Create a Product

This article explains how to view and create products in CommerceTools.

Contents

• Find products
• Add a product
• General information
• Product attributes
• Variants
• Search and SEO
• Pricing
• Tier discounts
• Product selection
• Images

Product overview

In CommerceTools all existing Products can be viewed in a list overview. Before creating a new product, it may be a good idea to view similar existing products. Keeping in mind naming conventions and not creating product names that maybe easily confused with each other.

Product List - Navigation

To view existing products in CommerceTools, in the main left menu pane hover over Products and select product list.

Search Bar and Filters

You will be redirected to the product list view page. Using the search bar you can find products by name, description, SKU, slug, product key or variant key. You may also toggle to only search in one of the fields by selecting one in the dropdown on the left of the search bar.

The filter pane, which can be hidden and un-hidden by pressing the Filters button directly to the right of search bar.

There are numerous filters that can be applied simultaneously to refine your search with fun parameters, like category or Date modified.

Product List - View

The product list will in turn display the products that match the search term and filter parameters. It can be sorted by selecting the column headers such as name, key, status (published/unpublished) etc.

Add a Product

To add a Product, hover above the Products option on the left menu pane and select Add product.

You will be redirected to a product creation page where there are several steps to complete to add a product.

Step 1 Select a product type

In this example the Base food supplement type is selected, as this is the product type for most of the offered products in our web shops.

After making a selection click Next on the bottom bar to proceed.

Step 2 Add general information

In this step the basic product information is configured, such as its name, description, Pricing mode, tax category and Product siblings. Products can also be linked to relevant categories in this step. As well as additional (optional) attributes.

General Information

Product Name

This is a mandatory field, the product name can be defined for the different locales/languages. Click show all languages to get a dropdown menu. The product name corresponds with Product group in Coltan.

Product description

This is where you can give a description in different languages for the product. This is not a mandatory field.

Product Key

This is where the product gets its key. You must leave it empty because it is set automatically after saving.

Product price Mode

It is best practice to use Embedded Prices.

CommerceTools provides the following information about this field:

A product can have Embedded prices and Standalone prices at the same time. This field determines the price used at the time of checkout.

• Embedded prices allow you to store up to 100 prices per product variant.
• Standalone prices allow you to store up to 50 000 prices per product variant

The Product price mode field is a default field implemented by CommerceTools itself. It is not really used by Vision Healthcare yet.

Tax category

This is where you set a Tax category. You can choose between exempt, reduced, standard. For most food supplements the reduced category applies but it differs from country to country.

Product Category

Link the product to any existing category. This can also be done after the product is created. Click the button to open the categories pop-up. Here you can search for and select existing categories to connect to the product.

Categories are linked to products on this page: you can add one or more categories. They cannot be set the other way around.

Product Attributes

Product Attributes contain information that should be known by logistics and data managers.

Product Short names

The name that will be displayed in the buybox when the product is a sibling of another product.

Product Siblings

Siblings are displayed in the buybox as closely related products, when clicked the customer will navigate to the product page of the sibling. More information on Siblings: Product Siblings.

Reporting brand

Used for BI business reports. This categorization is only used for internal reporting and segmentation purposes. It is not referring to the brand of the store, but rather the brand of the product.

Reporting Category

Product categorization used for datacube and tracking. Important for Tableau reports.

Intrastat code

The Intrastat code is an 8-digit code to divide goods into categories. Intrastat codes are also called commodity codes or HS codes. You can search for the relevant code with a keyword.

Click Next on the bottom bar to proceed.

Variant Information

Every product must have a minimum of one variant. For example, a product may come in bottles of 60 caps or 120 caps. Such a product would then have two variants within the same product.

Click Add variant to open the variant creation pane. On this pane there are several required fields which must be filled in, they are specified by a red asterisk.

Filter attribute fields

On the top right side of the variant creation pane there are some configurable filter options and a search bar. Use this to adjust what is visible on the screen or to quickly find a specific field.

SKU & Variant Key

The SKU number must be manually added, it must be the same across all systems: CommerceTools, Coltan, Hygraph, logistics systems, etc.

Leave the Variant Key Empty, it is auto generated when saving the Variant.

International Article Number (EAN)

Required field. This number is provided by the supplier or logistics company and is used when products are being sold on Amazon for example.

Variant name

Required field. This is where you fill in the variant name. If the product name is ‘Vitamin D 50 microgram’, the variant name could be ‘Vitamin D 50 microgram 120 caps’.

When applicable you may fill in a name for each localized language, but only EN is required.

Cost Price – Purchase Price

Required field. Fill in the cost price of the product, that is the total price excluding VAT that VHC pays to produce or purchase the product variant. Use the drop down to select valuta.

