Products are organized according to Product Type, which further defines a Product Category. For example, in the Product Category Computer; assigning the Attribute laptop further defines a Product Type.

Assigning additional Attributes such as brand, model, price, etc. defines a single instance of a product; for example, HP Compaq Presario CQ60 Notebook PC.

A product is defined in the CMS as a collection of Attributes. These Attributes define the properties of a specific item intended for sale in your Product Catalog.

Some product-specific Attributes are:

• Unique ID

• Product Type or Category

• Relationships; for example, a single SKU, multiple SKUs, Bundles

• Description

• Specification

• Images

• Documents

• Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Friendly product string

Attributes are unique product entities, for example, brand, size, color. They define Product Types, and facilitate navigation to a product by a visitor.

Attributes use a name/value pairing structure to define an object in the system. For example, the Attribute “color” could be designated with the values “red”, “green”, and “blue:”

Because Attributes are unique they can be used across products. The Attribute “color” could be part of the definition of the product T-shirt or MP3 player, and can appear across multiple SKUs.

There are System Attributes and User-Defined Attributes. The Commerce Administrative UI provides the ability to define values for Attributes and assign them to products.

See "Attributes and Facets" for information about adding Attributes from the StoreManager menu.

Products can be Tagged as part of their Product Attributes. These Tags, formerly known as Index Terms, can also be used on pages, content, styles, , images, etc.

Tags are managed within the Products section. See IndexTerms in the Store Manager Function section for more detail.

iAPPS Commerce lets you manage your Site from a Search Engine Optimization (SEO) perspective. By managing SEO terms, you can enhance the visibility of your Site through online search engines like Google. One aspect of this is easily under names and navigation present with the URL itself, especially for products.

Commerce creates unique SEO-friendly base names out of product attributes. For example, the following URL for a Dewalt drill might be:

<store>.com/powertools/drills/Dewalt-Drill-DW-245-0044222

In this case the URL base name is created from categories and selected product attributes: .

• Product name (Dewalt Drill)

• Model number (DW 245)

• Unique SKU (0044222)

iAAPS Commerce provides flexible tools to handle a wide variety of image sizes and cropping options, so that merchandising managers can easily control the images in the Product Catalog.

It supports the following image management features:

• Individual uploading of images

• A batch process for uploading and transforming images with an image naming protocol that integrates with an existing product database

• An image library that is browsed when you navigate the category hierarchy

See Managing Product Images for more information.

iAPPS Commerce provides editable text fields for creating detailed product descriptions.

See Product Information for more details.

Each level of navigation in the Product Catalog must have associated products. iAPPS Commerce allows you create filters to connect products to a particular level of your Product Catalog hierarchy. You can create any combination of Attributes, operators, and values to produce a result.

Operators can be: equals, contains, less than, greater than (including negations), and so on. Multiple statements are supported and combined with parenthesis and Boolean logic (and/or).

For example, a product Filter for all products might have the following Attribute values set:

Attribute.	Value
Product Type	TV
price	Less than $500
Low-cost-TV	Yes/No

 

And the following navigational statement:

product-type = TV AND price = less-than-500 OR low-cost-TV = yes

Product Filters can sort results based on Attribute values; for example price and latest model. Filters can also derive values such as best sellers and featured products.