Here’s Why You Need a Well-Built Inventory Feed for Ecommerce Clients

How do you track your inventory? To succeed in ecommerce, you have to know what you have available to sell, and what you don’t. To track your inventory, many brands utilize an inventory feed.

What’s an Inventory Feed?

An inventory feed is a real-time list of your inventory that includes such things as product descriptions, pricing, and relevant images. An inventory feed is often synced to digital platforms for selling purposes. For instance, you can sync your inventory feed to a Shopify account, so when customers place an order, your inventory feed is updated.

Why Do You Need an Inventory Feed?

An inventory feed doesn’t just make good business sense — it makes good advertising sense, too. Here’s a look at why you need an inventory feed:

• Don’t oversell products.

If you’re selling products online, the last thing you want to do is sell more products than you have available. Selling out of a product can spell disaster for your reputation. An inventory feed eliminates this potential problem.

• Make updates on multiple channels.

When you make changes to an inventory feed, it updates other systems or platforms. For instance, if you upload a new product picture of a trendy purse to your inventory feed, it can update the image you have on your website or on Amazon. Additional updates like pricing or product descriptions will also update.

• Advertising platforms require them.

To place ads on certain platforms, you have to have an inventory feed. Google Shopping, for example, requires an inventory feed that’s updated at least monthly.

The inventory feed also gives you the power to create dynamic ads on Facebook. For instance, you can retarget shoppers that visited your website and remind them about items they didn’t buy. The product feed provides all the information customers need to make an informed decision.

Creating an inventory feed may take some time, but once it’s created you’ll be able to update it easily. At the same time, you can provide quick updates to customers and vendors that can make a real difference to your bottom line.