eCommerce and RSS

[jimday1982]

I'm looking for a way to use the power of RSS on an eCommerce site (www.dynadirect.com), but the problem is, I don't fully understand how exactly I should use it . Would it be possible to have a feed listing the prices of all of our products (almost 10,000) or is it better to just list the top 10 best selling items...or do you have any other suggestions? I guess what I'm asking you is, how do you think RSS could benefit this site best and how should we implement it. Thanks a lot for your help!

[vgarcia]

I wouldn't do an RSS catalog of ALL your items. Remember that most RSS readers check for updates every hour or sooner, so you don't want a huge amount of data like that coming down every time. Maybe just show your last 10-15 featured or sale items.

[jimday1982]

I wouldn't do an RSS catalog of ALL your items. Remember that most RSS readers check for updates every hour or sooner, so you don't want a huge amount of data like that coming down every time. Maybe just show your last 10-15 featured or sale items.

Oh, I see. How about this - is it possible to have multiple feeds - say one for most popular items and another for the newest ones?

[stymiee]

Oh, I see. How about this - is it possible to have multiple feeds - say one for most popular items and another for the newest ones?

You can have as many feeds as you want. But many RSS readers are constantly checking for updates so the more feeds you have the more bandwidth you use and the higher the load on your server.

[jimday1982]

I see - so I guess there's no real way for a customer to view one of our product pages and if he/she decides she wants to be alerted on a price change, then subscribe to the feed for it? Sounds like it's better for just doing something like a top 10 list, correct?

[jimday1982]

In theory - wouldn't it be possible to generate an xml file for each product so users can subscribe to the ones they are interested in?

[stymiee]

In theory, you bet.

[vgarcia]

In theory - wouldn't it be possible to generate an xml file for each product so users can subscribe to the ones they are interested in?

In theory, yes. However, why subscribe to a product unless the price or feature set is in constant flux? If you're selling something like RAM or oil, then it might be useful. Otherwise you probably won't get many subscribers.

I do like your idea of feeds for top 10 specials or newest items though. That would be a cool feature to see in an online store .