Why use product feeds?
Time Benefits:- With Products On Request and our Template System you can quickly design content units, product pages and dedicated feed sites. Less than half the time you spent trying to import a CSV file into a database in the past!

Additional Benefits :- This method of page design allows Affiliates to quickly and easily create web pages while offering precise control over their design and layout.

Apply them to existing sites:- Using our code generation features Affiliates can insert product feeds into their existing sites and pages. Our systems design options allow seamless visual integration of Merchants products into Affiliate sites and improves conversion rates compared, simply linking to the front page of a Merchants site.

Multiple product source integration :-Linking product feeds from various Merchants allows you to have unique product ranges within your sites. This facility can enhance the users experience by allowing them to quickly find and compare similar products or services. This assists you as a Affiliate by assisting the customers decision making process and swiftly concluding sales, lessening the chance that they will visit other sites to make comparisons.

How to use a product feed
It’s as simple as typing a web address :- When using our Advanced Template System, Products On Request is as simple to use as entering and visiting a URL into your web browser, like you do to visit your favourite web sites! You can use the Products On Request URL in an HTML iframe to add instant content to your static HTML pages.

An example of what a feed URL looks like


Easy to code for PHP and Perl
Or if you’re using a scripting language such as PHP, Perl, ASP, CGI etc then all you need to do to integrate Products On Request into a page is write a few lines of code to fetch or pull the content from the Products On Request URL and then display that content to the visitor. PHP has the ability to fetch the contents of a URL built in, but with Perl you need to use the module LWP, nowadays most Perl installations will have this built in.

Using the preview panel
The Products On Request URL contains all the options relating to what products you want from your feed, how you prefer them to be sorted and the number of them you require. There are 2 ways to create this URL, the first method is to use the Preview system within the Control Panel. This is quick and straight forward as it requires you to simply select your options from drop down menus and selection boxes. This generates the URL for you - plus you can view a Preview of what the page or feed will look like!

The second method available to you once you become more adept at using Products On Request is to create the URL yourself, as the options become familiar to you through use of the system.

Creating additional user options on the fly
There is no need to register or setup any Product On Request URL in advance, this means your PHP, Perl or ASP scripts can modify and add options to the URL “on the fly” reacting to what your visitors are asking for. For example on a web site you may create a form to allow your visitors to select a price range for a certain type of products. All you would then have to do is read the submited form contents as normal, convert what the visitor wants into options usable by Products On Request, fetch the contents of the URL you just created, and output the content returned.

Keeping the raw feeds out of sight
Using our Template System you never have to see the raw product feed data, as you have the content delivered to you already applied to your very own HTML template. But if you do want a CSV or XML feed, then you can request them using a Products On Request URL.

Understanding the flow It is important to understand how Products On Request deals with each request, this helps to understand how to use the more advanced features of our Template system, but also helps if you are just pulling the data in a CSV or XML format. To view a PDF document of how Products on request does this click here>

Advanced Product Feeds - Example 1
The example on the right of this page demonstrates how a piece of your screen real estate can be utilised to create a visual search tool and a deep linking sales device that is attractive to your audience. It shows a typical 'Top Ten' content unit which is updated as the Merchants sales figures reflect the weekly sales they have made.

Adding it to your site
Adding a Products On Request Content Unit to your site is very easy and takes only the most basic HTML knowledge.
Here is all you need to do :-

Step 1. Login to the' Affilate Control Panel' and Manage > Content Units

Step 2. Select the desired Merchant.

Step 4. Publish your page and upload it to your server. and that is it.

It should be noted that this example is only the most basic use of the 'Products On Request Content Unit suite of tools. With a little more knowledge Affiliates can create their own units that combine product feeds from multiple Merchants to create truly unique content that is tailored to their audience. Indeed using our feeds system Affiliates can create entire sites that auto update content.