Merchant 1890 - Gossypium

[Confuscius]

I am starting my "A-Feed-A-Week makes me go 'eek!" campaign with Gossypium. I have chosen a relatively small feed on the basis that unlike trying to get Bennetts to write a single word for the past 6 months and outranking George Bush for the term 'miserable failure' then I might have a better chance with a smaller operation listeneing to the basic fact that if you can improve your feed then you can improve your turnover and improve my income!

Nice products, appealing to buyers, nice descriptions in the main if not a bit short BUT :

1. quite a lot of products with no descriptions

2. quite a lot of products in the wrong category ( lots of sex change ops needed! )

3. example: http://www.shopwindow.com/product.php?p=29213186&c=617 - look at the br/'s etc so part of html tags being left in feed, also on things like shirts then all the options are in tables so you get loads of tr's tds etc. How much better if the errors were replaced with spaces!

4. the missed opportunities to increase the size of the feed, if a product comes in 2 designs and 3 sizes say then this should make 6 products using 2 images, etc - this applies to loads of other feeds.

5. There are some examples of different product colours leading to different products but the product names are identical - create unique title for SEO purposes by including the colour. Now see this http://www.shopwindow.com/product.php?p=29213188&c=617 - the image is a different colour but the description relates to the white version and the title is the same.

That'll do for starters but if I see some improvements in the feed then I will post more ways to improve the feed for the dual benefit of Merchant and Affiliate.

Week 1 has begun!

You are all welcome to take your own look at this week's feed under the spotlight and add your own observations - the idea being to focus on specifics rather than the generality of say ' missing images' or 'no descriptions' - you get the idea. It will be interesting to see how certain Merchants react to Affiliate help or not!

Paul

PS I am happy to look at any merchant feed each week and provide the opening salvo, so to summarise:

Week 1 - Gossypium
Week 2 - Open for nominations
Week 3 - Open for nominations
Week 4 - Open for nominations

Taking requests for nominations now!

PPS I chose Gossypium because I like seeing a nice bit of Latin usage!

[gossypium]

PAul
We are working on those feeds , should be soprted by middle of the week.
thomas
www.gossypium.co.uk

[Confuscius]

Hi Thomas

Welcome to the affiliate hangout and general madhouse!

Thank you for such a prompt and positive response. Apologies for singling your business out but I needed to find a relatively small feed that could be improved with a little effort that would serve to highlight various feed issues that apply to lots of other feeds!

I am hoping that if we can demonstrate a financial improvement resulting from increasing the quality of a feed then we can generate a 'feed' template that works to encourage other merchants down the same route.

Paul

PS - another little tip to increase sales! If you have RRP's and you have a sale then use the promotion field to say something like 'Was £40! - Now £30! - You save £10! (25%)' or you could embed a discount code, expiry date and instructions, etc - then when people see your specific product they also see your specific offer on that product and are encouraged to make the purchase.