Loading...

E80: Ben Thomson

How You Can Optimise Your Product Feeds to Boost Profitability

Podcast Overview

Higher rankings, lower CPCs, better quality scores…these are all things we want from our Shopping Ads right? 

So many stores ignore the basics when it comes to optimising their feeds, and this week we have Ben Thomson on to talk about how you can achieve all of the above, simply by making a few tweaks to your product feed. 

He discusses the surprisingly common mistakes that a lot of stores make, that really let their feeds down (and how to fix them!), the top attributes you need to be adding to your feed that’ll put you ahead of the competition, as well as how automation has already affected online marketplaces and where Ben sees this heading in the future.

eCom@One Presents:

Ben Thomson

Ben is the Director of Business Development, EMEA, at Feedonomics, working with store owners and marketers on their product feeds using their own technology stack and services to list products on Google Shopping, Amazon and many other channels.

In this episode, Ben talks to us about what makes Feedonomics different from other feed providers, and how they work with clients to boost their sales through constant optimisation of their product feeds. He discusses the attributes within a feed that a lot of merchants neglect, which can actually heavily influence your profitability, as well as other common, but crucial mistakes that you should fix to transform the health of your feed. 

We also dive into Ben’s thoughts on automation and how it’s affected performance on Google Shopping, how he sees automation completely taking over, as well as the future of feeds and how changes Google Shopping will soon disrupt the way we shop.

Are you currently selling on shopping channels like Amazon and Google Shopping, but think your current feed setup is preventing you from fulfilling your potential? Then get listening as Ben takes us through some key actions that you can take now for an instantly optimised feed.

Topics Covered:

01:45 – Introduction to Ben and his role at Feedonomics

03:04 – What makes Feedonomics different to other feed providers

07:40 – Why should merchants run Google Shopping?

10:44 – What to include in your feed that’ll make your listings more profitable

17:05 – Will automation completely take over Google Shopping?

21:10 – Mistakes to avoid with your Google Shopping feed

28:25 – The future of feeds and Google Shopping

30:37 – A/B testing to improve your CTR

33:00 – Recommended resources

 

Richard Hill:
Hi there. I'm Richard Hill, the host of eCom@One. Welcome to our 80th episode. In this episode, I speak with Ben Thompson, Business Development Director for AMEA at Feedonomics. Ben and Feedonomics work with store owners and marketers on their product feeds, using their own technology stack and services to list products on Google shopping, Amazon, many other channels. In this episode, we talk shopping feeds of course, and how to scale and optimize by improving a march on your feed. Ben's opinions on automation and the benefits for shopping ads, the most common mistakes retailers make with their feeds and how to avoid them, and the future of Google shopping and feeds. If you enjoy this episode, please make sure you subscribe, so you are always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now let's head over to this fantastic episode. This episode is brought to you by eComOne, eCommerce Marketing Agency. eComOne works purely with eCommerce stores, scaling their Google shopping, SEO, Google search, and Facebook ads through a proven performance-driven approach. Go to ecomone.com/resources for a host of amazing resources to grow your paid and organic channels.

Richard Hill:
How you doing Ben?

Ben Thomson:
I'm doing great, Richard. How are you getting on?

Richard Hill:
I am very well. I am very well. Well, we're not that far away. I think we're about an hour and a half on the train. So not too far away. I think earlier this morning we had somebody on from New Zealand, which was an eight and a half hour time, or 12 hour time difference. So that was all very different, but-

Ben Thomson:
My goodness, they're in a better place than us.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, he was showing me his backdrop. It was really quite depressing. It was-

Ben Thomson:
Well, that's a beautiful backdrop you have right there, much better than mine.

Richard Hill:
I can imagine, a bit a little bit different to your London backdrop and my Lincolnshire backdrop. Well, thanks for coming on the show. I think it'd be good to kick off, just tell all the guys, the listeners a little bit about yourself.

Ben Thomson:
Yeah, sure. So, Richard, as you'd mentioned, Business Development Director for AMEA here at Feedonomics. My job here at the company is to grow my region. And I do that through partnerships, the bread and butter, which is with agencies and with both inbound and outbound leads that come in. Before Feedonomics, which is very much related to data because it's data and feed optimization. I was doing a similar thing, but within cyber security, digital risk protection. So again, all with data. That's been my focus, my obsession for the past 10 years of my life. And it was a very natural thing to move across to the fastest growing- one of the fastest growing sectors now, which of course is eCommerce.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Brilliant. So I think you're coming up to your year anniversary of Feedonomics, I think looking that your profile.

Ben Thomson:
That is absolutely right. You've spotted it.

Richard Hill:
Big birthday coming up, you'll be getting a special cake or something.

Ben Thomson:
I hope so. I'm not sure how they're going to send it to me with what I said earlier on off camera, but yes, it would be great if they could send me a nice Feedonomics [crosstalk 00:03:00].

Richard Hill:
So, Feedonomics. Obviously we've done a lot of episodes on feeds, Google shopping. It's at the heart of the podcast, at the heart of our agencies here, but Feedonomics, tell our listeners why Feedonomics is that a little bit different tell us about the offer of Feedonomics and how it compares to other feed providers.

Ben Thomson:
Yep, sure. Feedonomics is quite largely different from the rest of the competition, in that we are the only true, real full service solution. So what does that mean? Full service is that we are 24/7, round the clock managing a feed. With other providers or the competitors, some even claim to have full service, although we created that term, they are not real full service because they can take a day to three days to action a request. We do it in one hour to three hours, right? So there's this obsession today about the data quality score. And it's similar in a sense to a credit score. When you're 18 years old, you try and go get an AMEX platinum card. It's just not going to happen. You're going to build that credibility. You've got to pay things on time and be seen as a reliable partner of that bank.

Ben Thomson:
And so data is the exact same for the channels you're pushing it to. It doesn't matter whether it's a marketplace, or it's a PPC channel. And if you're actioning in that one day to three day mark, you're only ever going to be able to get that score to a certain level. Only Feedonomics customers can raise that to a certain amount. How do we do that? We do that through our technology. I'm not saying that these competitors are lazy, because they're not, they work hard and we've got some great competition out there. We broke an algorithm in 2015 that allowed us to action in that time. So our system can read what that error is, it can compute exactly how to fix it and display it in a way that our team of over 300 can go in, translate and make that actual action. So again, we try and correct within that one to three hour window, it's not just the case, we're going to have a look at it, start from that point.

Ben Thomson:
And that's how we set it up. So the next part to it is the pricing structure. Traditionally speaking, feed optimization, been around for over 20 years, you would take a percentage of the client's revenue and there'd be a setup cost. That's a high barrier for entry and worse, is a high barrier to leave with some of the key competitors that I will not mention but anyone else who's listening will probably feel my pain and with who I'm talking about. So that pricing structure is that it'd maybe take up to 3% of your revenue, but with Feedonomics you pay nothing upfront and we do not take a percentage of the revenue. The price you see is the price that you pay. And we have short term contracts and long term contracts. The reason that we do that is because we have a 93% retention rate.

