Products Overview
Products are the items or services that you might want to sell in your store. In Product Experience Manager, a product has a name, description, ID, and SKU. Products can also have additional attributes and associated rich media assets, such as product images or a file containing additional product details. If your store supports multiple languages, you can localize product names and descriptions.
Product data is stored in a database. After you add products, you can update product information, add images and other assets, and associate products with one or more hierarchy nodes. You can export the updated product information back to other business systems so that your organization sees a consistent view of products.
While defining products, the products are in a draft state. Your organization can develop the criteria and business processes to help determine when a product is ready to go live and appear in a catalog.
To appear in a catalog, a product must meet the following criteria:
- The product is live.
- The product is associated with at least one hierarchy.
- The catalog references a hierarchy that includes the product.
Product Templates
Templates are a collection of attributes. Attributes are grouped together to match a particular product type or to provide an input for other purposes, such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO) or product specification. For example, a Book template might contain the attributes, such as ISBN, Author, Number of pages, Year Published, or Condition (New/Used).
Product Attributes
Use attributes to define the characteristics of products in a store. For example, you can assign attributes such as, care instructions or fabric, to a shirt. When a shopper searches for a specific item, attributes help stores to return the products that match the search criteria. For example, when a shopper searches for a large blue shirt, all shirts that are large and blue are returned as the search result.
You can allow your shoppers to add custom text to a product when checking out their carts. This is useful, for example, if you have a product like a T-shirt that can be personalized. You can do this using the custom_inputs attribute when creating your products.
Once you have defined your custom inputs on a product, you must configure the custom inputs in your orders. See adding your products to carts.
For more information about adding attributes, see Add custom data to products.