Question
We would like to implement MyBuys on our website. There are two sections to this - one is a data feed of our products and another is a cart abandonment feed / purchase feed. Please see the attached and let me know how difficult it would be to implement.
Answer
We've spent a couple of hours looking into this for you and this help page details what we found.
MyBuys Background (From MyBuys)
MyBuys builds deep profiles based on each individual shopper's behavior, and then uses a patented portfolio of algorithms and real-time optimization to deliver the most relevant recommendations for each channel’s products. We construct these profiles using historical baseline data and then continue to refine them for relevancy with daily data feeds and website tracking information from our clients.
These data streams include:
- Baseline Data Feeds – We use your two year order transaction history and product catalog data to create initial shopper profiles.
- Automated Data Feeds – Automated daily transaction and product catalog uploads keeps the shopper profiles up to date and the product recommendations relevant and current.
- Website Tracking – MyBuys codes are added to your web pages to capture each click as shoppers interact with your site. We know what products interest them, what they search for, and what items were placed in their cart and subsequently abandoned or purchased
Short version: you send us information about your products and your customers, what they have bought. You continue to send this info daily. You put tracking codes on your web site so we can continue to monitor your site visitors and what they do, when they add stuff to shopping bags and when they checkout. All this is done to recommend products to your visitors on the web, through email and advertising.
MyBuys Website Implementation
As you pointed out there are two parts to the MyBuys implementation:
- Data Feeds
- Tracking & Conversion Codes
Data Feeds
There are up to 8 different potential feeds, but we would most likely only implement 4 of these 8 feeds during this initial phase:
- Category Feed - List of department hierarchy. No products are sent in this feed, just the department structure. Completely new requirement that we've not seen before and would need to be developed.
- Product Feed - Similar to feeds we're already doing for Google, TheFind, etc. Not too hard to implement.
- SKU Feed - An item level list with attributes, inventory and prices. Completely new requirement that we've not seen before and would need to be developed.
- Transaction Feed - A feed of all purchases made on your website. We've certainly provided to other marketplaces during the checkout process, but never as a feed. This is a new requirement and would need to be developed.
While we might be able to use the existing marketplace feed framework to send the product feed, the other feeds would need additional coding and development. All data feeds are sent nightly via FTP with specific naming conventions, but this is something we can do now with Marketplace Manager.
Feeds we are likely to skip include Cross Sells Items, Ratings, E-mail Opt Ins and E-mail Opt Outs. All 4 of these could be implemented but we're thinking they should be done in the next phase.
Tracking & Conversion Codes
Almost every page in your website will need to be updated as well. Changes to header and footer appear to be static, but each page type has different code to be inserted in the body, often dynamically determined (eg. product id, category id).
Changes are also needed in checkout and require listing the shopping bag out in a specific format on every page. We have done similar things before, but of course, this one is unique and will require new code in checkout. Every page in checkout will need to be touched to add the call to insert the body section of the code (head and foot will again be static and inserted in the branding files).
Summary
This is all very doable, but you will need to decide if the development cost is worth it. Thank you.