Ben Thomson:
We've got absolutely no fear of people leaving. Our key competitor is 27% retention rate. And we think that that's probably because it's so hard to leave their actual system that they remain. That really sums Feedonomics in a nutshell. But certainly for anyone who doesn't understand what feed optimization is, it is just aligning the data in line with what that specific channel's looking for. It's creating a better user experience for their site through things like categorization. And for that you're rewarded, for example, with PBC channels, you pay less per click, you are ranked higher organically. And of course the data quality score goes up.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I mean, I think we've done four or five episodes specifically on shopping. And obviously amongst that, probably 25% of that on feed. So feeds, as Ben said, they're absolutely key. You get that quality right in feed and that technical spec and those variables in your feed correct, then it obviously has a real impact on the cost of clicks because you've got a better feed. Your products are showing more in the right categories or at the right time. So obviously Feedonomics, they've just had a- well, we were just talking about it off camera, but they've just been acquired by BigCommerce and obviously BigCommerce is making huge waves internationally. It's a company that we're really impressed with on the podcast and at the agency here.

Richard Hill:
So obviously a real alignment there when you've got this big platform and then obviously they're aligning very much with the e-commerce community acquiring Feedonomics. Now it's a great move from their part, I think. So we'll jump back to feeds shortly, but obviously there are a lot of guys that are listening, there'll be some guys, and I know there will be that maybe haven't done too much shopping, but that may be investing whatever it may be a hundred grand a month. Obviously it varies but into search into Facebook. But why would you say, based on your experience, retailers and merchants should be running Google shopping.

Ben Thomson:
I mean, the potential is just still huge with the channel. I've heard a lot of people saying that PPC as a whole is dying and we are seeing the complete opposite of that. You align the data up the correct way and my goodness, you can seriously scale and air a large revenue stream from just Google shopping ads alone. But certainly having that image at the top of your product listing ads is so, so key and people are more visual today than ever, both with the title that you see, which we should optimize and the actual image itself.

Ben Thomson:
So getting that to the top is a key thing, another thing, so more than one of your shopping ads can appear for a given user search. And if it's relevant the add in text can also appear at the same time. So this means that you can reach a user for a single search and it could be double. So there's so much involved with the actual Google shopping ads platform at the moment, it would be hard to run through every single benefit that comes out of it. I mean, it's just an amazing platform in particular, Google. It's just so complicated and usable if you get it right.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I think it is common sense really in that if a user, potential customer goes to Google search for a product, they see an image of that product, you're halfway there, aren't you?

Ben Thomson:
Absolutely.

Richard Hill:
Seeing the product you typed in. I don't know, what have I got around here? Looking for a new pair of glasses, pair of, say sunglasses, you type in Tag sunglasses, you see a pair of Tag sunglasses. You're not seeing a text ad. You're seeing the actual Tag sunglasses. You're seeing the price. You're seeing the description. It says, Tag sunglasses, you're landing on an e-com product page. And there are a pair of Tag sunglasses on there. You're halfway there. It's obviously just aligning the- well, there's a lot more to do it than that, but you're aligning on the strategy around the structure of the campaigns, the bids, and obviously making sure that ultimately you are making more from that click than what it costs you to sell the products sort of thing.

Ben Thomson:
Yep. Absolutely. But maybe I diluted what I was saying a little bit too much, but what I mean by that doubling up is having the image at the top and then maybe your SEO is appearing at the bottom.

Richard Hill:
Okay.

Ben Thomson:
So you can have multiple things there.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. We all like that double listing, got the paid ad.

Ben Thomson:
Absolutely.

Richard Hill:
Organic. And even if it's a local search, it might have three listings potentially, if that. Depending on the search term, if we can win three or four boxes on the home- on the first page for brands and stuff, it's fantastic. So obviously you are focused on feeds. So what things do you recommend should be in a feed that's going to influence and help your Google shopping listing to be shown more, to be more profitable? Obviously within a feed, you've got various variables in that feed, but is there any particular and specific things that obviously from a Feedonomics point of view that you feel is really maybe quite often missed or something that should be in that feed, that's really going to help position those Google shopping listings better?

Ben Thomson:
Oh my goodness. There's so much within this. I'm going to just pick on two key things here because customers are really not too great at doing it. With Google, they give you so much leg room. Here are the key attributes that you can work with and uploads your products to the Google shopping platform. Fine. But by leaving more of those key fields out, you are not able to rank as high. So what I would say as a step one would be ad product typing yeah. Product typing is definitely not essential, but ad product typing. The second thing that I would do is really take time to add a Google product category. It amazes me today that people aren't selecting that search. I mean, if you're not selecting a Google product, category, it could be like taking a PlayStation five and putting it next to the potatoes in a Sainsbury's. It doesn't make any sense.

Ben Thomson:
And I get it, it's so difficult in Sainsbury's, you've got 16 aisles, but maybe if you're in America, you've got six aisles if it's Target or something like that. But generally speaking there's a much smaller area to put your items in a physical store. And you've got thousands of different variations to do that online. It becomes a bit of an art, to try and take the time to logically work through how something should be categorized and make that as granular as possible. And that in itself will help your product rank better. And you'll find customers who are actually looking to purchase your product rather than clicking on something they're not going to buy.

Richard Hill:
So product categories and product type, doing them both, yeah?

Ben Thomson:
I'd be including that. The next thing that I would say would be in titles, adding brand into the title. Adding other key attributes, such as color, possibly gender in there as well. The actual type of the item and the reason for this is when someone types in- if you had Air Zoom Pegasus and then that's the type of Nike running shoe, that could be a children's book. You're going to have the wrong person clicking on that. And they're not ready to purchase at that point. They're just typing in Air Zoom Pegasus, they're just starting to have a look. They don't know the color yet that they want to select. When they're typing in Nike, Air Zoom Pegasus, blue running shoes, size 12. Now they're ready to buy. All they're going to be looking at are those ads at the top, and saying which one looks the best? What's got the most credible title, fastest delivery and best reviews? That's it.

Richard Hill:
I think that's that's the beauty of working with a feed tool where you can add in that additional data to the title. Because it will exist in the product listing somewhere on the website, but often it's not in the title. So just to clarify for the listeners, quite often what will happen is you've got a product on a website and it might be in the Nike category of brands. So the actual description, doesn't say Nike or title doesn't say Nike, because it's assumed you understand that it's Nike because it's in the Nike category. But when it's listed in isolation on Google, it's not in that category anymore.

Richard Hill:
It's out in the wilderness and it might decide size 12 Pegasus, well, what is that, to me when you say Pegasus, I don't know what Pegasus Nike trainer is, whereas if it's got obviously the brand inserted in the title, but what we're saying is, and what Ben's saying is we don't need to go back to the website and add it to every title. We do it with a feed tool, like Feedonomics. Obviously other feed tools are available. And we add it in, we add the size, we add brand. We add depending on... we've got children's, men's, ladies. And then when a perspective customer is searching and they're a boy that's looking for a size five in blue then all that data is in your feed. You're going to appear for a lot better, more intense searches. Yeah. Love it. Brilliant.

