How to import your initial data

Learning Objective

After reading this guide you should have a better understanding of:

• What you will need to upload basic product data to Visualsoft

• How to correctly populate your data into a CSV document

Contents

Training Video

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Written Guide

Overview

In this guide, we are going to be looking at how we can move your data from your old website provider to match and import it into the Visualsoft Admin. We will be doing this through an Excel document and then transferring the file into a CSV ready to import.

Getting the CSV/Excel document

Visualsoft has produced a CSV and an Excel document you can use as a template and we will be populating the Excel version through this guide.

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CSV Import Master Sheet

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Excel Import Master Sheet

Populating the document

We are now going to look at the different columns within the spreadsheet, this information can also be found on both master sheets under the relevant columns.

Parent Reference (Required)

This is the parent reference of the product you are adding, but this can sometimes be referred to as a SKU. If your product has several child products within the parent product, you will need to copy this down for all the relevant child products.

You can see as this will have child 3 references as it comes in 3 different colours, this product will require the same parent product down 3 rows.

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Child Reference (Required)

This is the child reference of the product you are adding, but this can sometimes be referred to as a child SKU. If your product has different variations (colour/size) you will need to add the unique reference to each specific product.

If your product is a standalone item, you will need to copy the parent reference into the child reference.

As the product we are adding comes in 3 different colours, I will add the relevant child reference against the relevant product row.

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Parent Product Title (Required)

This will be the name of the product that will appear on the category page or when someone clicks on the product. If your product has child variants, this will be the name of the product before they click on the specific variant.

With our product, the product is called a snapback hat, this is all I will be adding into this section.

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Child Product Title (Required)

This will be the specific name of the product if the child variant is clicked on, the name doesn't need to be different, but is advised.

If the product is standalone, you will need to just copy the parent reference.

As our product comes in a different colour we will be adding the colour of the product to the parent title.

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Product Subtitle (Not Required)

This is not often used on product pages that already have lots of information on it as it can be a bit overload, but you can add a subtitle against your product.

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Here is an example of a product showing you where the subtitle sits

On our import sheet, we are not going to be adding a subtitle, you can either leave it blank if you aren't going to use this section, or you can hide/delete the column from the sheet to make the sheet easier to view.

Product Summary (Not Required)

This is usually used for the main bullet points of a product if you’re looking to add a longer description so on the product page you can have a summary tab first with main product points highlighted in bullet points and then a description tab with a larger paragraph of text in.

On our hats, I wanted to add the following to the product and it has pulled in the HTML format from my previous website: -

Cord Material

One Size Fits All

Structured crown

Snapback

Flat visor

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Product Description (Not Required)

This is the larger paragraph of text on the full product description. Again, this can either be added as standard text or if your previous website provider has exported your data in an HTML format, that can be added too.

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Brand (Not Required)

This is where you will add the brand of the product you are uploading. You will not need to populate the brands prior to the import as these will be created in the admin when you import the data.

If your products do not have a brand, please leave this blank as it will be added as an unbranded item.

The hats brands are produced by Visualsoft, therefore, in the brand column, I will be adding Visualsoft.

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Categories (Required)

This plays a large part in populating the main navigation of your site, so the main navigation structure would need to be decided before adding the categories.

We pull the categories and all of the products that fall within them to create the main nav and the dropdowns. Please note that the likes of Brand, Size, colour etc of the products don’t need to be added here as they are already tagged and referenced elsewhere.

This column is best for the main category and sub-category level only.

Your product can sit over more than one category/sub-category but you must follow the following structure.

For the snapback hat we are adding, I would need this product to sit under the following categories: -

Mens > Hats

Womans > Hats

Therefore when adding this to my CSV/Excel Sheet, I will need to add the following: -

Mens > Hats, Womans > Hats

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Attribute 1 (Colour) (Not Required)

You only needed if the product has options - this section will create the drop downs on a product page so if a product only comes in only gold you don’t need to add this as an attribute otherwise this will create a choose your colour drop down on the product page with just gold as an option.

You can add more attribute columns if needed you set the name of them in the brackets.

Products can have multiple attributes connected, for example, it could come in different sizes and colours.

The product we are adding, our Snapback Hat comes in three different colours and therefore we will populate them with the colour options available to the customer to purchase.

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Tag 1 (Colour) (Not Required)

These create the filters on category pages but these can be populated at any time, there is no requirement to add these with the initial import unless you already know your tag groups and tags, or your existing site has this information connected

You can add as many columns as you like for example a jewellery company might want to add “Type” “Carat” and “Metal” so think about every way in which a potential customer might want to filter through your products to refine their search.

For our product, we are going to be tagging the material of the hat and the style of the hat, therefore, I have populated my CSV/Excel document like this:-

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If your product sits within two tags in a group, you can simply put a comma to show that there are two tags connected against this item.

EAN & MPN (Not Required)

Barcodes are not necessary however please note that Google Shopping massively favours products with barcodes so we do recommend adding them if you can.

Price (Inc VAT) (Required)

You will need to add the price of the item you are selling, but you can add the price against each child product if there is any difference.

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Sale Price (Inc VAT) (Required)

You will populate the sale price for the product if it is different to the price added above. If your item is not on sale, you will need to copy the Price (Inc VAT) field.

On our product, the Black and White option isn’t on sale, but the blue is on sale at £9.99.

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RRP Price (Inc VAT) (Not Required)

You can add the RRP Price to the product and this will show on the front end of the website.

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Cost Price (Inc VAT) (Not Required)

This is the price you as the merchant has purchased the item. It is not required to be added but is used in some reports.

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Stock Value (Required)

This will be the stock value connected against the item and will be reduced as customers purchase the item.

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Weight (in KGs) (Not Required)

This is only used when you would like to ship your items depending on the weight of them. If you have this information, we would recommend adding it as it could be useful later when setting your shipping/couriers up.

The hats we have added are 500g.

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Meta Title / Meta Keywords / Meta Description (Not Required)

If you want to have a huge focus on SEO then we recommend spending time on filling these in. If that is not possible then it’s automatically pulled from the product data already inputted.

Product Image (Not Required)

There are two ways you can import the images via the CSV/Excel sheet.

If you have the URLs of the images, you can add them into this cell and this will put them upon import, alternatively, if you have the images on your desktop, you can pull them in via an FTP, there is a separate guide here, but we would recommend doing this after your initial import.

Summary

You should now have a better understanding of how to populate the initial import of your data to the Visualsoft Admin, but if you need any assistance, please do not hesitate to speak to your Project Manager.

Frequently Asked Questions

Further Reading