This is not the price for which the product is sold on the website, that is set in a different field: See the Price section of this article.

Subscription Interval

If the variant you are creating will be a subscription, you must select an interval. By using the + icon you can select multiple subscription intervals.

Ignore the sentence that states this feature is not yet in production. More information about Subscription variants: Subscription Variant.

Unit form

Required field. Select the correct categorization of the product, this field specifies the localized Enum specifying the form factor of the product variant.

Units per package

Required field. Enter the amount of units that the variant will contain.

Units per serving

Required field. Enter a value for the recommended amount of units a customer needs to ingest per serving. For example use 2 if: “take 2 capsules 3 times a day”.

Measurement unit

Required field. Select an Enum that stores the unit of measurement, which can be either grams or milliliters. Used for Intrastat and price per measurement calculations (EUR 5/kg).

Measurement value

Required field. A numeric field that stores measurement value, in either grams or milliliters as indicated by Measurement unit field.

Frequency per period

Enter in the frequency value for the recommended dosage.

Period in days

When all the required fields have been entered press the Save button on the bottom bar.

You can navigate back to the variant list of the product you are creating by selecting to variant list link in the top left corner of the variant creation pane.

Here you can view the already created variants, as well as adding more variants.

You can create a copy of the already created product variant by hovering the cursor over the initial variant and selecting the icon that appears on the right-side variant list.

Retired – Variant is recurring

This is a retired product configuration, the variant is recurring field was used to determine if a variant was a subscription. For new product configurations please now use the Subscription Interval field to configure a variant to be a subscription.

For more information about subscription variants: Subscription Variant.

Optional fields

There are several optional fields that only apply to certain tenants or regions.

PZN

The Pharma-zentral-nummer (PZN) is a numeric code assigned to pharmaceutical products in Germany. When applicable this number must be filled-in in this field.

Required space in box

This field is only used for Flinndal and VOR products unit to calculate how many of these items fit in a letterbox package (brievenbuspakketje). If none filled in will default to 1.

Product Discount

One of the many ways that a discount can be applied to a specific variant of a product. The drop down displays existing product discounts.

If optional fields have been filled in don’t forget to press the Save button on the bottom bar.

Once all the necessary variants have been created, proceed to the next step using the navigation buttons on the bottom bar.

Internal & external search information

In this step the internal website keyword search and SEO settings are configured.

Internal store product search

In this section you can select keywords that will determine the display of the product in the results of the website searchbar.

For each localized language different keywords may be entered. When you click on the i icon you get more information about how the tokenizer works. A tokenizer is the rule used to split up a search keyword to improve auto suggestions and search results for that keyword.

The use of internal keyword search is optional and can be reconfigured after the initial product creation.

External Search Engine Optimization (SEO)

SEO configuration takes place in Hygraph, the required fields must still be filled in, to be able to save the product, however, it will be the information entered and published in Hygraph that will ultimately be used. To improve the SEO for this product, set the slug, give the product's web page an appropriate name and describe the product in detail.

URL slug

Required field. The URL slug is a user-friendly way to generate the product page URL. Slugs substitute system generated product IDs in the website page URL.

This URL slug must be unique and may only contain between 2 and 256 alphanumeric characters, underscores, or hyphens. They cannot include white spaces or special characters like ñ, ü, #, %.

Meta title

A meta title is the clickable headline that appears in search engine results pages (SERPs). It’s also shown in browser tabs and when your page is shared on social media.

Meta description

Is a short summary of a webpage’s content that appears below the meta title in SERPs and in social media previews.

Then click Save and the product is created and searchable in the product list.

You will receive a confirmation pop-up in the top right hand corner of the screen.

The created product is still missing a number of configurations and must still be manually published before it can become visible on the website. After being created a product will by default have the Unpublished status.

Pricing

Pricing of products must be configured per variant, this allows the base product to be sold in different forms, for example, as a subscription. Currently, for the sync with Coltan to work correctly a base Euro embedded price must be created, even if the product will never be sold in euros. Furthermore, a base price for each currency must exist without any specification of sales channel.

Navigate back to the product list and search for and select the created product. Then navigate to the Variants tab.

Here you will see the variants that you had previously created. However, you may at this time, or at a later time, come back and add, or change, variants and add or change their respective prices or other configurations.

Select a variant from the list and navigate the Prices tab and select Add embedded price.

Here there are three sections that can be configured.

Price information

In the first section the price, currency and constraints for the selected variant itself can be configured.

Price Key

The price key which is set automatically on saving. It must be left empty. It is a unique identifier which can be referenced in code or in discount logic.