Ben Thomson:
I would also use the tools to look for search relevant keywords. So keyword tools can be extremely powerful. We have something called Feedtelligence, which will show the actual converted search term. So as an example, on a monthly basis, our team or your dedicated feed manager would be saying to you, this is your current title. And the port that you're playing in $60,000 have been spent within, or people searching that specific title of Google shopping. Well, if we can change it to this title, there's 103,000 being spent on that specifically. So we're always staying in line with what customers are searching for. And it's the only tool globally that we could actually see the dollar for dollar figure on that higher converted search term. But it is an enterprise level solution. So anyone who's listening, wait until you can step up a little bit in your revenue scale before you're moving on to-

Richard Hill:
But I think there's some insight there in obviously that's available at a certain price, is what we're saying. However if you go into your interface and you look at search query reports, you'll be able to see the terms that are converting and then you'll be able to add those back in yourself without any expense, add them back in to your descriptions, to your titles. that's a manual process, obviously. That's a long way round, potentially if you've got tens of thousands of skews, but if you've got certain key terms and phrases that are converting in the thousands of pounds, or depending on who's listing and it's tens to thousands of pounds from one term, whatever your numbers are, you could go and get those search terms and feather them through, making sure they are very prominent at the beginning of the titles or part of the titles.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. That's a great one, Ben. Yeah. That's a really cool- I like that. Yeah. Fantastic. So automation, let's go there for a minute. I think automation seems to be taking over the world, especially in shopping I think we've done a couple episodes, particularly on automation and smart shopping and that smart shopping is getting smarter. I think we're all, I think we're all agreed on that. Most people I've spoken to, but what do you think of automation? Will it completely take over shopping ads? Do you think we will be a time when there'll be no manual intervention needed?

Ben Thomson:
It already has, in some ways already. We definitely do have some clients right now that are seeing those teething problems. Some that would even say it doesn't work at all, but I do definitely think it will work. And I do believe that this structure will come through. I mean, we've got automated campaign bidding, sure. We automate categorization, as an example. And the power of AI is just so strong and people completely underestimated that five years ago. And I think even a naysayer from back then would today agree that we are coming close to a point of singularity, is what they call it. But certainly, yeah, I think that smart shopping is definitely going to just go leaps and bounds over the next two to three years. And certainly with our categorization system, we are 97% accurate. Right. Google has their own system at the moment that has an accuracy that is nowhere near ours, but I'm sure at some point it will start to increase in its accuracy as well, but we have automation in house the same and the power of that is incredible.

Ben Thomson:
We still go in with some manual input to make sure and see if we can raise that from the 97 to possibly 98% accuracy. But certainly, the simple answer to that is, I think it already has in some ways.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's just an interesting conversation, one we have, it's a constant chat in our- because we're a big believer in this hybrid model where you're using Google smart shopping to a level, but then you are able to control it via obviously really massively optimizing the feed and doing things in the feed that most people aren't doing.

Ben Thomson:
How have your customers found success so far, with Google shopping ads and that have been automated with smart shopping gambits?

Richard Hill:
In the early days, it's very much a mixed bag. Like you alluded to, whereas now it's getting smarter and smarter as the name suggests. So doesn't work for everybody. But I think if you've got a big catalog, if you've got orders coming through consistently, then there's definitely marge to be using it in conjunction with a manual approach as well. I think the mistake where a lot of people make is when they just take one feed, one campaign and let smart shopping do its thing, and that's it. I think we're a massive advocate of having multiple feeds, multiple campaigns, the best sellers split out different feeds for different products. I won't go into too much. I don't want to do the whole episode on it, but yeah, I think smart shopping definitely, you can't ignore it.

Ben Thomson:
Absolutely not. I mean, it's really exciting what's going to happen. I definitely think even our key customers that refuse to use it for now, because they've been burned maybe a year ago, whatever it may be, they would be surprised adding that system on today. It just comes with that slow learning time. I mean, for example, if we were going to optimize a feed of someone who is using smart shopping, Google has got to learn as a standard platform, the optimizations we've made, but then smart shopping has also got to learn it. So that can add a week sometimes even three weeks on to the time for the optimizations that we're putting in to kick into the feed that we're pushing.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. No, great. So obviously you're looking after there, thousands and thousands of feeds, a lot of feeds as we know, tens of thousands, I don't know the exact amount, but it's thousands of feeds, isn't it? What are the mistakes that you guys and you see time and time, again, obviously we've got all eCommerce listeners, they'll have their feeds and we talk about feeds a lot, but still we see the consistent things missing. Some of the things you've spoken about already. What would you say are some of the biggest mistakes that our listeners need to avoid when it comes to the shopping feed?

Ben Thomson:
Having data, pushing to an advertising channel that reflects their SEO. I mean, of customers that come towards us are unoptimized, are probably talking 85%, 90% that reflects SEO. Every single channel should have data aligned specific to how that channel wants to receive that data. So that would be the biggest mistake. Go and have a read at the fielding, requirements, how the data should be mapped on a channel per channel basis. And the reward for that is going to be that you will be found easier by customers that are ready to buy. And instead of paying that dollar 20 per click, you might get that done at 80- we get it done by quite a large amount, but you'll pay less per click anyway, if you make that more aligned, so no SEO setups on your data, pushing to advertising channels. The other thing would be set it and forget it type approach.

Ben Thomson:
They optimize some data. They spend some time, they may be using one of the entry level optimization solutions as they grow. They push it out there and then that's it. Well compliance changes. It's changing all the time and this causes errors. So errors is going to derail you and drop your data quality score. And anyone who's patient to these channels need to be obsessed about it. You're obsessed by your credit rating for banks, so you should be obsessed by this, it's your business. And what can happen if you set it and forget it is that it could come to a suspension, right? Not only are sales going to completely plummet, what's worse than a suspension, three months, even six months of being closed.

Ben Thomson:
Imagine having a store on Oxford street here in London and someone just comes up and says, "Look, you oversold the product, close your doors, six months." That's what happens with these channels. They are brutal, set it and forget approach, always keep something in place with the management of that data. And Richard, what about you? How often are you having to deal with errors at the moment and what are your customers finding? How much time are they spending doing it?

Richard Hill:
Well, we manage all of our clients that we manage shopping for. We manage their feed. And so we have somebody here that's pretty much full time sorting out errors and feeds so we set up automation, so if something happens in a feed, we're alerted before or as it happens, depending on what type of error. But ultimately I think definitely this last couple of months, maybe three months, we're seeing a lot more potential suspension issues and Google are really cracking down on it. If you don't adhere to their policies, first time, second time you are getting a seven day cooling off period where you're not selling anything. So I think absolutely, like you say, I think the amount of listeners that won't be going to their merchant centre, or they won't even be receiving the email triggers, the alerts to one of their other guys might be that isn't actioning any warnings, but just stock not updating correctly. So you're selling products that you actually don't have.

