Guide for FeedFusion - Product Feed Sync

October 17, 2023 158 view(s)
Guide for FeedFusion - Product Feed Sync

FeedFusion is a Shopify app that helps you create product feeds for selling on popular platforms like Google Shopping, Facebook, Instagram, Amazon, eBay, TikTok, and Pinterest.

 

Integrations

The Integrations section lets you connect the app to Google Merchant Center and Meta Commerce Manager. This activates Feed Wizard, a simple method for creating, managing and uploading Google Shopping and Facebook feeds. 

 

Note

If you don’t want to connect your Google Merchant/Meta Commerce account or don’t plan to create a Google or Facebook feed, you can skip this step and create feeds in the Feeds section.

Google Merchant Center Integration

Click the Connect to Google Merchant Center button. You'll need an active Google Merchant Center account for this. If you don't have one, you can sign up.


Note

If you try to connect a Google account that's not linked to Google Merchant Center, you'll see an error.


Login to your Google account to proceed with configuration. 

Login to Google account assosiated with Google Merchant Center

Click Continue and Allow FeedFusion app to manage your product listings and accounts for Google Shopping.

If you have multiple merchant accounts, you can add and connect another account to the app by clicking the Add Account button.

Add Google Merchant Account to connect with FeedFusion

Once connected, you can create a new feed using Feed Wizard, a simple one-page method for creating Google feeds. Just click Create data feed to get started.

data feed - Connect with Google Merchant Center

General feed info - this section displays general information about your feed (Feed name, Google Merchant ID, and Language) pulled from your Google Merchant Center and Shopify. Also, you’ll need to select Target market from the dropdown menu.

Schedule - select how often you want to submit the feed and specify the submission time (based on your store's time zone).

data feed configuration for integration with Google Merchant Center

Select the product filter (optional) - choose a premade product filter for your feed, or click the Add Filter button to create a new custom filter.

Shipping options - adjust the general configuration and specify the Country Code, Shipping Service, and Shipping Price for the feed.

Click Create and wait a few minutes for sync to complete. 

Once completed, a feed overview page will open. Here, you can edit information, view the sync schedule, copy the feed link, and download the feed. You can also preview the products included in the feed in the Items section.

Overview of Google feed created through the integration with Google Merchant Center

Facebook Integration

To easily create a feed and publish your products on Facebook, connect FeedFusion to your Facebook Business account. On the Integrations page, click the Connect to Facebook Business Account button. Make sure you have an active Facebook Business account. If not, you can sign up.

Note

If you try to connect a Facebook account that is not a Facebook Business account, you'll see an error.

Log in to your Facebook Business account. Manage optional cookies as needed, then click the Connect button to link the FeedFusion app with Facebook Business.

If you have multiple business accounts, click Add account to connect another one.

Once connected, you can create a new feed using Feed Wizard, a simple one-page method for creating and uploading Facebook feeds. Just click Create data feed to get started. In the opened page, fill in all required fields.

General feed info - this section shows general information about your feed. Here, you can:

  • Set the Feed name
  • Select business account (if you have multiple)
  • Select catalog where products will be uploaded and synced
  • Specify the Target market and Language

Schedule - select how often you want to submit the feed and specify the submission time (based on your store's time zone).

Select the product filter (optional) - choose a premade product filter for your feed, or click the Add Filter button to create a new custom filter.

Shipping options - adjust the general configuration and specify the Country Code, Region, Shipping Service, and Shipping Price for the feed.

Click Create and wait a few minutes for sync to complete.

Once completed, a feed overview page will open. Here, you can edit information, view the sync schedule, copy the feed link, and download the feed.

You can also preview the products included in the feed in the Items section.

In your Facebook Business account, you'll see all connected feeds.

For each feed, Facebook displays the last and next scheduled downloads, as well as the number of products updated, added, or removed.

 

Product feeds creation

If you want to create a feed for a shopping platform other than Google or Facebook or don’t want to connect your Google Merchant and Facebook Business account, you can create a product feed in the Feeds grid. This process will require more configurations but gives you more control over feed content.

Select pltform for your feed

Click Add Feed, select a ready-made or custom template, and then click Create.

 

Note

Ready-made templates differ by the tags they include. Select a template based on the data you want in the feed. For example, to upload only prices to Amazon, choose the Amazon Price template. To upload product stock data, select the Amazon Inventory template. You can also add or remove tags from any premade template as needed.

 

General

Specify the General Information about a new feed.

General information about product feed

Name - specify feed name.

Status - here you can activate or deactivate the feed.

Exported File:

Max Number of Items per File - the setting allows you to limit the number of items included.

Compression - you can set to compress the feed to Zip format when it generates and uploads to the server.

File name - set the name for the exported file.

