CSV Import / Export

Parent Reference - This is the main reference code of the product.

Child Reference - This is the reference code (SKU) of the different product variations, such as colour and size. If a product has no child products, a child reference must still be provided. In this case, you can make the child reference the same as the parent reference.

Parent Product Title - This is the main title of the product, such as “Dog Watch”.

Child Product Title - This is the title of the different variations of the product, such as “Dog Watch with Black Leather Strap”.

Product Summary - This is a brief summary of the product that should outline key information about it. The simplest way to display the product summary is by turning it into a set of bullet points. You can do this by making sure each point is on a new line in your import file. During the import process, we can convert those new lines to bullet points. If you need more information on how to do this, please see the Enabling Advanced Options guidance within the CSV Import section.

Product Description - This should provide a more detailed explanation of the product. You can elaborate on the points mentioned in the product summary. When writing this, consider any questions that could be asked about the product and include the answers in your description.

Manufacturer - This is the manufacturer or brand of the product that should be mentioned. If a product doesn’t belong to a certain brand, it is recommended that you create a brand with your company name. All products without a brand should be put into this brand for SEO and Google Shopping purposes.

Categories - The Categories column of the CSV helps the admin indicate which department products will show in on your site. For example, a shirt may live in the category ‘Ladies > Shirts’. The symbol ‘>’ indicates if the product lives in a subcategory. If a product lives in more than one category on the site, each category needs to be separated by a comma. For example, ‘Ladies > Shirts, Ladies > Tops’. Please note that if you have trailing ‘,’ or ‘>’ characters, this will stop the import from finishing.

Attributes - An attribute is a variation/option that products come in. These can be shown as a drop-down menu or swatches on your website and are presented as choices a customer will need to make when buying that product. Example attributes could be; Colour, Size, Length, Width, Ring Size and Dimension. In your CSV, each attribute should be in its own column, as demonstrated in the image below. The word in brackets is what the option group name will be called on your website. The content that you put in the cell in that column will create the information in the drop-down list/swatch box for the customer to pick from.

Open

An example of a colour and size attribute applied to a product

Price - This is the price of the product. You can also assign a VAT status to it in the header of the column by doing either ‘Price (INC VAT)’ or ‘Price (EX VAT)’.

Sale Price - This is the price customers will pay for the product when they make a purchase. If the product isn’t on sale (is not reduced), the sale price should be the same as the normal price. Like the normal price, you can also assign a VAT status to it in the header of the column by doing either ‘Sale Price (INC VAT)’ or ‘Sale Price (EX VAT)’. Please note that both the price and sale price are mandatory fields, even if the product isn’t on sale.

RRP Price - This is the price which product manufacturers would recommend products to be sold at.

Cost Price - This is what you paid for the product. This is not visible to the public.

Tax Rate/VAT Rate - This is the amount of VAT that should be applied to the product. This will not automatically change the price or sale price column so you will need to factor this in when you calculate your prices.

Stock Value - This is the number of units you have in stock. Each time the product is purchased, the number is decreased from the stock value until it reaches 0, at which point the product is then no longer able to be purchased. We understand that certain businesses offer products that have an infinite number of stock. In this case, you can enter “-1” which will tell the system to never deduct from the stock value.

Tag Groups - Tag Groups act as filters on your website and are a way for customers to search for products on your site by filtering the category view. These work similarly to attributes, in that each Tag Group needs its own column. If your product falls into multiple tags in the same group, these need to be comma-separated, as seen below.

Open

Product Sashes - Product Sashes help your products stand out from others and should be used to highlight new products or products that are on sale. The CSV file won’t create these sashes for you, only link a product to a sash. Product Sashes need to be created in the admin before running the import as it will error if it’s trying to assign a sash that doesn’t exist.

Stock Messages - Our default stock message is “Usually dispatched in 24 hours” unless you have specified that this should be different. Much like product sashes, these need to be created in the admin before running the import.

Parent/Child Active - Inputting a simple ‘Y’ or ‘N’ column to decide if you want to show the product on the site or not. ‘Y' will be shown, 'N’ will not.

Barcodes - Types of barcode are ISBN (International Standard Book Number), EAN (European Article Number), MPN (Manufacturer Part Number), UPC (Universal Product Code).

Model Number - The model number of the product (if applicable).

Available on Website - Use either a ‘Y’ or ‘N’ - This is useful if you wish to import a set of products but not have them show on the website. For example, you may be setting up a new range of products and wish to hide them until the launch date.

Display on Sale Page - Use either a ‘Y’ or ‘N’ - This determines whether or not the product will show on the sale page. By default, any product on sale will show on the sale page but in certain cases, you may wish to prevent a product from showing.

Meta Title - The meta title is an important factor in the structure of a product page by giving search engines, such as Google, information that tells it what the page is actually for. Having well-structured titles means potentially more clicks onto your website and therefore, potentially more sales.

Meta Description - The meta description is used as a way for the website to pass over a snippet of the product page content to a search engine so that it can be shown along with the meta title. Whilst not important for ranking, it’s a good way of getting user click-through. It’s important to not overpopulate the meta description so try and avoid flooding it with information that isn’t all that useful.

Upselling - This column can be used to link products to other products. One example of this is if you sell a coat, you may wish to upsell a hat, a pair of gloves, a scarf, etc. You can only upsell to a parent product, not a child product, so any references that go in an upselling cell must be parent references for it to work correctly. To add upselling products to your CSV, add a new column with the header of Upselling Group 1 (i.e. You May Also Like) and replace what is in the brackets with the actual upselling group. The product that you are wanting to upsell must have been previously created in the admin for it to work.

Featured - One way of promoting your products is to feature them on the Homepage. You can do this by adding a column called “Featured” into your CSV file and adding either a ‘Y’ or ‘N' to each product. ‘Y' will be shown, 'N’ will not.

Weight - The weight of the product in KG. If your shipping costs are based on weight (rather than cost or a fixed price), you need to add weights to your products in this column.

Parent Commodity Code - Use this header to enter your product’s commodity code. This is strongly recommended to input if you ship internationally.

Parent Country of Origin - Similar to above, use this field to enter your product’s country of origin.

Product Image: You can import your product images using the CSV by creating a column named 'Product Image'. The content of this column should be the image URL, or the image name relating to an image file uploaded using FTP.