Your product catalog is more than just a list of items; it’s the backbone of your online presence and the engine that powers dynamic experiences for your customers. For Bazaarvoice clients, a well-structured and meticulously maintained product catalog is especially vital. It ensures that your valuable user-generated content (UGC)—like ratings, reviews —submitted and displayed flawlessly for its respective products.
At Bazaarvoice, our systems rely on your product catalog as the definitive source of truth for all product-related information. Whether you’re updating your catalog via a feed or by uploading an Excel file directly to the Bazaarvoice portal, adhering to a few best practices will unlock the full potential of your UGC program.
Let’s explore the key elements to focus on for an optimal product catalog:
1. The Power of a Precise Product Name
The product name is arguably the most critical piece of information in your catalog. It’s how your customers identify items on your site, and it’s equally important for our hosted display solutions and APIs.
Best Practice: Always ensure every product in your catalog has a clear, accurate, and consistent product name. This enables our APIs to retrieve and display product information correctly, ensuring that your reviews and ratings are always associated with the right item and appear prominently on your product pages. A complete product name allows for a rich, informative display that enhances the customer journey.
2. The Clarity of Consistent Category Information
Categories help organize your products and, by extension, your UGC. They allow customers to filter, browse, and discover content relevant to specific product types.
Best Practice: Assign every product to a valid and appropriate category ID within your catalog. Furthermore, ensure that the category names associated with these IDs are consistently provided and accurate. Proper category data facilitates seamless content submission by guiding user contributions to the correct product groupings. It also empowers your customers with intuitive navigation and filtering options on your hosted display solutions, making it easier for them to find the reviews that matter most to them.
3. Naming Conventions for Optimal Integration
Beyond simply having a name and category, the format of these identifiers can significantly impact how smoothly our systems process and display your data.
Best Practice: For product and category IDs, it’s highly recommended to use only hyphens (-) and underscores (_) as separators for multi-word identifiers. Avoid spaces, plus signs (+), and other HTML characters (like &, <, >, etc.). For a comprehensive list of HTML characters and their entities, you can refer to resources like the W3C HTML Entities list. This practice ensures compatibility across various systems and prevents potential encoding issues when data is transferred via APIs, leading to more robust and predictable data flow.
Your Catalog: The Core
Your product catalog information, securely housed within the Bazaarvoice database, is the ultimate source of truth for all your product data. By ensuring its accuracy and completeness, you establish a strong foundation that empowers every Bazaarvoice service you utilize.
When you consistently provide precise product ID, product names, category ID and valid category names in your catalog—whether through feeds or direct Excel uploads—you actively contribute to:
- Seamless Display: Ensuring all your products and their rich UGC are accurately visible and attributed across Bazaarvoice display solutions and your website (if using our APIs).
- Smooth Submissions: Guaranteeing that new reviews are submitted flawlessly and effortlessly linked to the correct products and categories.
- Enhanced Data Integrity: Building a clean, reliable dataset that drives superior analytics and insights.
By embracing these best practices in your product catalog management, you empower your Bazaarvoice solutions to deliver the most impactful and engaging experiences for your customers, ultimately driving trust and conversions.