Getting started

Product Feeds

The easiest and most comfortable way of getting your products listed on PriceRunner is by sharing your products with us through a feed. Simply upload your product catalog to a server and send us the link so we can import it. The majority of e-commerce platforms have out of the box solutions for this and are usually included in their standard solution.

A product feed is a quick and effective way of sharing your product information with us. It often takes between just a few seconds and a minute for our system to process the information, and you have complete control of what is displayed. If you do not have a product feed, PriceRunner can collect all the information directly from your site. This solution is more time and resource-intensive, and if you make any changes to your site there is a risk that your products will disappear from PriceRunner. Please contact us to discuss the most appropriate solution for your particular site.

Timeliness and quality of the information

PriceRunner always strives to display correct and complete information. You should therefore try to update the data in the feed often and include all relevant information.

Bulk pricing is not accepted. If you have a specific price for bulk buys, such as four of a product, the price for purchasing a single product should still be shown in the price file, regardless of how common bulk buying is amongst your visitors.

If you have any questions about the price file, please do not hesitate to contact us.

Feed URL

The file should be placed at an HTTPS or FTP address from which we can retrieve it. If you have blockages at IP address level, you must ensure that PriceRunner's IP (185.153.57.22) has access. Refrain from using timestamps or other information that will change the URL of the feed as this will cause your products to disappear from PriceRunner.

Headers

In order for PriceRunner to optimize update routines and display the most recent version of your product catalog with prices and item availability, we highly encourage the last-modified HTTP response header to be provided and serviced. The header indicates the date and time the product feed was last changed. By servicing the date and time of this header PriceRunner can check for updates more frequently.

Encoding

Use one of the following encodings for the price file:
UTF-8, UTF-16, ISO-8859-1, Windows-1252

Format

We can handle the majority of formats. The most common are: TEXT/CSV, XML and JSON. Note that the price file cannot be in Excel or any other non-text format. To make our processing and your updates run faster, compress your feed using gzip/zip.

CSV

In the case of a CSV feed:
The data must be structured in rows and columns, where one row represents a product and each column consists of fields with product information.

• Each field or column must be separated by a particular separator. Recommended separators are tab, pipe, semicolon and comma.

• Use "field qualifiers" at the start and end of each field. Please note that this character may not occur within a field. Recommended “field qualifiers” single ( ‘ ‘ ) or double ( “ ” ) quotation marks

Example feeds

• CSV feed example, (tab separated)

• XML feed example

Field specification and order

Below is a list of the columns recommended for successful listing on PriceRunner. The order and title is unimportant (provided that they are comprehensible).

• By including EAN, it will be possible to match your products automatically and upload them to PriceRunner quicker.
• Fields should never contain code or tags such as HTML or javascript.

Fields

Basic product data

SKU/id
Name
Price
Shipping costs
Stock status
Delivery time
Manufacturer
EAN/GTIN
Manufacturer SKU / MPN
URL
Image URL
Category
Description

Detailed product data

AdultContent
AgeGroup
Bundled
Color
EnergyEfficiencyClass
Gender
Condition
GroupId
Material
Multipack
Pattern
Size
SizeSystem

Basic product data

SKU/id

Use SKUs as IDs where possible. Since SKUs are unique, they can also help prevent you from accidentally reusing IDs.

• Good SKU: ABC123
• Poor SKU: 1

Name

Any variant or model of a product should be clearly stated. PriceRunner's search engine and filters work using the information in this field. Try to use keywords you want to be found for.

• Good product name: Apple iPhone 12, 256GB, grey
• Poor product name: iPhone 12

Your product name will be used to match your product to our products and user’s search. Include the important details that define your product. Put the most important details first. Users will usually see only the first 70 or fewer characters of your title, depending on screen size.

Use keywords. Keywords will help connect your product with a user's search and help the user recognize what you’re selling. Your keywords could include these types of product details:

• Product name
• Brand
• Specific details about the product

Dont include info about discounts, sales or stock info in the name.

Price

The product price including VAT. The currency should be stated. Use a comma or a period as the decimal marker.

• Good price: £25
• Poor price: 25 excluding VAT

Shipping cost

The product's shipping cost. Shipping cost needs to combine all shipping-/order costs for the consumer, like for example environmental surcharge, freight surcharge, handling surcharge, packaging fee etc.

• Example: £5

Stock status

As a starting point, there must be a buy/order button so that the consumer can buy or order the product to show the product on PriceRunner. However, we allow chain stores to display their offline prices as long as they are in stock in their offline stores, but the products must be tagged as "out of stock" in your product feed to us. If the product cannot be purchased/ordered online or offline at all, it can’t be included in your product feed.

We don’t distinct if the product is in local or remote storage by the merchant. Your stock status in the product feed should always be based on your online storage status, and cant for example not show the stock status for one of your offline stores.

Pre-order products can not be tagged as "in stock", use "pre-order" or "out of stock".

"in stock"/"out of stock" or Yes/No or number of products in stock.

• Good stock status: Yes, InStock, 100
• Poor stock status: Few, or N/A

Delivery time

The promised delivery time from the time of the order in the number of days. Its important that the delivery time in the feed corresponds to the info on your site.

• Good delivery time: 5 working days
• Poor delivery time: Varies

Manufacturer

The product manufacturer. Used in our filters.

• Example: Adidas

Manufacturer SKU/MPN

Manufacturer's unique article number. Used by us to automatically match many product types.

• Example: 1170-0500

EAN/GTIN

EAN code. Unique barcode number. Used by us to automatically match many product types and make the products searchable in the barcode scanner in our app.

• Example: 0021299147573

URL

URL to the product in your shop. It can also contain tracking parameters for analysis tools such as Google Analytics.

• Example: https://www.yourstore.com/product1.html

Image URL

URL to the product image. The CMYK format is not supported.

• Example: https://www.yourstore.com/product1.jpg

Category

Use the full "breadcrumb information". Wherever possible, we recommend you to include more granular categories as it classifies your product more precisely. For example, Shoes > Sport Shoes > Running Shoes.

Remember not to mix up different product types within the categories. One example is to avoid adding accessories for a coffee machine to the same category as the machines themselves.

Use > to separate multiple levels in a category. Also, include a space before and after the > symbol. For example: Clothing > Women > Dresses.

For gender-specific products (e.g. clothes and perfume), it is important to divide them up into Women, Men and Children. Our filters are partly based on the category names.

• Good category name: Clothes > Women > Pants
• Poor category name: Fashion & Clothes

Description

Detailed information about the product. PriceRunner's search engine and filters work using the information in this field. Try to include the keywords you want to be found for.

• Good product description: Red four-legged table with storage underneath. Ideal for living room or bedroom. Dimensions 100 x 50 cm.
• Poor product description: Really attractive and practical!

Detailed product data

AdultContent

Indicate a product includes sexually suggestive content (yes/no)

AgeGroup

The demographic for which your product is intended

Bundled

Indicates a product is a merchant-defined custom group of different products featuring one main product (yes/no)

Color

Your product’s color(s)

EnergyEfficiencyClass

Your product’s energy label

Gender

The gender for which your product is intended

Condition

The condition of your product at time of sale e.g. "new", "used", "refurbished", "demo". PriceRunner only lists and compares new products atm, but we are looking into the possibility to expand this in the future. Until then its important these types of products are tagged correct in your product feed.

GroupId

ID for a group of products that come in different versions (variants)

Material

Your product’s fabric or material

Multipack

The number of identical products sold within a merchant-defined multipack (yes/no)

Pattern

Your product’s pattern or graphic print

Size

Your product’s size

SizeSystem

The country of the size system used by your product