Protect the feed link - here you can add a custom password to protect created feed.

Shipping Options - here, you can change the general configuration and specify Country Code, Shipping Service and Shipping Price specific for the feed. 

Feed - click Generate to create a feed. Once generated, you can Copy the link for the feed or Download it in XML format.

 

Note

You can generate a feed immediately with default settings or you can apply your own customizations (in the Templates section, Filters, Mapping, etc.). Regenerate the feed at any time, by clicking the Generate button in the header of the feed's configuration page.


Applied Filters - select the items to include in the feed: products, variants, or both.

Applied Mappings - choose the created feed mapping between your collections and shopping engine categories.

 

Items

In the Items section, you can preview the items included in the feed. To view products included in the feed, you need to Save and Generate the feed first. Only then will the products appear in the Items section.


Note

Currently, the Items section is not available for Amazon and eBay feeds. Instead, you can preview the feed with all items included as an XML file by clicking the Preview button in the header.

Preview products included in feed

Note

Products without an image or description will not be included in the feed and won't appear in the Items section.


Template


In the Templates section, you can choose which tags to include in the feed and match XML tags with Shopify attributes. 

The configurations differ depending on the platform. Google, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and Instagram share one configuration, while Amazon and eBay use another. Let’s look at both.

 

Template configuration for Google, Facebook, Pinterest, TikTok, and Instagram

configure feed template for Google, Facebook, Instagram and TikTok

The template configuration page is divided into four columns:

  1. First Column: Displays commonly used tags for the shopping platform you chose (e.g., id, title, image_link, etc.).
  2. Second Column: Contains a dropdown to select Shopify attributes that match the platform tags (e.g., for Facebook's "brand" tag, you can select Shopify's "Vendor" attribute).
  3. Third Column: Allows you to specify the format of the attribute. For example, Google Shopping requires currency for the price, so selecting "Price format" will add the currency. The available formats are:
    "as is" (no changes),
    "price" (adds currency),
    "date" (ensures the correct date format).
  4. Fourth Column: Provides an option to delete tags you don't want to include.

If you don't find the desired tag in the pre-made list, you can add your own tag manually at the bottom of the page. To do this, specify the XML tag name, select the corresponding Shopify attribute from the dropdown, and click the Add Field button. 


For example, Google recommends adding a color for each product, you can create a "Color" tag and specify the Shopify attribute "Color" for it.

Add tag to template

 

Template configuration for Amazon and eBay

For Amazon and eBay feeds, you can configure the feed header, footer and product information.

amazon template

 

Header - used to place some info into the XML header.

XML Tag for Item - a tag which will wrap each product in the feed.

Content - an XML editor where XML tags and attribute codes are inserted.

Amazon template for feed

Tag - XML tag for the attribute used by the shopping platform (e.g. for Amazon, XML tag will be Message).

Footer - used to place some info into XML footer.

Also specify the Attribute and Format.

It is possible to add modifiers for cases when you need to modify the original values of an attribute. To do this, use Add modifier action; select one action from the available range:

  • Strip tags - delete HTML and PHP tags from the line;
  • HTML escape - escape special symbols from the product description;
  • Google HTML escape - escape special symbols within an HTML string and trimming any leading or trailing spaces if they exist;
  • Lowercase - convert all attribute letters to lower case;
  • Uppercase - convert all attribute letters to upper case;
  • Capitalize - make the first uppercase letter;
  • Capitalize Each Word - make the first letter of each word uppercase;
  • Integer - convert values to whole numbers, for example, 5.2 will be converted to 5;
  • Length - remove symbols and numbers without rounding, for example, 33.75 will be truncated to 33;
  • Prepend - add text before the value in the column. The text is specified in an additional field that appears when this modifier is selected;
  • Append - add the text after the value in the column. The text is specified in an additional field that appears when this modifier is selected;
  • Replace - after choosing this modifier, 2 fields appear: in the first one we indicate the word that needs to be replaced, and in the second one - the word to be replaced with;
  • Round - round the number down to a whole following the mathematical rounding rules (0.5 - upwards to 1);
  • If Empty - specify the value to use instead of an empty attribute's value;
  • If Not Empty - fill in the value that will replace the original attribute's value;
  • To secure URL - replace http with https;
  • To unsecure URL - replace https with http.

Modifier for Amazon and eBay feed template
When you've chosen the modifier, click the Update button to apply it.

 

Upload

Here you may enter FTP account credentials where the feed will be uploaded.

 

Note

Find detailed instructions for Google feed upload and Facebook feed upload in their respective sections at the end of this guide.

 

Host - FTP\SFTP server hostname or IP address.

Port -  server's port number.

Protocol - network protocol for transmitting files.

User - FTP\SFTP username.

