How do I start building my product data file?

In this article we set out how to structure your product data, which leads to better usability, better findability and higher conversion in your webshop. A solid data structure also makes large product sets far easier to manage and optimise.

Here are the topics we cover in this blog:

• How do I start building a product data file?

• Which specifications are relevant for my target audience?

• How do I build my product titles and descriptions?

• How do I make sure search engines index my products properly?

Which specifications are relevant for my target audience?

Once you have created the product data file and shared it with the people who will help fill in the product data, it is important to think carefully about your product set. This is the point where you need to decide which specifications are relevant for your specific products.

Questions you should ask yourself are:

• What do customers want to be able to filter on when browsing the website?

• Which product data does a customer want to see on the product detail page?

• Which specifications do I need internally?

• What do customers want to filter on?

Filters are the options that let visitors narrow down the number of products shown on a collection page. Imagine you run a clothing store and a customer opens a page with all the shoes. They are looking for a specific brand of shoe, and because you added the Brand specification to your product set, the customer can filter by the different brands. You could do the same with, for example, size, colour and material.

Which data do you want to show on the product detail page?

When a visitor views your product detail page, they are looking for more information about the product. Photography is obviously important here, but other specifications such as packaging options and shipping options are highly relevant too. If this varies per product, you can manage it by adding product specifications.

Which specifications do I want to use internally?

If you have a large product set and want to link different products to each other, you can do so by giving those products the same specification. You might also want to add data to a packing slip or pass information to a supplier per product. You can use your product specifications for that as well.

At Afosto we have put together a document with a number of guidelines for building the names of your specifications. Sticking to these guidelines ensures a clear structure when creating your different specifications. Especially when you work with a large number of products, it is important to maintain a clear structure so that when several people work on the same product set they follow the same approach and data structure.

You can download this PDF here:

Afosto specifications

How do I build my product titles and descriptions?

Once your product specifications are in good shape, you can easily build your product titles and descriptions based on them. In Google Sheets you can combine text from the different cells of your specifications to build relevant, high-quality product names.

An example of a good product name could be: [brand name] + [main category] + [colour] + [size]

Building your product titles this way gives you a nice, uniform overview of your products on the collection pages, while at the same time putting the relevant keywords for your products into their names. You do need to make sure every combination is unique, so in the example above you could choose to use the [subcategory] instead of the [main category], or another relevant specification.

The same essentially applies to your product descriptions. Once you have your specifications neatly built up, you can combine them into a nice description that is unique for each product while still containing the relevant data.

An example of a product description could be:

Order this [main category] from the brand [brand] in the colour [colour] easily via [webshop domain]. This product is also available in the colours [colours of linked products].

For questions about this product you can contact us via [link to contact].

How do I make sure my products are indexed properly by search engines?

You are not putting all this effort into building your product data for nothing; the goal is better usability and findability of your products. That is why it is important to make sure your products can also be found easily by search engines. This is what allows people who are looking for your products to actually find them.

Sitemap

A sitemap is a file in which you tell search engines (Google, Yahoo, Bing) which pages exist on your website. It is important that all your products are represented well here and that you add this sitemap to Google Search Console. Doing this makes it a lot easier for Google to crawl your website.

Structured Data

It is also important to tell Google, through so-called rich snippets, what the availability, price, description and images of your product are. Google has developed a handy tool for this, in which you can check which data is passed along as structured data.

By carrying out the steps above properly, you lay the foundation for a well-structured product data set that you will get a great deal of value from, both for internal and external use.

Afosto is a SaaS solution with the goal of helping its customers grow in the areas of e-commerce, order handling, product optimisation, inventory management and processing your shipments. If you are interested in what Afosto can do, you can request a demo of our system via this page.

Questions about product data

How do I start building my product data file?

The first step towards a solid product structure is setting up a product sheet with the relevant columns in it. We usually do this together with the customer using Google Sheets. This tool makes it easy to create a shareable spreadsheet in which you can work together to build a good dataset for your products.

Via this link you will find an example file for importing products into Afosto.

In this file you will find different columns in which the fields that are mandatory for Afosto are marked red and the product specifications are marked light blue. This file is the basis of your product set, and it is where you will add the relevant specifications for your specific article group.

What is a product description?

A product description provides important information about a product. It lets customers see exactly what the product is and whether they should buy it.

What makes a good product description?

A good product description should meet the following requirements. 1. Provide information that is actually correct (for example dimensions, colour, material, etc.). 2. Name the benefits of the product. 3. Let the product description address the customer personally. 4. Test your product descriptions. 5. Avoid overly long texts.