Follow the steps below to ensure your product feed is ready for use within Aiden.
In Aiden, we use some fields from a Google Shopping feed format to display the correct product information in the advice. We recommend making sure the feed contains at least those required fields. Below we describe which fields those are.
1. Set up the required Google Shopping fields
The product feed you import into Aiden must have at least the following 5 required fields:
Field name | Purpose | Example |
id | To define unique products | 876542109 |
title | To display a product title on the advice page your customer views | Organic Cotton Men's T-Shirt |
link | To link to the product page in your webshop | |
image_link | To display a product image on the advice page your customer views | |
price | To display a price on the advice page your customer views | 15.00 EUR |
Please note:
Make sure each product is unique. For example, include EAN numbers in your feed; they are always unique.
The names of these fields must be exactly the same as above. Variations (e.g. title_product) will not be accepted and will result in an error.
Each individual product in the feed must have a valid value for these fields. Empty fields will not be accepted and will result in an error when loading the feed.
Make sure the price notation is identical for each product. We recommend using the currency format of a Google Shopping feed.
💡 Use a product ID that is also available to send to Aiden along with the purchase data to use in the Impact Analytics.
💡 Want to know more about the Google Shopping fields? Then view the Google Help Center.
1.1 Important: set product variants
Do you have the same product available in multiple variations in your feed, e.g. a record player in different colors? By setting product variations in your catalog, Aiden knows more about these products and how they relate to each other. This makes it possible, for example, to set showing only one variant per product in the advice. And it allows Aiden to show better insights for Impact analytics.
How to set up product variants can be read here.
1.2 Helpful: enable the availability field
In addition to the 5 mandatory fields above, the additional Availability field is available in the Google Shopping feed format. If you enable this field in your feed manager (e.g. Channable), Aiden automatically takes into account the availability status of the products. Products listed as "out of stock" are not shown on the advice page of the product finder.
Value | Included in advice? | When to use |
| yes | The product is in stock and can be ordered. |
| yes | The product is in stock and can be ordered |
| no | The product can't be ordered |
| no | The product can't be ordered |
| yes | The product will be available in the future and you're accepting orders |
| depends on setting | The product can be backordered and you're accepting orders |
(empty) | yes |
|
For more information see Google's documentation on product availability.
1.3 Helpful: enable the sale_price field
Use the attribute sale_price from a Google Shopping feed format if you want to display both the original price and the sale price in your product finder recommendation. This way, customers are aware of the correct prices during a sale period.
If you add sale_price to your feed manager, the sale price is automatically picked up in Aiden. For products that have a value for sale_price, the sale price is automatically shown next to the original price.
💡 Good to know: Do you want to show the sale price only during a certain period? Then add the attribute sale_price_effective_date to the feed. With this attribute, the available sale price will be shown only during the specific sale period.
1.4 Helpful: add additional product specifications
In addition to the fields above, it can be very useful to import additional product data that's available (for example, for headphones: color, wireless, bluetooth, portability). By including these useful product specifications in Aiden, you can easily filter and match your products. So we recommend including them whenever possible.
You can add any field to your feed in your feed manager.
Aiden takes over the title of these fields.
Unlike the mandatory fields, these additional fields are also accepted by Aiden if they contain empty values.
💡 Good to know: If you want multiple values in a field, you need to add the field multiple times. In your XML feed this should look this:
<item>
...
<field_with_multiple_values>first</field_with_multiple_values>
<field_with_multiple_values>second</field_with_multiple_values>
<field_with_multiple_values>third</field_with_multiple_values>
...
</item>
1.4.1 Add additional fields in Channable
If you use Channable as your feed manager, you can add additional fields to the feed in the Finalize-step by clicking on "Add new field" at the bottom of the list.
1.5 Finally
In Aiden you can still adjust the number of products in your Catalog by setting a filter or manually setting products to inactive.