Add products and variants

You can add products and variants to catalogs in Optimizely Commerce Connect. Go to Catalogs and click Add. Choose Product or Variant/SKU.

Product and variant properties

Basic info properties

The basic info properties area provides an overview of catalog entry information. Much of it is created automatically and rarely needs to be changed unless you manually create catalog entries. Click Change to edit a property value.

• Display name – Name on the content display page.
• Name – Name in catalog item list.
• Name in URL – URL automatically created, based on name and place in the navigation; whether it is visible in site links depends on implementation.
• SEO URL – Automatically created based on Name; whether it is visible in site links depends on implementation.
• Code – Product code/identification key, often provided by an external system.
• Markets – Markets where the item is available. By default, a product or variant is available in all markets.
• Visible to – Which users and groups can see the item. By default, catalog content is publicly visible and editable by CommerceAdmins group members.
• Languages – The content is available in the displayed languages. The active language is not underlined.
• ID, Type – The ID set by the system; the content type upon which the item is based.

Content

The Content tab properties depend on the product or variant.

Descriptions can include formatted text, images, and links, using a rich-text editor.

Belongs To

The Belongs To tab displays categories and products, packages, and bundles to which a product or variant belongs. For example, a variant belongs to a product and has a primary category. Also, an item may be part of a Weekly specials category and a Spring package category. See also: Work with categories.

Pricing (for variants)

The Edit Prices view lets you view and update pricing for packages and variants. The view displays a compact list of prices, which can be filtered by market or customer group. Market filtering displays both active and inactive markets.

The same item can be available in several markets. For each market, you can define multiple currencies and establish a different price for each one. If you enter no value for any currency, users will not be able to place an order for the item in that currency.

For each product or variant, you can define the following pricing information:

• Market
• Price
• Valid date range
• Sale type
• Sale code
• Minimum quantity

In many cases, pricing information comes from an external system, which may prohibit modifications in Optimizely Commerce Connect.

View prices

1. Select a category or product.
2. Click Pricing from the View selector.

   

3. (Optional) Use the Customer Group (Sale Code) and Market filters for pricing information. Only packages or variants with a price display in the list.

Add and edit prices

Modify these fields:

• Market – The market for the price.
• Price – The item's price and currency for that market.

  The list of currencies is determined by those available for the selected market.

• Valid – The time interval when this price is available. You can create a future price change:
  1. Select the item.
  2. Click Duplicate from the context menu.
  3. Change the item's pricing information.
  4. Set the available dates.
• Sale Type – Price availability to All Customers, a specific Customer, or a Customer Price Group. With the last option, you can create tiered pricing (also known as differentiated pricing).
• Sale Code – A price for a specific customer group. For example, create a price, select Customer Price Group as its Sale Type, and then insert the customer group name into the Code field.
• Min. quantity – The minimum number of units that must be purchased for the listed price. Use this feature to provide a bulk rate. For example, if a customer purchases 10 or more, the cost is $50.00 each. If fewer than 10, $60.00 each.

From a product's or variant's context menu:

• Click Duplicate to create a copy of price information, which you can modify to create a pricing configuration.
• Click Delete to remove a set of price information. You cannot undo the deletion of price information.

Set customer group pricing

Use customer groups to set permissions and create targeted marketing campaigns.

1. Follow the steps in View prices to access the Edit Prices view.
2. Click Add Price.
3. Click Customer Price Group.
4. Select the customer group to which the price applies.

Variants (for products)

A variant is a version of a catalog entry with specific characteristics, such as price, size, and color. You can perform most of the tasks on a variant that you can perform on a catalog entry. See Work with catalog entries.

Assets

Use the Assets tab to link a catalog entry to a media file, such as an image or a document. For example, you want to assign a picture to a catalog entry to accompany its website description. You can also link to another CMS page.

To add a media file, open the Assets tab, then drag the file from the Media tab to the Assets tab. Or, click Add Media and select the file.

When assigning media files to a variant, you can assign them to a group, such as Banner. You can then sort the files by clicking the Group column header. To rearrange items, click Move Up or Move Down from the context menu. On the sample site, the item assigned to the default group at the top of the list is used for the main display.

To link to another CMS page, open the Assets tab, select Pages, and drag and drop the page you want to link to in the description.

Related entries

The Related Entries tab lists catalog entries related to the current one. Typical relationship types are cross-sell and upsell. The types are set up by your developer during implementation.

Here is a typical cross-sell scenario: If a site customer views a page with a specific television model, a section is titled People who bought this also bought, which shows HDMI cables and wall mounts that fit that TV model.

To set up those relations, a merchandiser goes to the television, clicks its Related Entries tabs, and adds suitable cables and wall mounts using the type cross-sell.

Settings

Settings is a default tab with several built-in, date-related properties that you rarely need to change.

Add product workflow

This feature is currently in beta. Contact your Customer Success Manager or sign up for the beta on Optimizely.com.

The Add Product Workflow in Commerce Connect gives you all product information in a single screen with collapsible modules, rather than through tabs. You can quickly browse descriptions, attributes, assets, and so on.

Although the workflow is turned on by default, if you are on the latest Commerce Connect package, you can opt out by clicking Opt-out Product Workflow. 

If you want to go back to the workflow, you can click Opti-in Product Workflow. Your content carries over between the two modes.

To view the contents of each section, click anywhere on the module bar to expand it.

To collapse a module, click anywhere near the top or on the arrow.

The other options, like publishing and editing content, work the same.