10 Practical Ways to Improve Bad Supplier Content for Your eCommerce Site

May 7

When your online store relies on supplier data feeds, you inherit more than just products—you inherit their problems. Inconsistent formatting, missing values, keyword-stuffed descriptions, and outright misinformation are common. And when you’re pulling in thousands of products across categories, those problems scale fast.

1. Audit Everything at Ingestion

Never assume a feed is clean. Start with a baseline audit:

SELECT COUNT(*) AS total,
       COUNT(CASE WHEN ProductName IS NULL THEN 1 END) AS missing_names,
       COUNT(CASE WHEN Description LIKE '%<%' THEN 1 END) AS html_in_description
FROM SupplierFeed

2. Flag and Score Suppliers Based on Data Quality

Track feed issues and build a scoring system to monitor and negotiate supplier expectations.

3. Normalize the Basics with Scripts

Standardize category labels, brands, and units:

UPDATE SupplierFeed
SET SizeNormalized = CASE 
  WHEN Size LIKE '1L' THEN '1000 ml'
  WHEN Size = 'Litre' THEN '1000 ml'
  WHEN Size = 'L' THEN '1000 ml'
  ELSE Size
END

4. Apply a Multi-Model Consensus AI Cleanup Layer

Use several AI models and compare their results to reduce hallucinations and enhance trust in your output.

5. Detect and Strip Out Marketing Junk

SELECT ProductID, Description
FROM SupplierFeed
WHERE Description LIKE '%best in class%' OR
      Description LIKE '%top rated%' OR
      Description LIKE '%industry leading%'

6. Write Bullet Points that Don't Suck

Reduce clutter by limiting to 4–5 plain-language bullets per product and eliminate duplicates programmatically.

7. Identify “Dead” Products Early

SELECT ProductID
FROM SupplierFeed
WHERE DATEDIFF(day, LastUpdated, GETDATE()) > 365

8. Create a Secondary Enrichment Layer

Build a custom overlay system that adds or overrides fields like keywords, weight, and alt-text.

9. Handle Disagreements with Context Rules

Prioritize specific fields from better suppliers and reconcile differences with validation logic.

10. Test and Measure the Impact

Monitor performance metrics like CTR, conversions, and bounce rates after content updates.

Final Thoughts

Start small, automate, and iterate. The return on content cleanup is real and measurable.

Mike Mooney