Preparing your product feeds for the holiday season

As the holiday season approaches, ecommerce businesses need to prepare their product feeds to face off against inventory challenges, competing offers from other sellers, and consumer fulfillment expectations. In this Ecommerce Elevator, we share some key tactics to help you maximize your performance during this critical time.?

#1 Optimize your product titles, descriptions, and other attributes

With competition at its peak, having well-optimized product titles and descriptions is more crucial than ever. For your top products, data optimization is even more important as they not only generate the most revenue, but also solidify your position on key marketplaces—as highlighted in our recent white paper.

You should also consider incorporating holiday-themed keywords to attract seasonal shoppers, especially if your product makes for a great gift.?

Finally, make sure you perform proper A/B tests of key product attributes like titles, descriptions, and images before the season starts to find the combinations that convert the best. This will help you stand out and meet the holiday rush head-on.

#2 Make sure your feeds don’t go down?

The last thing you need during the busy season is for your product feeds to go down. Implementing strong data governance safeguards—like export conditions for outbound data—and regular data testing can help prevent disruptions like account suspensions, unoptimized exports, and network outages.

#3 Prepare your inventory management for surges in sales and returns

If you have limited inventory counts and a sudden influx of customers due to promotions, you run the risk of disappointing customers with order cancellations or delays—which can be especially damaging to your reputation during such a time-sensitive period. Consider using inventory buffers to account for spikes in sales and make sure you have a strategy for mitigating and handling returns.

#4 Keep your feeds up-to-date

Data synchronization across all your channels is essential to maintaining accuracy in pricing and inventory and consistency in branding. Out-of-date or mismatched data can lead to customer confusion, especially when it comes to descriptions or product attributes that play an important role in the decision-making process. Some channels penalize you for using uncompetitive prices for your products, which can lead to your listings being suppressed.

#5 Use dynamic remarketing campaigns

Dynamic retargeting allows you to keep potential customers engaged by showing them ads for products they’ve viewed or shown interest in. This approach can help to win over more price-sensitive customers who might be interested in buying items they were interested in but were not expecting to be on sale. Retargeting paired with cross promotions via SMS, email, and social commerce channels can help drive your message home and keep your brand top-of-mind.

#6 Leverage your brick-and-mortar locations

Use your brick-and-mortar stores as fulfillment centers to give customers more rapid options like buy online, pick up in store (BOPIS), and same-day delivery. You can also drive more foot traffic to your store by using local inventory ads to appeal to those customers who will want to check out your product in-person before making a purchase.

#7 Add custom labels to your product feeds

Finally, take advantage of custom labels in your product feeds to better customize your ad campaign strategy. By categorizing products based on factors like holiday-specific items, bestsellers, or high-margin, you can optimize your campaigns and ensure the most important products receive the visibility they need.

Of course, success in ecommerce requires strategies to achieve performance year-round. Check out this white paper to learn what you can do to grow profitably on online marketplaces.

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