Data Feed¶
The structure of the information sent to eSales 4 is an integral part of the integration and has a major impact of the quality of the results in many aspects. It has impact on search ability, visualization, and performance, as well as flexibility when it comes to merchandising tasks.
This section includes:
- Best practices - Best practices and guidelines for the content of the feed.
- The Format Specification - The details and syntax of the data feed format.
- Validating the feed - How validate the data feed.
- Scheduling the feed - How to set up continuous updates of the feed.
Improve the data feed creation
Read through both the Guidelines as well as the Format Specification prior to building the data feed.
Make sure both the integrating party as well as the retailer understands the data requirements and guidelines.
Concepts¶
The data feed is in short comprised of product data. How eSales handles the data feed depends on the feed operations included in the XML-file that is imported.
An online fashion retailer sells articles in different colors and styles, in different sizes. To describe an article and its properties, eSales 4 utilises a model with three levels.
The first level is the product group (the overall article), the second level is the product (the color or style), and the third level is the variant (the size/SKU). The product is what is shown in a search result. Consider the image below where the different type of tops are product groups, the colors of the different types are the products, and the sizes of the products are the variants.
The properties of the articles, i.e. the product attributes, are also segmented. Overarching properties such as brand and department are at the product group level, while attributes such as images and material are at the product level. Attributes as size, price, cost, and availability are at the variant level.
Content items enable visitors to search for content on the site, such as FAQs, shipping and contact information.
A market can be view as what separates product and behavior data for sites with multiple languages. The data import and the attribute modification operates on the market defined in the data feed.