Price

Using the drop down select the currency and fill in the price. Product prices containing sub-cents are labelled as 'High Precision Prices'. A price of high precision uses a higher amount of fraction digits, than the normal cent precision that a currency allows. This is useful especially for products with very low unit prices (e.g EUR 0,019). Price tiers can also be defined as high precision prices.

Once a price has been set, and through one way or another the variant falls under a product discount (e.g. because it is a subscription variant), the discounted price will be automatically calculated and displayed directly next to the main price.

If no product discount applies the Discounted price field will look like this.

Price constraints

There are various ways to specify when a price is valid for a variant, this enables, under the specified conditions, for a product variant to have different prices, depending on, for instance, where, when or to whom it is being displayed. Multiple constraints can be applied to a price.

Country

From the dropdown menu select a specific market for which this price is for.

Customer group

Limit the price to specific group who will be displayed this price. From the drop down menu select an existing customer group.

Channel

When a price only applies to certain channel this must be configured here, make the appropriate selection from the available channels. For instance; this is where it is specified that the price is for a subscription variant.

Date Validity

Enter a date range that determines if the price should be active for only a set period.

Recurrent interval

If the product has one or more subscription intervals configured, a pricing constraint can be specified.

Once a currency, price and any additional constraints have been configured press the save button.

Repeat this for all required currencies and variants.

Tier discounts

Tier discounts enable an increasing discount percentage based on the quantity of a product in a customer’s cart. It is the best practice for setting up a new product and should not be confused with Tier Pricing.

The tier discount setup is already preconfigured in CommerceTools, it uses multiple product discounts, which are in turn connected to a category, that finally is applied to the product. All you must do is to apply the category to a product.

Applying Tier Discounts to a product

Navigate to the product and in the General tab, within the General information section, underneath Product key, the Product Categories section is found.

Click the Add categories button and the Add categories selection pane will open. Here search for and select the Tier Discount category you want to add to the product and press save.

You will then see the categories that have been applied to the product on the general tab.

More information about Tier discounts: Tier Discounts.

Website Buybox

When a product is added to a tier discounts category, the system 'knows' that it should be connected to all the discounts that are linked to it. This is reflected on the website, on the product detail page’s buybox, it will automatically reflect the tiers that are determined by the logic of the discounts linked to the category.

Product Selection

The product selection functionality determines product and variant availability across specific storefronts.

Configuration

The Product Selections tab is found on the product overview page.

By clicking the + Assign variants to a product selection button a selection box appears on the screen where you can determine the assignment.

First select a storefront from the left dropdown.

Then make a choice as to which selection logic you would like to use.

• All variants — Include all variants of the product
• Only the following variants — Include specific SKUs
• All variants with SKU values except — Exclude specific SKUs

When choosing the two latter options, a secondary search drop-down field appears, where you may choose from the product’s available variant SKUs.

Each individual Product selection must be saved before proceeding, by pressing the save button on the bottom bar.

Here is an example of all three.

Primary and Tier Images

The primary image and tier images of a product is uploaded in CommerceTools, whereas all subsequent images are uploaded in Hygraph.

The primary image of a product is displayed when the customer visits a PDP (Product Display Page).

The image of the Master Variant in CommerceTools is used for product tiles, which are displayed in the search bar, search result pages, category pages, sliders, etc.

The primary image is uploaded in CommerceTools on each individual variant of a product. Navigate to the image tab and click Add an Image.

Another pane will appear where an image can be uploaded.

Non-primary images are uploaded via Hygraph and are not part of the CommerceTools product configuration.

For products that are sold in 2, 3, 4, 5 or 6-fold. To configure a primary image of those different tiers you need to upload different primary images in CommerceTools. See example screenshot below.

We have a separate article on configuring these Tier Images: Tier Images.

Coltan Synchronization

For correct synchronization to Coltan, a product requires a EUR price and tax category/VAT added in CommerceTools. These are mandatory fields for a product entry in Coltan and if those fields are missing, the product does not get synchronized correctly to Coltan. Even if the product will only be sold in the Nordics or Switzerland, Coltan still needs EUR.

Product states

When creating a product, it will by default have an unpublished state. It will not become visible unless it has been manually published. Also, after saving any change made to a product or variant the product state will become modified, and you must publish the product to push change to the website, it will then receive a Published State.

Related articles and further reading

• Official CommerceTools documentation: https://docs.commercetools.com/merchant-center
• Products documentation: https://docs.commercetools.com/merchant-center/products
• Comprehensive discount documentation: https://docs.commercetools.com/merchant-center/discounts-overview
• Cart Discount documentation: https://docs.commercetools.com/api/projects/cartDiscounts
• Discount Predicates: https://docs.commercetools.com/api/predicates/predicate-operators
• Carts and Orders overview: https://docs.commercetools.com/api/carts-orders-overview#line-items-and-custom-line-items