Richard Hill:
It's quite common VAT issues with B2B clients where they're listing ex-VAT, but they're putting in shopping with that. They go to the checkout is ex-VAT instead of inc-VAT or vice versa, things like that. But just general disapproval for image, price, description. There's usually... Depends on the clients, but too high a percentage issue when they come on, definitely. Something's just not looked at so we have somebody full time. 80% of their role is just looking after feeds now. Yeah. But that's where you win as a merchant, because if you are one of these guys that has just set it and forget it, then if you're working with a partner like ourselves, your feed is getting managed, for our instance we've got somebody looking at the feed, there's regular routines.

Richard Hill:
And like you say, you actually get a score for your feed. Not a lot of people know that, so it's got to be built in if you're doing it yourself, you need to be building in a routine where every Thursday morning, we're checking the feed. Whether you've had an alert or not, because that one, 2% product disapproval rate is going to impact you because somebody else, the competitor is going to be beating you and if your feed, certain product sets are poorly optimized you're going to be paying too much for the clicks or you're not showing for the products. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big business, isn't it? In terms of obviously Feedonomics, that's what you do, but feeds you can't just pull a feed. Yeah. That is the issue where people will just install a plug in, pull a feed out of their, whatever store, many stores available. And then they'll sync it up and ads will work, but they're just bad ads. They're just not optimized.

Ben Thomson:
That's it. Yeah. They're not ready to purchase. If anyone's going to take anything from this part of the biggest mistakes, go check your colour and price mismatches. They're the most common errors. Just check them. Needless.

Richard Hill:
That was my next question. If you were to share one-

Ben Thomson:
That'd be it.

Richard Hill:
One tip for improving your shopping specifically, would it be that?

Ben Thomson:
I mean, in terms of the errors, the most common ones for them to search for is just that, I mean, make sure that the price on your website is aligning with the price on, for example, Google shopping and the colouring. I mean, there's such simple mistakes to make. And I get that, crosscheck them twice, three times, especially for the key products. But these are things that just will degrade you and long term, you're just not going to get the same leeway when you make a bigger mistake from Google, from any of the channels, but in particular Google and certainly Amazon as well, are so heavy. As long as you're always putting things in place, crosschecking, having that data the way they expect to receive it, when you do go off and there is that rare occasion, you might oversell, it's going to be the same as someone who one time misses a payment. And for five years they haven't. You're going to be seen and taken in a much lighter respect than you would've if you weren't crosschecked those too.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Agreed, agreed. So obviously feeds and shopping go hand in hand they are separate, but you can't do one without the other in effect or one's no use without the other. Where do you see things going? If we sat here in three years, we jump back on the podcast and we're talking about where we are now in three years time, what do you see the future of feeds in Google shopping, any insights maybe on, is there anything you can give us from Feedonomics' roadmap? Maybe what's coming down the line in 6, 12, 18 months time?

Ben Thomson:
So Google shopping actions, buy on Google. So I'd say consumers are leaning more towards purchasing on the same site, than they are to discover a product rather than redirect to an eCommerce site to purchase. Think that's an area. You're seeing that, for example, with Instagram right now, as a perfect example, and the other one is going to be local inventory ads. It is just tremendous. It is amazing. Local inventory ads is such a game changer. I mean, what, 2015, 2016, they launched this type of product and only now people are jumping onto it. Even me. I mean, I've only really educated myself more about this system in about six months because the clients that I have that are using it, there's still a lot of people out there that won't purchase online even after COVID.

Ben Thomson:
What's happening right now with lorry drivers. There's been such a drop. What about when the online stock can't be delivered to your address? Local inventory ads, I think, is going to be huge, not just within the next three years within the next 12 months. I think that is going to explode. And for anyone who doesn't know what this is, you pay a set monthly fee, someone searches for titleless golf balls and it will show you the closest place titleless golf balls with the image next to it, and then straight to your store to make the purchase. I think that's going to be absolutely brilliant.

Richard Hill:
It was the local element. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Thomson:
It's just great. It's really good. Richard, your other question, you were going to lean on there was improving the results for your Google shopping ads. And I would do things, other than actioning, that those errors that I mentioned, I'd use AB testing, as much as possible. And AB testing can be done with the titles, trying brand at the start, brand at the end, if it's a white goods, maybe the digits, you could change the variation of where that is within a title. Yeah. And the AB testing can be done for images. That is quite a complicated thing to do. And that's what we do essentially for you, more when you get to the enterprise level and that is identifying what image is going to offer you the highest click through rate.

Richard Hill:
Testing variables in the feed. Yeah. Small. Like that a lot. So yeah. Actions, local inventory ads, I think I would say that probably less than 5% of our listeners that are still with us right now, are doing those things. And I think these are the ones, when we think about the people that- I think about our clients and obviously your thousands of merchants, it's the ones that test to have an amount of budget, whether that's five, 10, 15% of their monthly budget, where they're testing and pushing and trying different things have an amount, a budget to test these things we're talking about. For example, these new things that come out, some things when come out, we know notoriously can be, I don't want to say the word clunky, but you've got to be careful.

Richard Hill:
Be testing all your budget on everything that comes out. But having an amount of budget where you're testing things and when Google shopping got the option there for free listings, well obviously that's free, so there's no cost, but why would you not do it? Why would you not test these things as they come out when actions and local imagery ads obviously have been out for quite some time, why would you not test them? Test it- actually, woo. Another 3%, another 2%, another 5%. And that's across all platforms, really in a way. As my advice is to have a budget that you are testing, whether that's on Facebook and it's a creative angle where you're doing a multi retargeting campaign, but I think-

Richard Hill:
Okay, so resources. So our listeners, I always like to finish with a book or resources. So I'm going to let you decide which one you would like to recommend to our listeners at home. Obviously I'm sure Feedonomics have a lot of resources themselves, but any particular resources you'd recommend to our listeners, that they could go and have a look at, whether that's feed related, business related, mindset related anything at all?

Ben Thomson:
Mindset related. Oh my goodness. I think that- I don't have anything that's going to be feed related for this, but Zero to One by Peter Theo was a life changing book for me, opening up my mind and realizing what new things that I could do, how much I learned on what was already there. I think people should, as a whole expand their minds a little bit more now and apply the same thing to their feed management and their online presence. Keep trying and testing every single thing you can, any new innovation that comes out, where relevant, where possible, I think we should be trying that. And the Zero to One really, it was a life changing thing. Maybe three, four years ago, I read that book and it influenced me traveling and-

Richard Hill:
It's not one I've read, I have to admit. So that'll be my next task after we finish will be to spend another 15 quid on Amazon.

