Knowledge Base

Neto By Maropost

Products Overview

A product is an item that you sell through the various sales channels. They consist of product details, images, dimensions, prices, specifications and more. Products are managed through the Products > View Products menu in your control panel.

Product Anatomy

A typical webstore product will contain the following information:

Category
Brand and Product title
Price
Product images
Reviews
Upsell
Product Description
Cross Sell
SKU

Number	Name	Definition
1	Category	The way in which a product is categorised. To help your customers find what they are looking for, you will need to create a category tree that is easy to navigate. We recommend not exceeding three levels in your category tree. For example: Clothing > Men’s Clothing > Shirts
2	Brand and Product title	Identifies the product and brand name or manufacturer, and also acts as a page header. Occasionally, customers may search for a product by its model name/number, product ID, popular colours or configurations, and even by a name that the public in general uses (e.g. 'Kleenex' vs. 'tissues' or 'Chapstick' vs. 'lip balm'). Knowing what your customers are searching for can help when naming your products.
3	Price	The amount of money expected, required or given in payment for something. Before setting your pricing, it's best to determine the margins you expect to see from selling this item and conduct a competitor analysis to ensure you're ahead of the pack. Maropost Commerce has an add-on called Customer Groups which allows you to set different pricing for different customers (e.g. VIP Customers, Wholesale customers).
4	Product Images	Images highlighting the specific product. Human beings are overwhelmingly visual. The image you set for your product should be the 'hero' of the page. The main product image allows the customer to see exactly what they're buying, with the ability to zoom into the image when hovering their mouse over it. The alternative images underneath provide some additional views of the product being sold. Clicking on an image will open it up in a pop-up window. Further recommendations on product images are outlined here.
5	Reviews	Ratings and feedback provided by the customer about the product.
6	Upsell	Persuading the customer to buy additional items.
7	Product Description	Necessary information about the product. Resist the temptation of copying and pasting the manufacturer's product descriptions. Otherwise, your products will come off cold, impersonal, unloving. Remember, you are addressing real people and not robots. Write your copy in personal way that draws your customer in. If the resources are available, consider having your product information professionally designed with HTML/CSS, resulting in a polished and sharp look.
8	Cross Sell	Sell (a different product or service) to an existing customer.
	SKU (not shown)	(Stock Keeping Unit) An identification, usually alphanumeric, of a particular product that allows it to be tracked for inventory purposes. Typically, an SKU is associated with any purchasable item in a store or catalogue. Maropost Commerce supports importing of existing SKUs or can dynamically generate SKUs when creating new products.
	SKU specifics (not shown)	Properties of each product or SKU. These can be used to differentiate the variations or can be added to products to create filters (ways to narrow a search) on the website front end. An example of a 'specific' would be the variation (child) SKU 'SAMPLE_P2_2' has the specific 'colour' with the value 'Orange'. Specifics can be used to offer your customers ways to narrow their search.
	Quantity in stock (not shown)	Total quantity in stock for a specified warehouse. This field is used for stock take.
	Product SEO (not shown)	A title tag is the main text that describes an online document. It is the second most important on-page SEO element (the most important being overall content) and appears in three key places: browsers, search engine results pages, and external websites.

Product Types

Maropost Commerce supports four products types:

Regular Products: Individual or standalone products (e.g. a DVD, a table, a vase or a toy).
Variation Products: Products that are the same except for a specific feature (e.g. clothing, a T-shirt, bed sheets etc).
Kitted (or Bundled) Products: Groups of products sold together as a single product (e.g. hampers). Kits can either be standard (non-editable) or editable (a customisable product built from many components put together).
Electronic Gift Vouchers: An electronic voucher that can be sent to a recipient as a gift to purchase items from your Webstore or Point-of-Sale.

There is no limit to the number of products you can have in your Maropost Commerce product database. You can continually add, update and remove products using the Maropost Commerce Content Management System (CMS).

Product Filters

When working with products, you can filter products by many different ways, such as:

SKU
Brand
Product Name
Stock on hand
Status
eBay template
Model
From dollar amount / To dollar amount
By Content/Category
Sort By: SKU, Active, Price Group and more.

To create saved filters:

In your Maropost Commerce control panel navigate to Products > View Products and click the down arrow button on the right hand side of the search filter.
Select the filter options and click Apply Advanced Filter button.
If you use the filter regularly, you can save the filter for later use by clicking on the Custom Filters button and click Save Current Filter. This filter will appear under Products in your Maropost Commerce control panel.

Specifics and Variations

Variations are individual products that are differentiated by specific features. For example, a t-shirt may be sold in different sizes, like small, medium or large. These products are related to each other through parent / child relationships. The main product (shoes) called the parent product and the variations (small, medium or large) are called children. The feature that differentiates the children from each other is the variation specific.

In the example below the parent SKU is 217 and the children are 217_1798, 217_1799 and 217_1800.

This will display as one product on your website with buying options available from a drop down menu.

Specifics are the properties of each product or SKU. These can be used to differentiate between the variations, or can be added to products to create filters (ways to narrow a search) on the website front end.

In the example below the variation (child) SKU 2968_chocnut has the specific Flavour with the value Chocolate and Nuts.

Specifics can be used to offer your customers ways to narrow their search and will be visible on the front end.

In short, variations are the products, and specifics are the unique qualities that differentiate between the products.

Product Add-ons

Your Maropost Commerce control panel will contain only the basic required product fields to get you started. This functionality can be extended through the use of add-ons available in the Maropost Commerce add-on store:

Some popular Product Add-ons are:

Product Options: Adds Non-inventoried extras you offer your customer’s at the point of purchase. For example, the option to pay for gift wrapping or enter a gift message.
PDF Brochure Upload: Adds the ability to upload PDF brochures to your products. Customers can then download the brochures from the product pages.
Advanced Product Descriptions: Expands the number of product description fields available, including Short Description, Features, Specifications, Terms & Conditions.
Multilevel Pricing: Allows you to offer discounts for customers ordering products in greater quantities. You can set customised price levels based on the quantity ordered.

You can install product add-ons at any timely selecting Addons from the left hand menu.

Product Options - Gift Wrapping Example

Tip: You will need to install the Product Options Add-On before you can create a Gift Message option for a product.

You can give customers the option to add Gift Wrapping, a Gift Message or Other Non-Inventoried Options to a product they order by adding “Extra Options” to the product.

In your Maropost Commerce control panel navigate to Products > View Products.
Select the Product you want to add the Gift Message to.
Scroll down to the Extra Options section.
Add a new option by clicking the Add Product Option button.

Popular and Trending Products

Popular or trending products are determined by the amount of products sold through your store. By default these will appear highest in the ‘Most Popular’ default sort order.

Sort Order	Description
Most Popular	Quantity sold over the last 7 days in descending order of sort order, model, brand
Trending	Quantity sold over the last 7 days in descending order of sort order, model, brand
Top Sellers	All time top sellers in descending order of sort order, model, brand