Magento Product Feed Overview

LXR Product Feed Manager extension is designed for automatically generating the products list in a format that can be directly uploaded to shopping sites such as Google Shopping. It generates the Product Catalog Feed in csv, xml files from your Magento Ecommerce Store.

Note: This extension does not create any Google AdWords / Google Merchant Center Account. It helps in generating a feed and push it to the Google Merchant Center Account which is linked to the Google AdWords. To upload the product feed, you need to sign up here: Google Merchant Center.

Key Features & Benefits

The generated feed file can be directly uploaded to Google Merchant Centre to make your products available on Google Shopping.
Automated Product Feeds can be scheduled from your Magento Store to Google Merchant Center.
You have a choice of filtering / selecting the products to be sent to the Feed based on different parameters explained in how it works section.

How to set up a shopping feed for Google Merchant Center?

Click the LXR Feed button from the left side menu.

Click on Add New Feed button to create a new product feed.

Step 1: Shopping Feed information setup

Select ‘Google Shopping’ from the feed type dropdown. [This Magento Extension will be extended to other shopping feeds in future and hence the dropdown].

Click Save Feed button to continue.

Step 2: Basic product filter information setup

Product Feed Information: Provide Feed name and Feed File Name to generate a feed template.

Product Name Filters:

1.Product name Begins with: Filter products based on the product name begins with
Enter the Starting letter of the product names to be filtered separated by commas.
2. Product name Contains with: Filter products based on the product name contain within particular product title.
Enter the letters contains in the product name separated by commas.

Price Filter:

1. Price Type: Filter products based on price type (Sale Price, Actual Price, etc.). Select any price type from the dropdown provided.
2. Price Range Option: Filter products based on the price range of the products. For example Less than, Greater than, equal to, etc. Select a price range less than or greater than or between from the drop down.
3. Price Range Value: Filter products based on price range value of the products. These values will be filtered depending on the Price Range.Enter a price range value to filter the products.
These price range values will be filtered based on the range and value given in the text box.
If Price range is selected ‘Price Range Between’ then give values as ‘100-20000’.
If Price range is selected ‘ALL’ then no need to give any price values.

Stock Filters:

1. Availability: Filter products based on the Stock Availability of the products. For example In Stock, Out of Stock, etc. Ideally include only the products that are In Stock and exclude products that are not in stock.
Select Availability from the dropdown provided.
2. Stock Availability Range Option: Filter products based on the stock availability of the products. For example Less Than, Greater than, a particular count.Select a stock range less than or greater than or all from the drop down.
3. Stock Availability Range Value: Filter products based on stock range of the products.
These values will be filtered depending on the Stock Range.
Enter a Stock availability range value to filter the products.
If Stock availability range is selected as ‘All’, then stock availability range will be ignored and all products will be selected.

Step 3: Product Category filter information setup

Select at least one category to filter products.
Select All Categories if you would like to apply the below filter on all categories.

Step 4: Basic Product Feed information setup

Google Merchant Center will require some mandatory fields for product feed setup. The requirements depend on your store location and the type of products.

GTIN (A Global Trade Item Number) and MPN (Manufacturer Part Number) are important fields that need to be part of the product feed. Understand the definitions of these data fields and map the related product attribute for these fields from the dropdown. [Dropdown lists all the product attributes from your product catalog].

Google Product Category field is an attribute to indicate the category of your item based on the Google product taxonomy.Click here for more details.
You can verify the list of google product categories based on item/category.
If Google Product Category attribute is not defined in your website as per the Google Merchant Centre, then the default product categories will be considered while generating the feed.

Note: If the store product categories are not according to Google Product Categories then your Feed may disapproved. Then need to create a custom attribute for Google Product Category and need to provide the related category name to all products.

Step 5: Scheduler Setup

Helps to schedule the automated product feed generation from your store to Google Merchant Center.
Select Day(s): Select the days to fetch the product data from the store.
Select Hour(s): Select a particular timeslot from the dropdown, to update/fetch the product feed data for the above selected days.

Click Save Feed Button.
It will return back to plugin home page.
Once the above setup is complete, click on the generated feed name, it will open the feed with all the filters already selected.
Click Generate CSV button to generate the CSV Product Feed with the selected filters.
Click Generate XML button to generate the XML Product Feed with the selected filters.
Click Preview Sample Feed option to view sample feed for ten products in XML format.
We can able to view or download the Generated (CSV/XML) product feed at plugin main page with desired location URL.

Merchant Center
Merchant Center is a tool that helps you upload your store, brand and product data and make it available to Google Shopping and other Google services. To advertise your products on Google, you’ll need a Merchant Center account.

How to Create a Merchant Center Account?
https://support.google.com/merchants/answer/188924?hl=en

How to setup product feed to Merchant Center?
Upload either the generated CSV or XML URL to merchant center.

Note:

How do Scheduler Tasks Work:

cron.php is launched regularly from your server side (every 5 minutes most of the time)

The cron task for Product Feed is targeted and evaluates if a product feed data needs to be updated based on the scheduler day and timestamp stored in the database and on the schedule table for this specific profile.

If the above condition matches, then the product feed data will be re-generated.

Be sure that you have correctly configured a scheduled task from the server side (cpanel) targeting the cron.php file in your WooCommerce installation.

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