How to Create a Multi-Country & Multi-Language Product Feed Strategy

Lukáš Horák
5. 1. 2023
8 minutes read
How to Create a Multi-Country & Multi-Language Product Feed Strategy

The e‑commerce platform has evolved dramatically in the last decade and has made the world a smaller place. According to Statista, global e‑commerce sales are expected to reach $8.1 trillion by 2026.

The e‑commerce platform has evolved dramatically in the last decade and has made the world a smaller place. According to Statista, global e‑commerce sales are expected to reach $8.1 trillion by 2026. It’s a huge number that only shows the potential of the e‑commerce industry.

In this modern world, businesses are no longer bound to brick-and-mortar stores or physical locations. Businesses can now reach out to their potential customers worldwide, and online shopping and ad platforms like Facebook and Google, have made it even easier.

To reach potential customers located in different countries, businesses need to create multi-country and multi-language product feeds.

What is Product Feed?

Definition for Google Snippet: A product feed, also known as a data feed, is a centralized list of products that a business offers on its e‑commerce store. A product feed contains all the necessary data to define and specify products a business offers. It’s basically a file, collected by Google or other ad channels to create shopping ads.

An optimized product feed is the difference between a waste of online spending and a successful online campaign. The relevant keywords and the content of your feed will decide whether or not your product will be displayed against a particular search query on online ad channels. Therefore, the information you add to your data feed for your e‑commerce store must be polished.

Creating a Multi-Country & Multi-Language Product Feed Strategy

Here’s a list of steps that you can use to create a multi-country & multi-language product feed strategy.

1. Determine the Right Time

Most e‑commerce startups target local markets because they understand how to meet the demands and needs of local customers better. If your e‑commerce business has a decent local online presence and you want to scale it and find new flourishing markets, you can consider going globally.

Do your math to make sure that the prices of your products for a specific country cover possible variations in the exchange rate. The prices that you set for your products in the data feed should cover all fees and taxes.

2. Understand the Requirements of Shopping Channels

Understanding the requirements of different shopping and ad channels, where you’ll be uploading your product feed, is the most critical part of creating a data feed strategy.

Different online ads and shopping channels, such as Google and Facebook, have different requirements that you need to fulfill while creating a product feed for multiple countries in multiple languages. Each platform has policies to specify prohibited content and practices that you must understand.

The following are the general requirements that your product feed should meet for most ad and shopping platforms. 

Restricted Content Policies

You’ll need to take into account the cultural values and legal laws of a particular country while making your product feed. You won’t be able to use the following types of content in certain countries.

  • Adult Content: Ecommerce businesses are restricted to promote adult merchandise, such as lingerie and adult magazines on shopping platforms. Such ads won’t be displayed if they violate the regulations and laws of a target country.
  • Alcoholic Beverages: There are many countries where selling and buying alcoholic beverages, such as hard alcohol, wine, and beer, is illegal. If your data feed contains such products, you’ll need to remove them for countries with laws against them.
  • Inappropriate Content: You can’t sell products that can be offensive to people. Most shopping channels believe in respect and diversity for all, so avoid using offending product details, such as a graphical representation of racial discrimination or a crime scene.
  • Dangerous Product: You can’t have products in your data feed that can bring harm to the public or encourage people to commit dishonest acts like hacking.
  • Counterfeit Products: Shopping channels don’t accept product feeds with information about counterfeit products that mimic an original well-known brand.

Landing Page Requirements

When someone clicks on one of your shopping ads, they’ll be redirected to the landing page of your e‑commerce store to buy the product. So, your landing page must:

  • Be in working condition
  • Contain the product shown in the shopping ad
  • Be responsive, so that users can easily see and use it on different display sizes, like smartphones and tablets
  • Offer consistent user experience in terms of language and currency
  • Show the details of your product clearly

Important Note: All platforms, including Google and Facebook, have their own product feed format specification that you’ll also need to follow, along with the requirements related to prohibited and restricted content.

3. Choose a Tool to Create Product Feed

While it’s possible to create your data feed manually, it’ll cost you a whole lot of time. Therefore, you should use a product feed creation tool like MERGADO, Channable or GoDataFeed

Most product feed creation tools can be integrated into popular e‑commerce platforms such as WooCommerce, WordPress, Shopify, and BigCommerce and help you create your product feed easily and quickly.

There are also tools available, such as WPML, that allow you to create a multi-language WooCommerce online store and with the help of an additional plugin, you can even generate different versions of your data feed in multiple languages.

Most multilingual tools can create multi-language versions of your product feed in different formats, such as TSV, CSV, XML, or Google Sheets. It helps you upload your product feed in different languages to shopping channels easily.

