Creating product families

What are product families?

Product families are groups of similar products that differ in certain characteristics. For example, the Nike Air Max sneakers sharing the same material, shape and series are available in variants based on their colour and shoe size. Therefore, they can be categorised in the same product family. For each product classification, one or two attributes are defined which eventually forms the base to create such type of families.

Product families can increase the revenue and customer satisfaction, by making it easier to find the desired products. Products in the product families also inherit reviews, which thereby increases the conversion rate.

How does it work?

  1. Products belonging to the same family are grouped together by defining a certain value for their shared attributes. This means that all the potential products of the same family must be assigned the same value for the Family Key attribute.

    For example, the value 20220103SneakersNike could be assigned to the Family Key attribute of all the variants of Nike Air Max sneakers to group them together as a family. The value for the Family Key attribute is stored as a string. Therefore, you can use a hyphen ("-"), pipe ("|"), or an underscore ("_") while defining the values. Using whitespace is not supported.

    The value for the Family Key attribute must be unique for each product family to prevent unwanted grouping. The value for the Family Key attribute is not stored. Therefore, no feedback is provided on processing of the request.

  1. After receiving this information, products with the same value are grouped together and product families are created on the website.

Prerequisites for creating families

A product must meet the following criterias to be eligible to be a part of a product family:

  • Must be in the same product group (chunkId).

  • Must have the same brand, author, or artist.

  • Must have at least one distinctive feature. For more information, see Distinctive features.

  • Each product family has a maximum of seventy products.

Distinctive features

Distinctive features are the attributes that separate the products in a family. For example, it can be size/color for a t-shirt or shoe size for a pair of sneakers.

Each product classification in the data model specifies a number of attributes, that qualify as the distinctive features. These attributes are defined in the distinctiveFeatureIds field in the datamodel.

It is recommended that all families of multiple products should adhere to the distinctive feature set for that product classification. Creating product families using other than defined attributes, leads to creation of invisible families or less easy for customers to navigate through. The possibility of creating product families cease to exist if a product classification category does not display any distinctive features.

Adding products to a product family group

In contrast to version 6, starting from version 7 onwards, it is no longer mandatory for the product family members to be present in the same batch.

To add a new product to the family, create a new message with the same value for the Family Key attribute.

The value of the Family Key attribute is stored for 28 days therefore, any update to the Family Key value after 28 days of the initial upload requires the inclusion of all the family members to the product family once more. Currently, no feedback is provided to track the processing of the request. Therefore, you can also use the Seller Dashboard alternatively to verify the status of your request.

Deleting products from a product family

To delete a product from a product family:

  1. Visit the Seller Dashboard.

  2. Select a product in My assortment.

  3. Click Bewerk varianten.

  4. Click the Ontkoppel button.

Frequently asked questions (FAQ)

How long will it take for the changes to become visible?

If the uploaded products meet the prerequisites, entire process can take up to 8 hours.

What if one of the products accidentally has a different brand, author, or artist?

If you miss adding a distinctive feature, the products will not be grouped.

To fix this:

  • Make a new upload request for the same product.

  • Use the Seller Dashboard if necessary.

What if the webshop shows less products than the size of family?

If the values of the distinctive features are not unique, they will not be grouped in the webshop. Inconsistency in upper and lower case letters for the value of the distinctive features might lead to ungrouping of the products.

For example, if the Colour attribute has the value Grey or grey for two different products of the same family, they will not be identified as members of the same family.

It is recommended to be consistent with the value of the distinctive feature for all products in the product family to avoid the ungrouping of products in the webshop.