Feeds (Again): Merchants should offer the "Add to cart" as well as the "Deep Link"

[pricespin]

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Hi Guys,

Once again I have just come on to have a moan at the Affiliate Networks! Feel free to jump in with your views.

So whilst developing the new website we have been doing some major market research and conversion research.

When a user (visitor) clicks the BUY NOW button on an affiliate website, they end up on the merchant's item information page.

This is a step in the sales channel where we can expect drop outs.

So my proposal is that the biggest retailer affilaite networks should encourage the merchants to include a "add_to_cart" link field in their feeds.

So that we can offer:

MORE INFO >
BUY NOW >

This way the visitor can choose if they would like to proceed directly to the merchant's shopping cart.

We are just convinced that, like in retail, the less steps you have for a lead to become a sale the better.

(I know that some mobile-phone retailers do offer this link, I'm talkking about general retailers, like PC world).

[toast8172]

This could be complicated for items with multiple variants e.g. clothing in size / colour combination as the feed currently would only list the master SKU. To have a buy button would require a full output showing all colour / size options available for products.

Can be done as we do it for one affiliate, but I would imagine for large merchants like Littlewoods for instance you would end up with an absolutely massive feed :scared

Cheers
Paul

[pricespin]

Absolutely - I can see how that could be a problem for such retailers as Littlewoods.

But for the majority of retailers where a product is exactly what it is, including the add-to-cart link in the feed can't be that much trouble.

I think my main moan today is at the affiliate networks, who don't actually seem to have the field available.

Maybe if the networks made the field available, the retailers may make use of it.

...we certainly would.