Our custom datafeed service provides affiliates who work with us with the crucial tool they need to produce the most advanced database-driven or straight (X)HTML sites around.
What is a Datafeed?
A datafeed (some prefer 'data feed') is simply a list of products and associated information for each product -- such as the product price or the URL on a merchant's site where that product can be ordered. Often, a datafeed includes additional product information such as a lengthier description, the URL for a graphical image of the product, or a product's category. There are actually two separate meanings of the term 'datafeed' now in common use, described below.
'True' Datafeeds
'True' datafeeds are just as described above: lists of products and their associated information. True datafeeds come wrapped up in a standard format such as XML (eXtensible Markup Language), CSV (comma-separated values), tab-delimited text, or even a plain Excel spreadsheet. True datafeeds give the affiliate the freedom to parse and utilize the information with their choice of tools and their choice of languages, providing great flexibility and the capability of generating sites using (X)HTML, PHP, ASP, and so on. Desktop products such as WebMerge also enable affiliates to use datafeeds to generate entire sites right on their PCs, which can then be uploaded directly to a server.
Javascript Feeds
Some merchants instead provide what they refer to as a 'datafeed' in the form of a large chunk of Javascript code which dynamically grabs product information from the merchant site each time a relevant page is loaded on the affiliate's site. The affiliate must include complex Javascript instructions within each product page of a site -- usually one instruction for each piece of information required (e.g., a chunk of code that retrieves the current shipping cost for product number 492). Unfortunately, Javascript 'datafeeds' severely limit the affiliate's choice of tools for producing pages, clutter the site's source code with impenetrable Javascript, and require that any modifications to the merchant's product line be matched with corresponding modifications to the affiliate's Javascript source code. (For example, if a merchant removes the 3-pack of a particular product and replaces it with a 5-pack instead, the affiliate must replace the Javascript requesting product information for the 3-pack with different Javascript requesting information for the 5-pack.)
Why Use Affiliate Datafeeds?
Datafeeds have become extremely popular with affiliates and merchants alike, because they can enable affiliates to build quality sites much more quickly, and because they provide merchants with an easy way to supply definitive product information directly to their affiliates. Datafeeds cleanly separate the job of marketing from the job of maintaining pricing and product details: in other words, they enable the affiliate to focus more clearly on their job of marketing, by fully leveraging a job which the merchant would be doing anyway.
Modern tools allow datafeeds to be parsed automatically, and their content inserted into template-based pages using plain old (X)HTML, or languages such as PHP, ASP, Cold Fusion, etc. Affiliates can easily generate literally thousands of pages of search engine-friendly XHTML using a datafeed, they can create dynamic price-comparison sites which update themselves automatically, and they can quickly and easily incorporate new products (or delete old products) from their sites without undertaking wholesale modifications at the level of underlying site code.
There's more: the best part is the end result. Merchants who have introduced datafeeds (or affiliates who have taken it upon themselves to create them and then use them) report that conversions increase by a factor of 2x or more! In other words, datafeeds don't just make affiliate marketing easier. They make it more effective. And that means more sales and more return on your investment of time and money.
The Affiliate Insight Datafeed Advantage
If you use one of the custom datafeeds which we produce for merchant programs that don't already offer them, you gain an automatic technology advantage over all the other affiliates for that program who are not yet able to use datafeeds for that program!
If you've signed up with one of the programs we promote here at Affiliate Insight, you're entitled to any custom datafeeds we have built for that program. Just get in touch via our contact page for your free datafeed.
Merchant Information
And if you're a merchant currently operating an affiliate program without a datafeed, you're missing out on all those additional sales which would be made possible if only affiliates could use the latest tools to build their sites! Just get in touch via our contact page to learn more about our custom datafeed creation services and find out how we can help you deliver the promise of datafeeds to your affiliate marketing partners.