YouLead allows to import Customer’s product database automatically and regularly. The main purpose of such an operation is the ability to mark out which contacts are interested in particular products. Thanks to the import, it is also possible to segment the Contacts according to the viewed products, define rules for the “Viewed Product” event, and more advanced segmentation, for example, according to the attributes of the product being viewed ‘ (e.g. show Contacts who are interested in products of X color)
Product feed can be:
- downloaded from FTP server,
- expand from ZIP archive,
- downloaded from CRM service.
However, in the above cases, the name of the file should be provided by the client and unchangable.
In the case of CRM, should be attached:
- documentation,
- access data,
- name of the method that returns products.
YouLead can import two types of product feed: CSV or XML.
The technical implementation of the product feed in a CSV file, should be:
- separated by semicolons,
- in UTF-8 encoding,
- available through the http protocol at the specified url,
- number of columns has to be the same in all products.
It is recommended that the first line contains the column names, where the exact column name is not relevant and only serves to pre-verify which column it corresponds to.
The technical implementation of the product feed in a XML file, should be (YouLead system can import files of integration with another services like ceneo, but it should has features below):
- in UTF-8 encoding,
- available through the http protocol at the specified url
- number of fields in products have to be the same in all products
- every product should be separate as object in XML format
The file is imported once a day (during night hours) and basing on its content, the product database is updated in YouLead system.
The file should contain the following columns:
- ID – A unique product identifier that will be used to compare product information in a product feed with a product database in YouLead system.
- Product name (used e.g. to be displayed when communicating with Contact) [mandatory column]
- Complete Url (with http: // or https: //) to the subpage with the product description [mandatory column]
- Photo Url, which is a complete Url (with http: // or https: //) to the image thumbnail of the product (with http:// lor https://) [recommended column]
- Product Category – an optional field used to categorize products such as brand, location, etc. [recommended column]
- Active – (0/1) Information on whether
the product is still on sale (1=YES, 0=NO). The column is not mandatory, but
its presence or absence causes a slightly different effects of the product
feed.
In the absence of this column, the feed is treated as a complete database of products currently on sale. If there are other products in YouLead (not currently in the feed), they will be marked as “Inactive” or not in sale. In addition, all products present in both feed and in YouLead are updated in YouLead (overriding all features, names, url, photo url, category into the values present in the feed). Products that appear in the feed and are not present in YouLead are added to YouLead.
In case the Active column is present in the product feed, in the process of importation YouLead updates its product database on the basis of the product feed, which means it finds all products with the same ID located in the product feed and in YouLead data base and updates database according to all features, name, category, url, photo url and the Column Active (!) into the values present in the product feed.
In case of products existing in YouLead and absent in feed – YouLead does not change their attributes.
- Feature 1 [recommended column] – contains selected, fixed attribute of the product (for example price, color, size etc.)
- Feature 2 [same as above]
- …
- Feature 10 [same as above]
1 demonstration line with the product feed:
Id;Nazwa;Url;PhotoUrl;Kategoria;Kolor
A001-1;laptop XYZ;http://www.strona.pl/A001-1/Details/1;http://www.strona.pl/images/aad.jpg;Laptops;silver
The information about the product being viewed should can be passed from the browser using javascript API:
ylData = window.ylData = window.ylData || []; ylData.push({ ‘product’: { ‘products’: [‘productId’] } });
For more information, see the YouLead API documentation.