Skip to main content

eCommerce Integration

Introduction

Ads are designed to populate with data automatically. They can also take administrator preference into account. The following sections describe all the ad variations, the data they display, and where they are published.

Block Image

The Recommended Tools ad increases product exposure to users on Guides and Answers. The ad displays products from a list of useful items—this list is maintained by the development team.

Block Image

The Related Products ad intelligently promotes items within a guide. The ad features items from the Relevant Parts section listed at the top of a repair guide.

In order to maximize the potential of this feature, it is important to properly fill out the Item Supplier Table and include a URL to an approved eCommerce link for each item. This will allow the Related Products ad to accurately display all the relevant parts used in a guide.

Required Tools

Block Image

The Required Tools ad intelligently promotes items from a repair guide. The ad draws from the Tools section listed at the top of a repair guide.

As always, it is important to properly fill out the Item Supplier Table and include a URL to an approved eCommerce link for each item. This will allow the Required Tools ad to accurately display all the relevant tools used in a guide.

This ad differs from Recommended Tools in that the listed items are specifically used in the repair guide being viewed. The content of guide page's Required Tools ad could vary, while Recommended Tools would still showcase all the items from its list.

Importing Ads

Upload ads to your site by clicking the "Product Ad Upload" tab of your Management Console. Ads require some knowledge of code, so this might be a job for your web site designer.

Upload a tab delimited text file—where groups of text are separated by tabs—for all the ads. Learn how to create a tab delimited file from scratch here.

Be sure to follow the format closely: If you skip over one tab, the whole ad will be affected.

Here's some helpful tips for better ad integration:

  • The first row must include these headings: productid, title, price, link, image_link, quantity, description, and related_products
  • Separate columns with tabs
  • Separate by each row with a new line
  • In a row, these columns must contain valid text: productid, title, price, and link
  • You can enclose text in quotes to show that text should be contained as a unit
  • To use a quotation mark to appear within a block of text, use two quotation marks next to each other ("")
  • You can use Excel and Calc to structure information into rows and columns, then save your file as a delimited text file
  • If your links reference a site that uses SSL, be sure to use "https://" at the front of your links instead of "http://"


Go back to the Help Index

Was this article helpful to you?

Yes
No

Didn't find the answer you were looking for?

Ask a Question
Creative Commons License
Materials Engineering Equipment Safety by The Cal Poly MatE Community is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Based on a work at http://matecalpoly.dozuki.com/.