Ben Thomson:
I think it's maybe cheaper than that. Actually. I think it's only about seven pounds. Audible.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Audible. Yeah. Well, thanks Ben. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Really thank you for being a guest on eCom@One. For the guys that are listening that want to find out more about yourself, more about Feedonomics what's the best way to do that?

Ben Thomson:
Absolutely. You can contact me directly. My email address is ben.thomson@feedonomics.com. And so Thomson is spelled without a "P." T-H-O-M-S-O-N. ben.thomson@feedonomics.com.

Richard Hill:
Fantastic. Well thank you once again for being a guest on eCom@One. I'll see you soon.

Ben Thomson:
Thanks so much, Richard. Cheers.

Richard Hill:
Thank you, bye.

Richard Hill:
Thank you for listening to the eCom@One e-commerce podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please hit subscribe and don't forget to sign up to our e-commerce newsletter and leave us a review on iTunes. This podcast has been brought to you by our team here at eComOne, the e-commerce marketing agency.

Richard Hill:
Hi there. I'm Richard Hill, the host of eCom@One. Welcome to our 80th episode. In this episode, I speak with Ben Thompson, Business Development Director for AMEA at Feedonomics. Ben and Feedonomics work with store owners and marketers on their product feeds, using their own technology stack and services to list products on Google shopping, Amazon, many other channels. In this episode, we talk shopping feeds of course, and how to scale and optimize by improving a march on your feed. Ben's opinions on automation and the benefits for shopping ads, the most common mistakes retailers make with their feeds and how to avoid them, and the future of Google shopping and feeds. If you enjoy this episode, please make sure you subscribe, so you are always the first to know when a new episode is released. Now let's head over to this fantastic episode. This episode is brought to you by eComOne, eCommerce Marketing Agency. eComOne works purely with eCommerce stores, scaling their Google shopping, SEO, Google search, and Facebook ads through a proven performance-driven approach. Go to ecomone.com/resources for a host of amazing resources to grow your paid and organic channels.

Richard Hill:
How you doing Ben?

Ben Thomson:
I'm doing great, Richard. How are you getting on?

Richard Hill:
I am very well. I am very well. Well, we're not that far away. I think we're about an hour and a half on the train. So not too far away. I think earlier this morning we had somebody on from New Zealand, which was an eight and a half hour time, or 12 hour time difference. So that was all very different, but-

Ben Thomson:
My goodness, they're in a better place than us.

Richard Hill:
Yeah, he was showing me his backdrop. It was really quite depressing. It was-

Ben Thomson:
Well, that's a beautiful backdrop you have right there, much better than mine.

Richard Hill:
I can imagine, a bit a little bit different to your London backdrop and my Lincolnshire backdrop. Well, thanks for coming on the show. I think it'd be good to kick off, just tell all the guys, the listeners a little bit about yourself.

Ben Thomson:
Yeah, sure. So, Richard, as you'd mentioned, Business Development Director for AMEA here at Feedonomics. My job here at the company is to grow my region. And I do that through partnerships, the bread and butter, which is with agencies and with both inbound and outbound leads that come in. Before Feedonomics, which is very much related to data because it's data and feed optimization. I was doing a similar thing, but within cyber security, digital risk protection. So again, all with data. That's been my focus, my obsession for the past 10 years of my life. And it was a very natural thing to move across to the fastest growing- one of the fastest growing sectors now, which of course is eCommerce.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Brilliant. So I think you're coming up to your year anniversary of Feedonomics, I think looking that your profile.

Ben Thomson:
That is absolutely right. You've spotted it.

Richard Hill:
Big birthday coming up, you'll be getting a special cake or something.

Ben Thomson:
I hope so. I'm not sure how they're going to send it to me with what I said earlier on off camera, but yes, it would be great if they could send me a nice Feedonomics [crosstalk 00:03:00].

Richard Hill:
So, Feedonomics. Obviously we've done a lot of episodes on feeds, Google shopping. It's at the heart of the podcast, at the heart of our agencies here, but Feedonomics, tell our listeners why Feedonomics is that a little bit different tell us about the offer of Feedonomics and how it compares to other feed providers.

Ben Thomson:
Yep, sure. Feedonomics is quite largely different from the rest of the competition, in that we are the only true, real full service solution. So what does that mean? Full service is that we are 24/7, round the clock managing a feed. With other providers or the competitors, some even claim to have full service, although we created that term, they are not real full service because they can take a day to three days to action a request. We do it in one hour to three hours, right? So there's this obsession today about the data quality score. And it's similar in a sense to a credit score. When you're 18 years old, you try and go get an AMEX platinum card. It's just not going to happen. You're going to build that credibility. You've got to pay things on time and be seen as a reliable partner of that bank.

Ben Thomson:
And so data is the exact same for the channels you're pushing it to. It doesn't matter whether it's a marketplace, or it's a PPC channel. And if you're actioning in that one day to three day mark, you're only ever going to be able to get that score to a certain level. Only Feedonomics customers can raise that to a certain amount. How do we do that? We do that through our technology. I'm not saying that these competitors are lazy, because they're not, they work hard and we've got some great competition out there. We broke an algorithm in 2015 that allowed us to action in that time. So our system can read what that error is, it can compute exactly how to fix it and display it in a way that our team of over 300 can go in, translate and make that actual action. So again, we try and correct within that one to three hour window, it's not just the case, we're going to have a look at it, start from that point.

Ben Thomson:
And that's how we set it up. So the next part to it is the pricing structure. Traditionally speaking, feed optimization, been around for over 20 years, you would take a percentage of the client's revenue and there'd be a setup cost. That's a high barrier for entry and worse, is a high barrier to leave with some of the key competitors that I will not mention but anyone else who's listening will probably feel my pain and with who I'm talking about. So that pricing structure is that it'd maybe take up to 3% of your revenue, but with Feedonomics you pay nothing upfront and we do not take a percentage of the revenue. The price you see is the price that you pay. And we have short term contracts and long term contracts. The reason that we do that is because we have a 93% retention rate.

Ben Thomson:
We've got absolutely no fear of people leaving. Our key competitor is 27% retention rate. And we think that that's probably because it's so hard to leave their actual system that they remain. That really sums Feedonomics in a nutshell. But certainly for anyone who doesn't understand what feed optimization is, it is just aligning the data in line with what that specific channel's looking for. It's creating a better user experience for their site through things like categorization. And for that you're rewarded, for example, with PBC channels, you pay less per click, you are ranked higher organically. And of course the data quality score goes up.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I mean, I think we've done four or five episodes specifically on shopping. And obviously amongst that, probably 25% of that on feed. So feeds, as Ben said, they're absolutely key. You get that quality right in feed and that technical spec and those variables in your feed correct, then it obviously has a real impact on the cost of clicks because you've got a better feed. Your products are showing more in the right categories or at the right time. So obviously Feedonomics, they've just had a- well, we were just talking about it off camera, but they've just been acquired by BigCommerce and obviously BigCommerce is making huge waves internationally. It's a company that we're really impressed with on the podcast and at the agency here.