4. Create Product Feed

After selecting the product feed creation tool of your choice, the next step is to create your product feed. The following are the most important features that your product data feed must have.

Product Title

The way you name your product in the data feed is critical for your success. You need to make sure that you choose appropriate titles, containing keywords, for your products. Here’s a list of some recommended structures that you can use.

  • Books: Book’s Title — Genre — Format (e‑book or hard copy) — Author
  • Seasonal Products: Opportunity — Type of Product — Attributes
  • Electronics: Brand — Attributes (design, size, color, weight, etc.) — Type — Model
  • Hard Products: Brand — Name — Attributes (quantity, size, and weight)
  • Consumables: Brand — Type — Attributes (quantity and weight)
  • Apparel: Brand — Type — Gender — Type — Attributes (material, size, and color)

Regardless of the product type you’re offering, make sure that the titles start with the most important information that you want your potential customers to see first.

Product Description

The description that you add to the data feed must consist of objective and factual information. Plus, it should also be similar to what you use on your website’s landing page to offer a consistent user experience.

Product URLs

The URLs in the data feed refer to the landing pages from where users can order your products. Every URL must start with “HTTPS” or “HTTP” and should lead the users directly to the landing page, without any redirects.

Product Images

Adding images to your product feed will allow your customers to visualize the product they’ll be getting. Therefore, you must use clear, high-resolution, and authentic product images to make sure that you represent your products in the best possible way. To make sure your images stand out, use a bulk editing tool like Feed Image Editor and Image Validator to help optimize product images for various advertising platforms. 

Ideally, the images mustn’t be covered with text, shadows, or watermarks because they’re not part of the product. Plus, you also shouldn’t include any accessories that you’re not offering.

Other Required Information

Other than product titles, descriptions, images, and URLs, you’ll also need to add product ID number, price, brand, and availability.

Depending on the type of your product, you might also need to add more information. For example, if your e‑commerce store sells clothing items, you’ll need to add the size, color, and material of the product.

Upload the Product Feed

Once you have created your product feed in multiple languages, the next step is to upload it on the shopping and ad channels. Each platform has different methods to upload your product feeds.

If you want to upload your data feed on google, you’ll have six different options to choose from, including direct upload, FTP upload, SFTP upload, scheduled fetches, Google cloud storage upload, and content API. Whereas, Facebook offers only one method of uploading product feeds.

It’s important to note that you’ll need to carefully select the country and language while uploading your product feed so that it’s displayed to your potential customers of a certain area in the right language.

Make sure that you use a private network while uploading your data feed because you don’t want it to get hacked. Never use public Wi-Fi networks because they’re not secure.

In addition, consider using a VPN service like ExpressVPN, to encrypt your online data transmission while uploading your product feed to protect it from prying eyes.

Keep Your Product Feed Updated

Making a product feed strategy and uploading it successfully is only a milestone of a long journey to scale your e‑commerce business and create a solid global digital presence. In order to make sure that your data feed continues to work optimally, you’ll need to keep it updated.

You’ll need to add new products to your feed and exclude the ones that are out of stock. In addition, you’ll also need to update product titles, URLs, descriptions, and Images to offer the best user experience.

According to a study, updating rule-based titles can increase CTR (Clickthrough Rate) by 88% and impressions by 2,000%.

Optional Steps

Once your product feed is up and running and you have started getting international traffic to your online store, you can take the following steps to improve your customers’ experience.

  • Translate all your product pages on the website for the country from where you’re getting the most traffic
  • Buy a dedicated domain for certain countries depending on the amount of traffic
  • Create FAQs in multiple languages
  • Translate your policy pages
  • Add multiple languages for your chatbots to assist customers from different countries

Final Words

It’s important for e‑commerce businesses to start offering their products in different countries to grow. With the help of online ads and shopping platforms, it’s now easier than ever to target potential customers worldwide.

To do that, businesses must have their data feeds in multiple languages so that people from different countries can read and understand their products easily. The product feed should also meet the requirements of ad and shopping platforms and it must also be free of errors.

Following the steps discussed in this guide will help you comply with the industry standards, legal laws, and cultural values of different countries so that your products can be well understood by the target audience of a specific location. As a result, your e‑commerce store will drive more traffic and close more deals.

Author:

Laura Mogenytė 

Laura is a content manager at Cybernews. Her main goal is to educate people about cybersecurity and present complex information with simplicity. 

Read more:

Lukáš Horák

Lukáš takes care of most of the Czech and English communication in Mergado. Through blogs, e‑mail, and social networks, he regularly supplies readers with e‑commerce news and news and tips from Mergado. In his time off, he enjoys simple things like badminton, digging the hidden gems of the 80’s, and seafood served with red wine.