Awin feed for Shopify

Awin's product feed feature accepts one file format, CSV, where "CSV" means delimited text with a choice of comma, semi-colon, pipe or tab. The quoting rule is explicit: a field containing the delimiter must be enclosed by double quotes, and a field containing double quotes must have them doubled. The exporter does exactly this, so a comma in a description never breaks a row, and the file goes out in UTF-8 as Awin asks.

The header row is optional but rewarded: when your column titles match Awin's platform names, automatic mapping of the columns completes the setup for you. That sentence is the reason the template's headers are spelled Awin's way, column for column. Get them right and you never see the mapping screen. An XML form is still documented with a DTD, but Awin's own advice is to prefer CSV as less error-prone.

A hosted HTTPS URL is Awin's first-listed ingestion method: it downloads the file, samples the headers, scans for errors like delimiters and incorrectly formatted data, runs the column mapping (skipped when the headers already match) and then waits for the one thing a file cannot do: the category mapping in the UI. A first upload is a setup session, not a fire-and-forget URL.

After that, Awin fetches on your schedule of up to four times a day, recommending an update at least every 24 hours because conversion drops when a listed price no longer matches the site. Two things deserve attention: the fetch has a ten-minute timeout, and a scheduled feed that errors is unscheduled automatically. Feedflock's hourly regeneration keeps the file current, and its fetch tracking tells you the moment the downloads stop.

Unlike a comparison site, Awin publishes no category tree for you to adopt. merchant_category and merchant_product_category_path carry your own words (the Shopify product type and a breadcrumb like "Apparel > Clothing > Shirts"), and Awin's system attempts to map them to its internal tree automatically. Due to the number of different category structures, that is not always possible.

What is left unmapped becomes a UI task: you finish the mapping in Toolbox → My Product Feeds, and until you do, the feed health is amber with a named error. Feedflock fills both columns from your product types so the auto-mapping has clean, consistent strings to work with, but the final click in the Awin interface is one only you can make.

The price column is deliberately simple: a bare number like 110.00 or 6.88, with the three-letter ISO code in the currency column (blank falls back to the programme currency). One thing Awin never says, on any page, is whether the price is gross or net. The column carries whatever your shop charges, so keep it consistent with the prices publishers will quote.

Just as striking is what Awin does not check. EAN, GTIN, UPC and ISBN are all accepted with "we do not validate" attached, so a mistyped barcode is neither an error nor a warning, and nothing will tell you. And identity is unforgiving in the other direction: product_id is the key Awin builds its awID and affiliate deeplinks on, a duplicate keeps only the first row, and changing an id orphans every link a publisher already placed. Feedflock keeps the id on the Shopify variant id, which never changes and is never reused.