Product Classification or merchandising eVar

[analyticsjunkie2293]

Do you suggest product classification on the purchase page or would u recommend having merchandising eVar?

As, I am thinking to classify the product SKU with all the product specific metadata like color,manufacturer,brand etc . I am not sure if I use merchandising eVar though?

[Jennifer_Dungan · Accepted solution]

There are two ways you could go about this...

One is as you said, to use Merchandising eVars.

I'm not sure what you mean by:

Do you suggest product classification on the purchase page or would u recommend having merchandising eVar?

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Even on the purchase page, you would still want to use Merchandising eVars... I assume that your users can purchase multiple products at a time... Merchandising eVars would be the only way to explicitly connect "value a" to "product a" / "value b" to "product b", etc... if you were to just pass a bunch of values into a standard dimension, they will relate to all products equally...

Unless you are wondering about Conversion vs Product Syntax? But Conversion Syntax would be something like passing your sites' search terms, or some designation of "you might be interested in", etc into your purchase event. But for data that explicitly belongs to the product, each products values must be stitched via Product Syntax so that it relates to the correct product.

That said... if you are using SKUs; while yes, you could use Merchandising eVars... you could also consider using Classifications and the Classification Importer to map each product to its SKU data.... 

Classifications process every 4-6 hours, so there is that drawback.. but you have the benefit of re-defining items up to 6 months later... for instance.. let's look at a Sport Jersey... someone may have uploaded it to the site as "apparel".. which technically it is.. but maybe someone decides this should actually be in "sports", and they move it... if you are tracking the SKU and its data into the implementation... this means that the data is recorded as seen, so this month may have the Jersey in 2 places... With a classification, you can reprocess the data, and pull this months data with the Jersey in sports....

However, if you are using Raw Data Feeds, classifications won't be part of the raw data... So if this is a concern, then you should use Merchandising eVars....

Here is more info about Classifications:

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/components/classifications/c-classifications.html?... 

https://experienceleague.adobe.com/docs/analytics/components/classifications/classifications-importe... 

[analyticsjunkie2293]

Thanks for the detail response and links to classifications. This is super useful

[Jennifer_Dungan]

You're welcome if you need any more help, don't hesitate to reach out!

[ChiragMa]

Just for confirmation on above i am also trying to map certain product level data like category, subcategory, ratings, instock details, etc. in product array using "productListItems[]._experience.analytics.
customDimensions.eVars.eVar1" for product dimensions and "productListItems[]._experience.analytics.
event1to100.event1.value" for product metrics. Can i pass them as merchandising evars by enabling merchandising evars with product syntax in reporting suite?

[Jennifer_Dungan]

Yes... depending on what info you are trying to set, you can set these on the product page or anywhere in the cart / checkout / transaction flow.

For instance, if you are setting product classification eVars, you could set those on the product page, and rely on eVar expiry to carry that value forward until the purchase event... or you can set it at each usage (depending on factors like how long people leave content in their carts and how often certain info may update or change (like stock levels).

I haven't used the WebSDK / XDM structure yet, but those look like they should be correct...

[ChiragMa]

I have seen suggestions for not using merchandising evars for product variables but adobe product string structure mention merchandising evars should be used. Is there any major impact of using standard evars over merchandising evars.