A while back we did a review of our merchant datafeeds to see how consistent product image sizes are from one merchant to the next.  The results were less than impressive.  There were huge variations in both width and height for small (a.k.a. thumb/thumbnail) and large images between merchants, and in some cases within single merchant datafeeds.

For those of you affiliates who build cross- or multi-merchant solutions this likely comes as no surprise – it’s always been that way, right?

Well, we talked over the results internally and decided we weren’t satisfied with maintaining the status quo any longer.  So we began building a solution that would let us scale (resize) product imagery as part of our normal datafeed processing, resulting in feeds that more closely resemble our standard recommendations, namely:

• Small Images – 100×100 pixels
• Medium Images – 200×200 pixels
• Large Images – 300×300 pixels

But part-way through implementing this, it was brought to our attention that our standard recommendations don’t quite suit everyone perfectly, and that there might be some value in allowing affiliates to have some say in the matter.  To that end, we’d like to announce the ability of affiliates to configure their own datafeed image preferences.

If you log in as an affiliate at AvantLink.com, and go to the “Account” page you’ll see a new link to the “Datafeed Image Preferences” page.  From there you can set up how you’d like to see product images, either for your entire affiliate account or individually for specific websites.  Take a look at the following screen shot to get a better idea of what’s available:

For each of the three image sizes (small, medium, and large) you can specify whether to leave the image as we supply it, or to modify it to fit your desired width/height/image type (.png, .jpg, or .gif) preferences.  Additionally, in the case where you have custom processes in place that work best with the original/unmodified image directly from the merchant, you can choose to include that information in your raw datafeed files (or substitute it in place of the normal large image).

It is important to realize that the preferences you configure apply only to product imagery from merchant datafeeds, and can affect the following tools:

• Raw Datafeed Files
• Web Service Datafeed Client
• RSS Product Feeds
• Product Ad Widget
• Product Display Builder
• Additional Product Content Widget
• ProductSearch API

Ad/Link tools (e.g. merchant banner ads) and Dynamic Coupon/Deal tools (e.g. Deal of the Day) are not affected by these settings.

Changes to your image preferences take effect immediately across AvantLink.  So something as simple as a grid-formatted product search request will show an improvement on the very next request once you’ve implemented standard image preferences of your own.  Note that there is no HTML image sizing involved in the screenshots below; the product images are all being displayed at their native sizes:

Product Search API Results – Default, “as-is” product imagery

Product Search API Results – Standardized product imagery

Of course, we’re going to continue working with merchants to improve the quality and standardization of their datafeeds from our end as well.  We want to to provide the cleanest, most usable datafeeds – by default – in the industry.  We are the datafeed people, after all.

Questions and comments are always appreciated.  Let us know what you think!

-David & AvantLink