Lately I’ve heard of datafeed sites and decided to find out what’s it all about.

Well, datafeed sites are simply sites that are created using feeds of data from a merchant, which includes all details about the products they sell.

There are several types of datafeeds – Javascript and file based.

Javascript feeds are simply javascript codes you can add to your site and everything is does automatically for you by the merchant. In this case you don’t have much influence about the products that will show. You able, however, to control the colors and fonts and usually the category of the products.

file based feeds are text files in either XML, CSV or TXT files with all products available from the merchant, along with categories, prices, link to images etc. In this case you have absolutely full control over what you will show on your site.

Here are some sample products from a file based datafeed…

BTW – This is a real product you can order…

I’m going to play a little more with datafeeds and eventually, I’ll decide if it’s too hard work and if it worth the effort.

Stay tuned!