Richard Hill:
So obviously a real alignment there when you've got this big platform and then obviously they're aligning very much with the e-commerce community acquiring Feedonomics. Now it's a great move from their part, I think. So we'll jump back to feeds shortly, but obviously there are a lot of guys that are listening, there'll be some guys, and I know there will be that maybe haven't done too much shopping, but that may be investing whatever it may be a hundred grand a month. Obviously it varies but into search into Facebook. But why would you say, based on your experience, retailers and merchants should be running Google shopping.

Ben Thomson:
I mean, the potential is just still huge with the channel. I've heard a lot of people saying that PPC as a whole is dying and we are seeing the complete opposite of that. You align the data up the correct way and my goodness, you can seriously scale and air a large revenue stream from just Google shopping ads alone. But certainly having that image at the top of your product listing ads is so, so key and people are more visual today than ever, both with the title that you see, which we should optimize and the actual image itself.

Ben Thomson:
So getting that to the top is a key thing, another thing, so more than one of your shopping ads can appear for a given user search. And if it's relevant the add in text can also appear at the same time. So this means that you can reach a user for a single search and it could be double. So there's so much involved with the actual Google shopping ads platform at the moment, it would be hard to run through every single benefit that comes out of it. I mean, it's just an amazing platform in particular, Google. It's just so complicated and usable if you get it right.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. I think it is common sense really in that if a user, potential customer goes to Google search for a product, they see an image of that product, you're halfway there, aren't you?

Ben Thomson:
Absolutely.

Richard Hill:
Seeing the product you typed in. I don't know, what have I got around here? Looking for a new pair of glasses, pair of, say sunglasses, you type in Tag sunglasses, you see a pair of Tag sunglasses. You're not seeing a text ad. You're seeing the actual Tag sunglasses. You're seeing the price. You're seeing the description. It says, Tag sunglasses, you're landing on an e-com product page. And there are a pair of Tag sunglasses on there. You're halfway there. It's obviously just aligning the- well, there's a lot more to do it than that, but you're aligning on the strategy around the structure of the campaigns, the bids, and obviously making sure that ultimately you are making more from that click than what it costs you to sell the products sort of thing.

Ben Thomson:
Yep. Absolutely. But maybe I diluted what I was saying a little bit too much, but what I mean by that doubling up is having the image at the top and then maybe your SEO is appearing at the bottom.

Richard Hill:
Okay.

Ben Thomson:
So you can have multiple things there.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. We all like that double listing, got the paid ad.

Ben Thomson:
Absolutely.

Richard Hill:
Organic. And even if it's a local search, it might have three listings potentially, if that. Depending on the search term, if we can win three or four boxes on the home- on the first page for brands and stuff, it's fantastic. So obviously you are focused on feeds. So what things do you recommend should be in a feed that's going to influence and help your Google shopping listing to be shown more, to be more profitable? Obviously within a feed, you've got various variables in that feed, but is there any particular and specific things that obviously from a Feedonomics point of view that you feel is really maybe quite often missed or something that should be in that feed, that's really going to help position those Google shopping listings better?

Ben Thomson:
Oh my goodness. There's so much within this. I'm going to just pick on two key things here because customers are really not too great at doing it. With Google, they give you so much leg room. Here are the key attributes that you can work with and uploads your products to the Google shopping platform. Fine. But by leaving more of those key fields out, you are not able to rank as high. So what I would say as a step one would be ad product typing yeah. Product typing is definitely not essential, but ad product typing. The second thing that I would do is really take time to add a Google product category. It amazes me today that people aren't selecting that search. I mean, if you're not selecting a Google product, category, it could be like taking a PlayStation five and putting it next to the potatoes in a Sainsbury's. It doesn't make any sense.

Ben Thomson:
And I get it, it's so difficult in Sainsbury's, you've got 16 aisles, but maybe if you're in America, you've got six aisles if it's Target or something like that. But generally speaking there's a much smaller area to put your items in a physical store. And you've got thousands of different variations to do that online. It becomes a bit of an art, to try and take the time to logically work through how something should be categorized and make that as granular as possible. And that in itself will help your product rank better. And you'll find customers who are actually looking to purchase your product rather than clicking on something they're not going to buy.

Richard Hill:
So product categories and product type, doing them both, yeah?

Ben Thomson:
I'd be including that. The next thing that I would say would be in titles, adding brand into the title. Adding other key attributes, such as color, possibly gender in there as well. The actual type of the item and the reason for this is when someone types in- if you had Air Zoom Pegasus and then that's the type of Nike running shoe, that could be a children's book. You're going to have the wrong person clicking on that. And they're not ready to purchase at that point. They're just typing in Air Zoom Pegasus, they're just starting to have a look. They don't know the color yet that they want to select. When they're typing in Nike, Air Zoom Pegasus, blue running shoes, size 12. Now they're ready to buy. All they're going to be looking at are those ads at the top, and saying which one looks the best? What's got the most credible title, fastest delivery and best reviews? That's it.

Richard Hill:
I think that's that's the beauty of working with a feed tool where you can add in that additional data to the title. Because it will exist in the product listing somewhere on the website, but often it's not in the title. So just to clarify for the listeners, quite often what will happen is you've got a product on a website and it might be in the Nike category of brands. So the actual description, doesn't say Nike or title doesn't say Nike, because it's assumed you understand that it's Nike because it's in the Nike category. But when it's listed in isolation on Google, it's not in that category anymore.

Richard Hill:
It's out in the wilderness and it might decide size 12 Pegasus, well, what is that, to me when you say Pegasus, I don't know what Pegasus Nike trainer is, whereas if it's got obviously the brand inserted in the title, but what we're saying is, and what Ben's saying is we don't need to go back to the website and add it to every title. We do it with a feed tool, like Feedonomics. Obviously other feed tools are available. And we add it in, we add the size, we add brand. We add depending on... we've got children's, men's, ladies. And then when a perspective customer is searching and they're a boy that's looking for a size five in blue then all that data is in your feed. You're going to appear for a lot better, more intense searches. Yeah. Love it. Brilliant.

Ben Thomson:
I would also use the tools to look for search relevant keywords. So keyword tools can be extremely powerful. We have something called Feedtelligence, which will show the actual converted search term. So as an example, on a monthly basis, our team or your dedicated feed manager would be saying to you, this is your current title. And the port that you're playing in $60,000 have been spent within, or people searching that specific title of Google shopping. Well, if we can change it to this title, there's 103,000 being spent on that specifically. So we're always staying in line with what customers are searching for. And it's the only tool globally that we could actually see the dollar for dollar figure on that higher converted search term. But it is an enterprise level solution. So anyone who's listening, wait until you can step up a little bit in your revenue scale before you're moving on to-

Richard Hill:
But I think there's some insight there in obviously that's available at a certain price, is what we're saying. However if you go into your interface and you look at search query reports, you'll be able to see the terms that are converting and then you'll be able to add those back in yourself without any expense, add them back in to your descriptions, to your titles. that's a manual process, obviously. That's a long way round, potentially if you've got tens of thousands of skews, but if you've got certain key terms and phrases that are converting in the thousands of pounds, or depending on who's listing and it's tens to thousands of pounds from one term, whatever your numbers are, you could go and get those search terms and feather them through, making sure they are very prominent at the beginning of the titles or part of the titles.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. That's a great one, Ben. Yeah. That's a really cool- I like that. Yeah. Fantastic. So automation, let's go there for a minute. I think automation seems to be taking over the world, especially in shopping I think we've done a couple episodes, particularly on automation and smart shopping and that smart shopping is getting smarter. I think we're all, I think we're all agreed on that. Most people I've spoken to, but what do you think of automation? Will it completely take over shopping ads? Do you think we will be a time when there'll be no manual intervention needed?