Password - FTP\SFTP password.

Path - path to directory on FTP\SFTP server. 

Click the Check connection button to check whether the data for the FTP\SFTP connection is correct.

History - this section provides detailed information regarding the uploading of a feed.

 

Schedule

Decide whether to generate feed manually or by schedule. When you choose to generate feed by schedule, also specify the precise day or several days and time of its generation.

To schedule feed generation without uploading, choose the time and day, but don't fill in details in Connection Settings

 

Google Analytics

These settings allow you to set utm-parameters that will be added to the urls in your feed. Thus, you can collect all the sales statistics to your Google Analytics account.

 

 

Configure Filters

Filters allow you to specify which products should be included in the feed. You can filter out disabled products, include products from specific collections, and more. 

In the Filters grid, you can find the built-in filters. Here, you can also create custom filters by clicking Add Filter.

Filter products for feeds

Specify filter name and click Create to proceed with configurations.

Filters configuration

Filter Name - add or edit the filter name for easier navigation.

Status - here you can activate or deactivate the filter.

Feed Content - select what should be added to the feed: products, variants, or both.

Products Exclusion - exclude disabled and out-of-stock products from the feed here.

Collections Selection - specify which collections should be included in the feed.

Select products to include in the feed

Products Selection - select specific products to include in the feed.

Select feeds to apply filters for

Applied to Feeds - select the feeds to which the filter should be applied.

 

Configure Mapping for shopping platforms

To adjust your store’s collections and product types for platform requirements, use the Data Mapping grid. This helps match your products to marketplace categories. 

For example, Google Shopping requires Google Product Taxonomy. Data mapping makes it easier to align your Shopify store collections with Google's categories. The same applies to other shopping platforms you create feeds for.

To create a new category mapping, please hit on the Add Mapping button.

Configure data mapping for feeds

Mapping Name - specify mapping name for easier navigation.

Collections Mapping - map your collections with shopping platform categories.

Product Types Mapping - map your product types used in Shopify store with shopping platform product types.

Applied to Feeds - choose the created feeds to apply the collections mapping.

 

Pricing plans

FeedFusion pricing

 

Settings

To add general information about your store in the feed, we recommend specifying the following settings:

Store settings

Store Description - here, you can write a concise summary providing essential information about your store. You may add the store description attribute to the feed header. It's automatically added to the Google feed header by default.

Country Code, Shipping Service and Shipping Price may be specified here as global settings and used for all feeds. Alternatively, you can set them individually for each feed.

Shipping - insert a required shipping information for all feeds. 
Currency - specify the currency code used for feeds.

Feed store settings

Product organization - choose the default data for feeds.

 

Upload feed


Google Merchant Center

If the app is connected to your Google Merchant account, the feed will be uploaded automatically according to the schedule you set. If you’re not using the integration with Google Merchant Center, you'll need to upload the feed to your Google Merchant account manually or via SFTP. 


Upload via FTP/SFTP

To upload the feed via FTP/SFTP, first, you need to add a product source in your Google Merchant account:

1. Go to Settings & Tools > Data Sources.

Settings Data Source

 

2. Click Add product source button.

Add product source

 

3. Add products from a file > Add a file using SFTP or Google Cloud Storage.

Add a file usinf SFTP
4. Enter the exact file name of the feed you created in FeedFusion.

5. Click View SFTP and Google Storage Details.

View SFTP details

 

6. In the dialog window, you’ll find the credentials you need to copy.

7. Click Continue.

8. Return to FeedFusion, open Feeds > Google Feed > Upload.

9. Select the protocol (in our case, SFTP) and paste the credentials you copied from Merchant Center.

Upload feed via SFTP

10. Click Check connection to make sure that connections go through.

11. Click Upload or schedule automatic feed upload in Feed Generation & Upload by Schedule section.

 

Upload manually

You can upload the feed file manually, but keep in mind that this method requires you to update the feed manually as well. For it, you’ll need to download your feed in FeedFusion and then upload it in Google Merchant account.


1. In FeedFusion, go to Feeds, open your Google feed and download it.

Download feed from FeedFusion

2. Then, open your Google Merchant Account, navigate to Settings & Tools > Data Sources.

Settings Data Sources

 

3. Click Add product source button.

Add product source

4. Add products from a file > Upload file from your computer.

Upload feed from your computer

5. Click Browse and upload your feed file.

6. Click Continue.

 

Facebook

Set up the initial product catalog in Facebook business account in Data Sources > Data Feed > Next.

Upload feed to facebook

2. Choose upload option.

Choose upload option

3. Provide the feed file URL, which you can copy from the Feed’s configurations in FeedFusion.

4. Configure a schedule for the feed.

5. Name your feed and click on the Upload button.

Upload data feed in Facebook