Online store owners need more ideas and methods that help increase the sales rate and the success of the online store in the long term, and one of the most important of these methods is sharing the online store’s products on all major platforms.
Therefore, sharing the online store’s products on different platforms helps you gain more effective visitors, especially when sharing these products in an organized and clear manner in front of customers.
During today’s article, we will provide you with a comprehensive guide on how to share the products of the online store on the various platforms of WordPress, directly, in an organized and automatic manner, with practical application, but first let us explain to you the mechanism of sharing the products and the actual importance that it obtains, so continue reading the article with us.
What is Product Feed?
Product Feed is the basis through which online store products are shared on external platforms. This is because when sharing products, it is not possible to publish all the product details because the result will be disorganized and unclear to the customer.
Instead, we rely on the Product Feed, which helps you organize the way the product is presented, as well as determine the basic contents and distinctive points that need to be shown to the customer, for example, the product image, price, and a summary of the details.
There are many methods that help in preparing a product summary, for example, relying on the manual method using Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets, but this method requires a lot of effort and has a relatively high error rate. However, the best way is to rely on custom WordPress plugins to prepare the product summary in a proper manner. Automatic It also helps to share product feed on completely different platforms.
Before learning about the most important of these additions and how to deal with them, we will first learn about the importance of preparing a product summary and sharing products on external platforms and the extent of their impact on the performance of the online store, so continue reading with us.
The importance of sharing products on the performance of the online store?
Sharing the online store’s products on external platforms helps enhance the performance and success of the online store in the long term and provides many advantages, the most important of which are the following:
- Increasing the sales rate : Sharing the online store’s products on external platforms helps you increase traffic on your online store and increases the opportunity to reach the largest possible number of customers, whether relying on free or paid methods, and this is certainly reflected in increasing the sales rate and the success of your online store.
- Brand Strengthening : When you continue to publish products on external platforms and appear successively in front of customers in an organized manner, this helps you strengthen your online store’s brand, and when you reach the stage of gaining customers’ trust or a trusted brand for them, you will find it completely different in increasing the sales rate. Reducing the budget for advertising campaigns.
- Enhancing product reports : When you share the online store’s products on external platforms, you can obtain more reports related to the products and study the extent of customer interaction and interest in those products. Thus, you can rely on these reports in preparing the future online store development plan.
- Organizing the store’s products : When you share the online store’s products on external platforms, you prepare a summary of the products, and this helps you organize the store’s products and the way they are presented to customers in terms of price, description, etc., and this in turn helps improve the online store’s sales.
- Organizing advertising campaigns : You can rely on the product feed to share the online store’s products on external advertising platforms, for example, Google ADS, etc. This, in turn, helps you display your online store’s products in advertising campaigns in an organized manner, which makes you get the most out of the advertising campaigns.
When you consider sharing the online store’s products on external platforms periodically, you will get the maximum possible benefit from the previous features in the long term.
How to share online store products on external platforms:
There are many methods that you can rely on to share online store products on external platforms. As we mentioned in the previous paragraphs, there are manual methods, but they have many problems, for example, the need for time and great effort, as well as their high error rate, etc.
The other solution is to rely on custom plugins in WordPress, and this is certainly the best option, as these plugins help prepare the product feed according to the platform on which you need to share the products and organize the process of sharing products and all of these things automatically.
There are many add-ons that you can rely on, for example, adding Product Feed Pro for WooCommerce , adding CTX Feed Plugin , adding Product Feed Manager , and many other options.
But I always prefer to rely on the CTX Feed Plugin because it provides the sharing of online store products to more than 100 different platforms and markets . It also provides a dynamic control panel that helps prepare the product feed in a simple and good way. During the following paragraphs, we will explain to you the method of sharing products based on that CTX Add-on. Feed Plugin with detailed information and pictures, so continue reading with us.
1- Install the CTX Feed Plugin on WordPress
First of all, you need to install the CTX Feed Plugin on your online store. You go to the main WordPress panel, then choose Plugins from the side menu, and then choose Add New from the drop-down menu.
After that, you will be directed to the WordPress store page. You will search for the CTX Feed Plugin, and after it appears, you will click on Install Now next to it, as shown in the following image:
After completing the installation of the CTX Feed Plugin, you click on activate, and in this way the installation of the plugin on your online store has been completed.
2- Prepare the product feed by adding the CTX Feed Plugin
After completing the installation of the CTX Feed Plugin on your online store, you can now start adjusting the product feed and sharing products on external platforms.
Firstly, you go back to the main WordPress control panel, then choose CTX Feed, and from the drop-down menu, choose Manage Feed, as shown in the following image:
After entering the product feed settings page on the CTX Feed Plugin, you will find a summary of all the products that have been shared from your online store on external platforms. In order to share a new product, you click on New Feed, as shown in the following image:
After that, you will be asked to specify the main information for the product you want to share from your online store, and that information is as follows:
- Country : You select the target country and this will not affect the properties of the product feed much.
- Template : You select the required template for the product summary, and this template varies depending on the targeted platform. You will find more than 100 different platforms. For example, when you want to share products on the Facebook or Instagram platform, you choose Facebook Catalog / Instagram.
- File Name : You write the name of the product summary, and this is a guide for you only in the product list.
- File Type : You specify the type of file from which the data will be pulled, for example an Excel CSV file or an So you rely on the extension’s control panel to prepare the product feed.
- The main point that affects the previous points is Template, based on which the platform template is prepared automatically, as shown in the following image:
After that, you will find that the CTX Feed Plugin has automatically prepared a template that includes all the basic variables related to the platform on which the product is required to be shared, as shown in the following image:
Now we need to properly understand the details of the template variables so that you can deal with them, upload product details, and share them correctly on different platforms.