Ben Thomson:
It already has, in some ways already. We definitely do have some clients right now that are seeing those teething problems. Some that would even say it doesn't work at all, but I do definitely think it will work. And I do believe that this structure will come through. I mean, we've got automated campaign bidding, sure. We automate categorization, as an example. And the power of AI is just so strong and people completely underestimated that five years ago. And I think even a naysayer from back then would today agree that we are coming close to a point of singularity, is what they call it. But certainly, yeah, I think that smart shopping is definitely going to just go leaps and bounds over the next two to three years. And certainly with our categorization system, we are 97% accurate. Right. Google has their own system at the moment that has an accuracy that is nowhere near ours, but I'm sure at some point it will start to increase in its accuracy as well, but we have automation in house the same and the power of that is incredible.

Ben Thomson:
We still go in with some manual input to make sure and see if we can raise that from the 97 to possibly 98% accuracy. But certainly, the simple answer to that is, I think it already has in some ways.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Yeah. I think it's just an interesting conversation, one we have, it's a constant chat in our- because we're a big believer in this hybrid model where you're using Google smart shopping to a level, but then you are able to control it via obviously really massively optimizing the feed and doing things in the feed that most people aren't doing.

Ben Thomson:
How have your customers found success so far, with Google shopping ads and that have been automated with smart shopping gambits?

Richard Hill:
In the early days, it's very much a mixed bag. Like you alluded to, whereas now it's getting smarter and smarter as the name suggests. So doesn't work for everybody. But I think if you've got a big catalog, if you've got orders coming through consistently, then there's definitely marge to be using it in conjunction with a manual approach as well. I think the mistake where a lot of people make is when they just take one feed, one campaign and let smart shopping do its thing, and that's it. I think we're a massive advocate of having multiple feeds, multiple campaigns, the best sellers split out different feeds for different products. I won't go into too much. I don't want to do the whole episode on it, but yeah, I think smart shopping definitely, you can't ignore it.

Ben Thomson:
Absolutely not. I mean, it's really exciting what's going to happen. I definitely think even our key customers that refuse to use it for now, because they've been burned maybe a year ago, whatever it may be, they would be surprised adding that system on today. It just comes with that slow learning time. I mean, for example, if we were going to optimize a feed of someone who is using smart shopping, Google has got to learn as a standard platform, the optimizations we've made, but then smart shopping has also got to learn it. So that can add a week sometimes even three weeks on to the time for the optimizations that we're putting in to kick into the feed that we're pushing.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. No, great. So obviously you're looking after there, thousands and thousands of feeds, a lot of feeds as we know, tens of thousands, I don't know the exact amount, but it's thousands of feeds, isn't it? What are the mistakes that you guys and you see time and time, again, obviously we've got all eCommerce listeners, they'll have their feeds and we talk about feeds a lot, but still we see the consistent things missing. Some of the things you've spoken about already. What would you say are some of the biggest mistakes that our listeners need to avoid when it comes to the shopping feed?

Ben Thomson:
Having data, pushing to an advertising channel that reflects their SEO. I mean, of customers that come towards us are unoptimized, are probably talking 85%, 90% that reflects SEO. Every single channel should have data aligned specific to how that channel wants to receive that data. So that would be the biggest mistake. Go and have a read at the fielding, requirements, how the data should be mapped on a channel per channel basis. And the reward for that is going to be that you will be found easier by customers that are ready to buy. And instead of paying that dollar 20 per click, you might get that done at 80- we get it done by quite a large amount, but you'll pay less per click anyway, if you make that more aligned, so no SEO setups on your data, pushing to advertising channels. The other thing would be set it and forget it type approach.

Ben Thomson:
They optimize some data. They spend some time, they may be using one of the entry level optimization solutions as they grow. They push it out there and then that's it. Well compliance changes. It's changing all the time and this causes errors. So errors is going to derail you and drop your data quality score. And anyone who's patient to these channels need to be obsessed about it. You're obsessed by your credit rating for banks, so you should be obsessed by this, it's your business. And what can happen if you set it and forget it is that it could come to a suspension, right? Not only are sales going to completely plummet, what's worse than a suspension, three months, even six months of being closed.

Ben Thomson:
Imagine having a store on Oxford street here in London and someone just comes up and says, "Look, you oversold the product, close your doors, six months." That's what happens with these channels. They are brutal, set it and forget approach, always keep something in place with the management of that data. And Richard, what about you? How often are you having to deal with errors at the moment and what are your customers finding? How much time are they spending doing it?

Richard Hill:
Well, we manage all of our clients that we manage shopping for. We manage their feed. And so we have somebody here that's pretty much full time sorting out errors and feeds so we set up automation, so if something happens in a feed, we're alerted before or as it happens, depending on what type of error. But ultimately I think definitely this last couple of months, maybe three months, we're seeing a lot more potential suspension issues and Google are really cracking down on it. If you don't adhere to their policies, first time, second time you are getting a seven day cooling off period where you're not selling anything. So I think absolutely, like you say, I think the amount of listeners that won't be going to their merchant centre, or they won't even be receiving the email triggers, the alerts to one of their other guys might be that isn't actioning any warnings, but just stock not updating correctly. So you're selling products that you actually don't have.

Richard Hill:
It's quite common VAT issues with B2B clients where they're listing ex-VAT, but they're putting in shopping with that. They go to the checkout is ex-VAT instead of inc-VAT or vice versa, things like that. But just general disapproval for image, price, description. There's usually... Depends on the clients, but too high a percentage issue when they come on, definitely. Something's just not looked at so we have somebody full time. 80% of their role is just looking after feeds now. Yeah. But that's where you win as a merchant, because if you are one of these guys that has just set it and forget it, then if you're working with a partner like ourselves, your feed is getting managed, for our instance we've got somebody looking at the feed, there's regular routines.

