BesteKauf.de feed for Shopify

BesteKauf.de's model is the simplest possible transport: the feed lives on your server at a public URL, and their crawler fetches it, four times a day on the default schedule, at least once. There is no upload form, no SFTP and no authentication anywhere in the manual; the example URL is plain http.

Feedflock hosts the file on a stable URL and regenerates it on your schedule, as often as every hour, so each of those four daily fetches sees current prices and stock. What the URL must never do is change silently: Compare Group asks to be informed upfront about any new location or structure, by e-mail to partner@bestekauf.de or your account manager.

BesteKauf.de links your offer to its product catalog by EAN first and by SKU with brand second. Compare Group's SKU means the manufacturer part number (MPN), not your internal code. The name is deliberately kept out of pairing: it should be unique, and it should contain neither the brand nor promotional text.

Because every variant is a separate offer, the variant belongs in the name so two sizes never collide, and variantGroup (the Shopify product id in Feedflock's default) ties them back together. Your category text is the fallback matcher: your own breadcrumb, as specific and as close to the BesteKauf.de tree as you can make it. Compare Group publishes a German tree of about 3,500 categories, roughly half the size of the Dutch and Finnish ones, purely as a target to aim at.

Every price in the feed is gross and in euro: “49.00”, never “49”, “49,00” or “€49.00”, however natural the German comma feels. The schema enforces the shape (a decimal greater than zero with exactly two decimals or none), and there is no net-price or VAT element anywhere in the format.

For promotions you rarely need more than Shopify's compare-at price: mapped to originalPrice, it makes BesteKauf.de create and display a deal automatically. And if you sell by weight or volume, units plus unit (from a closed list of fourteen, ml to kg) let Compare Group calculate the unit price itself, a pair Germany requires for categories like food, beverages and perfume.

Compare Group is unusual among comparison sites: delivery is described per offer, repeatable, and without a single carrier name. A shippingOption says where (a country code: DE for this storefront, legal since Compare Group widened its schema to the twelve countries it operates in), how fast (a free-text delivery time: “1 day”, and “2-3 days is better than 2-7 days”), which mode (delivery to door, same-day express or in-store pickup) and at what total price including VAT.

Because 0.00 is a claim of free delivery, Feedflock writes no shippingOption at all until you set a delivery time and price; Shopify has neither per product. Fill them in: Compare Group names delivery times among the factors that decide how many clicks your offers receive.