First, you will find the first column includes the basic variables of the product Attributes, and the most important of these variables are the following:
- Product Id : The product identification number on your online store.
- Product Title : The title of the product.
- Product Description : Description of the product.
- Product URL : Product link.
- Product Category : Product classification.
- Stock : The quantity of the product in stock and whether the product is available or not in general.
- Main Image : The main image of the product.
- Regular Price : The price of the main product.
- Sale Price : The price of the product after the discount.
- Attribute : Product variables, for example colors, sizes, etc., and below them you will find variables derived from them, for example Additional Size, etc.
You will find a large group of other variables, and in the article you will find another column titled Type in front of each box, which is used to specify the type of variables, as it includes two options as follows:
- Attribute : Variables change depending on the product. For example, the product title. The title of each product is pulled separately.
- Pattern (Static Value) : Variables are fixed on all products. For example, the product title is a fixed value, such as the name of the website, a specific brand, or something else.
So you select the appropriate option for you in the Type column for each previous variable, and then you go to the fourth column, Value, which is linked to the Type column, where if you select the Attribute option, you need to specify the value that will be withdrawn from the products automatically, so you choose the value that is appropriate to the variable, for example, in the title. Product You specify Value with the Product Id value.
If you choose Pattern, you manually write the value to be installed on all products, for example if there is a special fixed price for that group or otherwise.
You adjust all the previous options for all the variables you need on your online store, and if there is a variable you do not need, you can click on the ellipsis available at the end of each row.
If you want to add a row with a new variable, you click on Add New Attribue and describe the variable among the previous options, and after completing all the previous data, you click on Update And Generate Feed, as shown in the following image:
In this way, the product feed for all products available on your online store is automatically prepared according to the previous table.
If you modify any product on your online store, you need to return to the table again and click on Update And Generate Feed, and the product feed will be updated with the same link, so you will not need to re-link it to external platforms.
Or you can return to the Manage Feed page and go to the section for updating automatic data, Auto Update Interval, and adjust the rate of updating the data, for example, every hour, then click on Update Interval, as shown in the following image:
In this way, the data feed has been prepared and the automatic update settings have been set.
3- Adding new features that are not available on the online store
You may find some variables that are not available on your online store, for example, materials, brand, stock availability date, etc., and these options are not available in the WooCommerce add-on in the first place, so you can rely on the Easy Post Types and Fields add-on in order to add those. The slots in your online store will therefore be automatically added to the CTX Feed Plugin tables.
Or you can rely on adding the CTX Feed Plugin directly by entering Settings from the CTX Feed menu and then choosing Custom Field, as shown in the following image:
After that, you activate the required variables and properties, for example, Brand and Material, and then click Save, as shown in the following image:
After that, you return to the products on your online store and access the product data. You will find a new section called CUSTOM FIELDS by CTX Feed, which is specific to adding the CTX Feed Plugin, as shown in the following image:
Then you return to the CTX Feed Plugin tables. You will also find that this new data has been added within the platform template, and in this way the product feed for all products on your online store has been prepared automatically and correctly, and the next step is to share those products on the various platforms.
4- Share the online store’s products on various platforms
After completing the complete preparation of your online store’s product summary, you can now share this summary on various platforms. In the previous example, we prepared the data feed for the Facebook platform, and this is what we will apply the practical example to.
So you enter the Manage Feed page from the CTX Feed tab, then copy the link to the product feed on your online store that we worked on, as shown in the following image:
After that, you go to your Facebook business page and go to the Manage Shop tab, or through this link directly, and from there you choose Commerce Manager, then choose Create a new catalog, and then click on Start Using, as shown in the following image:
After that, you choose the catalog specialization, and here we choose e-commerce, then you click on Next, as shown in the following image:
After that, you click on Upload Product Information, specify the catalog owner and the catalog name, then click on Create, as shown in the following image:
After that, you select the catalog and click on Add items to the catalog. Then you select the method of adding items. Here we will choose from a data list, then you click on Next, as shown in the following image:
After that, you choose how to download the file by using the URL, then you paste the product feed link for the online store, then click on Next, as shown in the following image:
After that, you specify the data update rate, and you can make it the same rate as the update rate of the product summary on the online store, for example, every hour, and specify the appropriate time for updating, then click on Next, as shown in the following image:
After that, you review all the linking data, including the list name, file link, scheduling rate, and default currency for the products, then click on Save Data List and start downloading, as shown in the following image:
After that, the products from your online store will be uploaded to the Facebook catalog automatically, and their data, for example, price, stock, etc., will be updated automatically periodically as well.
Conclusion:
Sharing the online store’s products on external platforms helps enhance the brand, reach the largest number of customers, and display all the online store’s products in an organized manner on external platforms. All of these factors help increase the sales and success of the online store.
There are many methods that you can rely on to prepare a Product Feed, but in today’s article we have relied on the most effective, fast, and organized method, which is relying on WordPress plugins.
In today’s article, we relied on the CTX Feed Plugin, which is one of the best plugins used to share online store products on more than 100 external platforms.
We provided you with a comprehensive guide on how to share online store products in practical application step by step on the Facebook platform, and you can apply the same steps with other platforms. We also explained to you the importance of sharing products on the online store’s performance, especially in the long term.
If you still have a question or inquiry regarding sharing the products of the online store, you can comment below the article, and the technical support specialists will respond to you as soon as available, God willing.