Richard Hill:
And like you say, you actually get a score for your feed. Not a lot of people know that, so it's got to be built in if you're doing it yourself, you need to be building in a routine where every Thursday morning, we're checking the feed. Whether you've had an alert or not, because that one, 2% product disapproval rate is going to impact you because somebody else, the competitor is going to be beating you and if your feed, certain product sets are poorly optimized you're going to be paying too much for the clicks or you're not showing for the products. Yeah. Yeah. It's a big business, isn't it? In terms of obviously Feedonomics, that's what you do, but feeds you can't just pull a feed. Yeah. That is the issue where people will just install a plug in, pull a feed out of their, whatever store, many stores available. And then they'll sync it up and ads will work, but they're just bad ads. They're just not optimized.

Ben Thomson:
That's it. Yeah. They're not ready to purchase. If anyone's going to take anything from this part of the biggest mistakes, go check your colour and price mismatches. They're the most common errors. Just check them. Needless.

Richard Hill:
That was my next question. If you were to share one-

Ben Thomson:
That'd be it.

Richard Hill:
One tip for improving your shopping specifically, would it be that?

Ben Thomson:
I mean, in terms of the errors, the most common ones for them to search for is just that, I mean, make sure that the price on your website is aligning with the price on, for example, Google shopping and the colouring. I mean, there's such simple mistakes to make. And I get that, crosscheck them twice, three times, especially for the key products. But these are things that just will degrade you and long term, you're just not going to get the same leeway when you make a bigger mistake from Google, from any of the channels, but in particular Google and certainly Amazon as well, are so heavy. As long as you're always putting things in place, crosschecking, having that data the way they expect to receive it, when you do go off and there is that rare occasion, you might oversell, it's going to be the same as someone who one time misses a payment. And for five years they haven't. You're going to be seen and taken in a much lighter respect than you would've if you weren't crosschecked those too.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Agreed, agreed. So obviously feeds and shopping go hand in hand they are separate, but you can't do one without the other in effect or one's no use without the other. Where do you see things going? If we sat here in three years, we jump back on the podcast and we're talking about where we are now in three years time, what do you see the future of feeds in Google shopping, any insights maybe on, is there anything you can give us from Feedonomics' roadmap? Maybe what's coming down the line in 6, 12, 18 months time?

Ben Thomson:
So Google shopping actions, buy on Google. So I'd say consumers are leaning more towards purchasing on the same site, than they are to discover a product rather than redirect to an eCommerce site to purchase. Think that's an area. You're seeing that, for example, with Instagram right now, as a perfect example, and the other one is going to be local inventory ads. It is just tremendous. It is amazing. Local inventory ads is such a game changer. I mean, what, 2015, 2016, they launched this type of product and only now people are jumping onto it. Even me. I mean, I've only really educated myself more about this system in about six months because the clients that I have that are using it, there's still a lot of people out there that won't purchase online even after COVID.

Ben Thomson:
What's happening right now with lorry drivers. There's been such a drop. What about when the online stock can't be delivered to your address? Local inventory ads, I think, is going to be huge, not just within the next three years within the next 12 months. I think that is going to explode. And for anyone who doesn't know what this is, you pay a set monthly fee, someone searches for titleless golf balls and it will show you the closest place titleless golf balls with the image next to it, and then straight to your store to make the purchase. I think that's going to be absolutely brilliant.

Richard Hill:
It was the local element. Yeah. Yeah.

Ben Thomson:
It's just great. It's really good. Richard, your other question, you were going to lean on there was improving the results for your Google shopping ads. And I would do things, other than actioning, that those errors that I mentioned, I'd use AB testing, as much as possible. And AB testing can be done with the titles, trying brand at the start, brand at the end, if it's a white goods, maybe the digits, you could change the variation of where that is within a title. Yeah. And the AB testing can be done for images. That is quite a complicated thing to do. And that's what we do essentially for you, more when you get to the enterprise level and that is identifying what image is going to offer you the highest click through rate.

Richard Hill:
Testing variables in the feed. Yeah. Small. Like that a lot. So yeah. Actions, local inventory ads, I think I would say that probably less than 5% of our listeners that are still with us right now, are doing those things. And I think these are the ones, when we think about the people that- I think about our clients and obviously your thousands of merchants, it's the ones that test to have an amount of budget, whether that's five, 10, 15% of their monthly budget, where they're testing and pushing and trying different things have an amount, a budget to test these things we're talking about. For example, these new things that come out, some things when come out, we know notoriously can be, I don't want to say the word clunky, but you've got to be careful.

Richard Hill:
Be testing all your budget on everything that comes out. But having an amount of budget where you're testing things and when Google shopping got the option there for free listings, well obviously that's free, so there's no cost, but why would you not do it? Why would you not test these things as they come out when actions and local imagery ads obviously have been out for quite some time, why would you not test them? Test it- actually, woo. Another 3%, another 2%, another 5%. And that's across all platforms, really in a way. As my advice is to have a budget that you are testing, whether that's on Facebook and it's a creative angle where you're doing a multi retargeting campaign, but I think-

Richard Hill:
Okay, so resources. So our listeners, I always like to finish with a book or resources. So I'm going to let you decide which one you would like to recommend to our listeners at home. Obviously I'm sure Feedonomics have a lot of resources themselves, but any particular resources you'd recommend to our listeners, that they could go and have a look at, whether that's feed related, business related, mindset related anything at all?

Ben Thomson:
Mindset related. Oh my goodness. I think that- I don't have anything that's going to be feed related for this, but Zero to One by Peter Theo was a life changing book for me, opening up my mind and realizing what new things that I could do, how much I learned on what was already there. I think people should, as a whole expand their minds a little bit more now and apply the same thing to their feed management and their online presence. Keep trying and testing every single thing you can, any new innovation that comes out, where relevant, where possible, I think we should be trying that. And the Zero to One really, it was a life changing thing. Maybe three, four years ago, I read that book and it influenced me traveling and-

Richard Hill:
It's not one I've read, I have to admit. So that'll be my next task after we finish will be to spend another 15 quid on Amazon.

Ben Thomson:
I think it's maybe cheaper than that. Actually. I think it's only about seven pounds. Audible.

Richard Hill:
Yeah. Audible. Yeah. Well, thanks Ben. It's been an absolute pleasure having you on. Really thank you for being a guest on eCom@One. For the guys that are listening that want to find out more about yourself, more about Feedonomics what's the best way to do that?

Ben Thomson:
Absolutely. You can contact me directly. My email address is ben.thomson@feedonomics.com. And so Thomson is spelled without a "P." T-H-O-M-S-O-N. ben.thomson@feedonomics.com.

Richard Hill:
Fantastic. Well thank you once again for being a guest on eCom@One. I'll see you soon.

Ben Thomson:
Thanks so much, Richard. Cheers.

Richard Hill:
Thank you, bye.

Richard Hill:
Thank you for listening to the eCom@One e-commerce podcast. If you enjoyed today's show, please hit subscribe and don't forget to sign up to our e-commerce newsletter and leave us a review on iTunes. This podcast has been brought to you by our team here at eComOne, the e-commerce marketing agency.

Accelerate Your Online Growth With SEO, PPC, Digital PR and CVO Accelerate Your Online Growth With SEO, PPC, Digital PR and CVO