The only information we capture about products online is the product number (also known as SKU). The ‘Products’ report (Reports & Analytics Location: Product → Products → Products) contains the data that is captured directly from digital channels. It gives the product SKU and the data captured for it.
It’s possible to report on product performance all the way from individual products up to Trading Director and Web Category Level 2. All product reports are located in Product → Products in the Reports & Analytics menu.
Metrics you can use with the Products report;
- Product Views*
- Visits
- Conversion
- Any revenue metric (prefixed ‘Revenue:’)
- Any orders metric (prefixed ‘Orders:’)
- Any units metric (prefixed ‘Units:’)
- Average Order Value (AOV)
*A product view is incremented against a product every time its PDP is loaded.
All other product information such as description, brand and category is uploaded to Adobe by us. When a SKU is captured online Adobe looks up the additional information from our uploaded data and populates the relevant reports. This is known as a classification.
For example, if a customer viewed the product page of a Toaster, the only information captured directly from the page is its 7 digit SKU. Adobe would then look this SKU up in the uploaded data, see that it belongs to the Toaster category, and populate the relevant reports with this data. So in this example ‘Toasters’ in the ‘Web Category Level 4′ report would receive a visit as well as ’58 – Small Kitchen Appliances’ in the ‘Trading Series Number & Description’ report.
All reports under ‘Products’ in the Reports & Analytics menu are classifications of the Products report. See below links for information on these;
- SKU & Description
- Trading Series Number
- Trading Series Number & Description
- Trading Manager
- Trading Director
- Web Category Levels
- Flag (iExtra)
If you’re a bit of a geek and are more interested in the technical side of the product string keep reading!
The syntax or structure of the product string is as follows:
| Category;Product;Quantity;Price;eventN=X[|eventN2=X2];eVarN=merch_category[|eVarN2=merch_category2] |
That is defined as:
| Field | Definition |
|---|---|
| Category | Historically this was removed from the Adobe infastructure so wasn’t used, as a result nearly all product strings look like “;1234567” symbolising no category ID, semi-colon, product ID.
More recently this has changed and now it is possible to use a category ID so you may see records that look more like “33006169;1234567” symbolising a category ID, semi-colon, product ID. |
| Product | This is the product number or ID and is ALWAYS populated anytime a product is present. This includes the product page (PDP), trolley list page / basket (TLP) but also any add to cart pop-up’s, confirmation pages, etc.
We have “classified” reporting available for the category, trading area, etc and while this is dependant on us getting product information from the relevant area and mapping it which can mean it’s not always 100% complete. The product will ALWAYS be captured and is never lost even if we haven’t updated the category and trading hierarchy. |
| Quantity | As Adobe is designed for a standard business this is the home delivery units and does not include reservation and fast track collection / prepay reservation units. |
| Price | As above this is specifically home delivery revenue. |
| Events | This is where we would capture any other data related specifically to the product, the key examples are reservation units and reservation revenue however this also includes lots of other relevant data such as the number of reviews, whether the product is out of stock, etc.
As shown in the above syntax everything in the product string is delimited with “;” however if it’s the same type of field then it may be delimited with a “|” so all events are contained between two semi-colon’s and all eVar’s are together. |
| eVars | This similar to events is any other information we specifically want to relate to a product, a key example is store number or ID which while it’s a number isn’t an event of a value we want to aggregate but a string we want to store against a particular product. This can be combined with things like out of stock messages to understand instances of a particular product being out of stock at a particular store. |
