What does it take to build a good and valuable Rich Card?
When you start working on setting up an online store, you need to collect information about the products you intend to sell. This is information such as:
- product name
- product photo gallery
- basic product description
- product specification
- producer
- product type
- product flags e.g: NOVELTY, PROMOTION
- product tags
- Product attributes e.g: COLOR, SIZE, WORKMANSHIP, FABRIC, HEEL HEIGHT
- Cross Sell and Up Sell related products
In addition, there are product variants:
- size
- manufacturer’s price suggested
- actual selling price
- SKU code
- EAN Code
- variant picture
At this point, we start to think about how to collect and manage this information. At the beginning we probably use some files in EXCEL and collect photos in folders on the local disk.
This is not a bad solution, everyone probably started their e-commerce adventure this way, but what if we already have 100 or 1000 of these products? How do you manage these products and effectively supplement product information? Even if it doesn’t cause me any problems, how to transfer the collected data to the e-commerce system?
How to store valuable product information in Shopify?
You have already collected product data, you plan to build valuable product pages in your future store, you have chosen the Shopify environment and started editing in the data administration panel of the first product – at this point you notice that something is missing. In Shopify you do not see boxes for additional descriptions, there is no possibility to add product attributes, there are no links between products. Then, how is it done in other stores?
This is where the additional METAFIELDS fields come in, which in Shopify allow you to expand the possibilities of the whole system. To edit them, you need to install additional applications to edit METAFIELDS.
Well, we have already got the data in EXCEL, the METAFIELDS application installed and we are starting to add the product. We create the name, copy the description, add photos to the gallery, create product variants, set the manufacturer, price, stock, EAN and SKU codes. Then we go to the application to METAFIELDS, create the keys and save the values of our additional descriptions and product attributes in them.
We succeeded, we created the first product, we looked at the watch and the whole process lasted from 10 to 20 minutes, and we have already spent about 15 minutes collecting data in EXCEL, and there are still 1000 products ahead of us…Do others also work like this ? Every 6 months a new collection of 1000 new products comes in, the season will end before we can play them… How do others do it?
Using Akeneo PIM to manage product data.
To effectively and quickly manage, add, treat product information, use the PIM system, and Akeneo’s PIM is the best solution. Even if we have had everything prepared in EXCEL so far, once the sheets have been properly formatted, we can easily import the corrupted data into Akeneo and further process it there. Many people can work on the product data at the same time and the validation mechanisms in Akeneo will show us products with incomplete data.
Akeneo’s integration into Shopify
We have correct product information management using Akeneo’s PIM. So how will this data appear to us in Shopify? Here a ready-made integrator comes in handy, so that all the data that has been tampered with Akeneo will be available in Shopify. The integrator will create new products or update existing ones, set up collections and assign products to them. The integrator will also add photos to the gallery or create and complete METAFIELDS fields or tags with data.
Time to market
Success, now that we have Akeneo integration with Shopify. Adding 1000 new products to the store will take us a few minutes (not weeks), and preparing product information will be more efficient, richer and error-free. With reliable and comprehensive product information, our customers will be able to make a quicker purchase decision and will strongly reduce possible returns due to incorrect product descriptions.
