1. Product Feed Optimisation for
ECU
Make your feed work better for you
on Easy Content Units

2. It Pays to Have a Good Feed
You have gone to the expense of creating a feed, make sure
you get as best an ROI as possible
 Good data feeds should convert really well
• Our members see an impression to click ratio of around 10%
• A Click to Sale ratio of around 10%
 Good data feeds account for up to 30% of all your affiliate
traffic
 Poor data feeds can send only 5% of your traffic, how much
are you getting? And Why?

3. Why Optimise Your Feed?
Simple:
You need to make sure your products are
selected to appear on affiliate web sites.
 Can they be found?
 Are they correct?
 Does the image work?
Are common reasons why affiliates do not
choose your products in ECU.

4. Essential Fields
ECU doesn’t ask for too many fields for you to appear
Essential
Product ID Product Name Price URL Image URL
Complete
Category Description Availability Brand
Ultimate
RRP Delivery
Charge
EAN/ISBN/UPC
Other fields such as size/colour etc are important to many other sites, but it’s not
something which we are utilising at the moment.

5. Product ID
Unique number that you use to specify the
product
Some merchants call this their SKU
Where it’s not available we select the
Network’s Product ID – though this is not
always reliable

6. Product Name
Important that this is as optimised as possible as
our search utilises this field.
Tips:
Include Style/Model
Include Product Type
Include Colour

7. Product Name
Case Studies
Duo Boots via Linkshare
Current Feed Example: Damask
Optimised: Damask Brown Full Length Boots
Strangely their site has Damask Brown Boots in their title, so is
optimised, why is the feed not?
Affiliates cannot find their products easily, so they are not
included on lots of units.

8. Price
Correctly formatted
Right currency for your program
Up to date
Prices that are not updated reflect poorly on your
brand, as well as the site they appear on
ECU update prices daily, the minimum that is
acceptable

9. URL
Deep link must work and resolve to the correct
product page.
Particular attention should be made when you
update your website, the data feed must also be
updated.
Dead links and those which go to your home page
reduce conversion rates and harm your brand

10. Image URL
Must Resolve to Correct Image URL
Again make sure this is addressed when sites are
upgraded
We like to use as large an image as available certainly
400x400 is great for fashion sites
Try to reduce borders, backgrounds and watermarks for
images as these tend not to be compatible with most
site/unit designs

11. Category
Where possible we use your own categories as
long as they are included in the feed.
The categories you include should be those
which make up your site’s own navigation, as
this will make the products easy for affiliates
to find
Remove any category structuring from the field,
as this doesn’t help us.

12. Description
Add as much detail to the description as you
can.
Some affiliates like to add this as content on
their sites, so best practice could be to have a
description solely for use on the data feed.
The first 50 words should include the key
information, with any thing else added

13. Availability
Most networks have an availability field
This should be used so that you can include all
your products in the feed, those out of stock
can be identified in the availability field
This enables affiliates to show thorough listing
for price comparisons etc.

14. Brand
We offer various filters for products, this is one.
Including it with in your feed will help affiliates
narrow down your products.
Fashion affiliates particularly like to write
content about brands, using ‘Random’ ECUs to
offer their visitors a selection of the available
products.

15. RRP
Can also be PriceWas, Old Price as well as RRP
We will be adding functionality to include this
information, so that affiliates can show the
discounted price and highlight the savings

16. Delivery Charge
We are adding this information as an extra for
affiliates, so they can show the true costs of
items.
All delivery options can be included with most
networks, check first, if in doubt, add the basic
postage costs only.

17. EAN/ISBN/UPC
EAN – European Article Number
ISBN – for books
UPC – Universal Product Code
We are adding functionality for price comparators
to search on this value.
Make sure you are included in the results by
including this information

18. Formats
We can work with most feed types:
CSV
XML
TSV
RSS
Preferably through an Affiliate Network, though
we can work with independent programs

19. ECU Data Sheet
Why optimise for ECU?
 Well we have close to 2500 affiliate members
• Many will not be on your program
• Many will not have considered including you in their efforts
 Most are ‘Content’ affiliates
• Your products can appear on long tail and niche sites
• You can be included in Price comparison
• ECU enables content writers to easily include products within their content
• No technical knowledge is required
 We drive over half a million clicks each month
 Our units are shown over 5 millions times each month