload.1.3.dtd">
<merchant>
	<product weboffer="no" preorder="no" instock="yes" forsale="yes">
	<pid>3mt5689f3a</pid>
	<upc>123123123123</upc>
	<ean>123123123123</ean>
	<mpn>123123123123</mpn>
	<isbn>123123123123</isbn>
	<modelno>123123123123</modelno>
	<name>The Da Vinci Code - Unedited</name>
	<desc>Breaking the mould of traditional suspense novels, The Da Vinci Code.</desc>
	<spec>Product Spec goes here.</spec>
	<promotext>Discounted by 27%</promotext>
	<category>Books</category>
	<lang>EN</lang>
	<brand>Dan Brown</brand>
	<purl>http://www.shopwindow.com/index.html?product=3mt5689f3a</purl>
	<imgurl>http://www.shopwindow.com/images/3mt5689f3a.jpg</imgurl>
	<thumburl>http://www.shopwindow.com/thumbs/3mt568.jpg</thumburl>
	<deltime>Next Day</deltime>
	<validfrom>2006-01-16</validfrom>
	<validto>2008-06-23</validto>
	<currency>GBP</currency>
	<price>
	<actualp>6.99</actualp>
	<rrpp>12.99</rrpp>
	<storep>12.99</storep>
	</price>
	<delcost>0.00</delcost>
	<stockquant>10000</stockquant>
	<warranty>Warranty text.</warranty>
	<condition>new</condition>
	<ptype>main</ptype>
	<lastupdated>1205366400</lastupdated>
	</product>
</merchant>

Please ensure that your XML feed follows the DTD layout EXACTLY. i.e. Tags are in the correct order as shown above.

Uploading the Datafeed

Uploading your product feed is done on the ShopWindow page in your account.

On this page you will be presented with various options. If you have the URL/HTTP or FTP location of your product feed then upload it on the ‘Automated Upload’ page. If you have an XML or CSV file that you would like to upload then select ‘Manual Upload’.

On both of these pages you will be prompted to enter some settings dependant on the format, compression and type of file that you are uploading. On the ‘Automated Upload’ page you may be prompted to enter a username and password for the file (dependant on whether you have set this up on your server).

Make sure you enter an email address so that we can notify you when the feed has been uploaded and if there are any problems. Please ensure you add a static file, see location of file name in screenshot above, this will ensure we can pick up the feed correctly.

If you are uploading a CSV file then when you upload it you will be presented with a page listing some of the records in your file as well our categories. You need to assign each column in your product feed to a category in the drop down list. Once done, select ‘Save Mapping Details’.

Troubleshooting your datafeed

If when uploading your feed to the product manager you experience problems and the feed doesn’t upload then check the feed for some of the common errors listed below. If you still have problems after this then please raise a ticket or email from your Merchant Administration Area.

CSV

• Are there any non standard characters in the feed? If yes, remove them.

• Are there any spaces before any of the data? If yes, remove any spaces.

• Does the data contain a delimiter in any of the fields? If yes, ensure all fields are double quoted (“). Or, separate the fields with a character such as a pipe (|).

• Are there any empty rows at the end of the feed? If yes, remove them.

• Are there any required fields that are missing data? If yes, ensure that these fields are populated.

• Is the CSV file saved as a .txt or a .csv and not an Excel spreadsheet file?

XML

• Are all required fields included and populated with data?

• Has the file been validated using the DTD file? – See below

• Does the data contain any of the characters listed below? If so, please change them to the HTML entity listed. For example, if a URL contains an ‘&’ then change that to ‘&’.

DTD

You can review the latest DTD from the following location:

[DTD]

There are a few elements within the XML which are only to be used by merchants within the Gifts, Gadgets and Toys sector. The elements you will need to populate are:

<!-- The Gift Finder options for the product. -->
<!ELEMENT giftoptions (recipientid*, personalityid*, occasionid*)>
<!-- The recipient associated with the product. -->
<!ELEMENT recipientid (#PCDATA)>
<!-- The personality associated with the product. -->
<!ELEMENT personalityid (#PCDATA)>
<!-- The occasion associated with the product. -->
<!ELEMENT occasionid (#PCDATA)>
<!-- Last Updated timestamp, reference: 
http://www.gnu.org/software/tar/manual/html_node/Date-input-formats.html  -->
<!ELEMENT lastupdated (#PCDATA)>