Introducing Typed & Category-Based Product Attributes for Better Product Catalogs

Specifying product attributes when listing an item allows your sellers to make their products more appealing and more visible to buyers on your marketplace platform.

Attributes are displayed on product pages and used in faceted filters to make it easier for buyers to find the right products.

The upcoming MultiMerch version features a new system of typed, category-based product attributes that I'll cover here.

Attributes are basic properties or characteristics of a product that are used to better describe the product.

If you're selling shoes, some examples of product attributes would be:

• Type - casual, running, hiking
• Season - summer, winter, all weather
• Material - leather, textile, synthetic

Note that size and color aren't attributes if they can be varied on – in this case they would be product variations (more on this shortly).

The new MultiMerch 8.25 allows you to create sets of typed product attributes and make them available to sellers listing items in different categories.

This is especially useful if you're running a marketplace platform that offers products in multiple different categories, such as any regular retail B2C marketplace.

 

Attribute types

Attribute type controls how the attribute is be displayed to your sellers on the item listing form.

You can use 3 different attribute types when creating product attributes:

• select
• checkbox
• text

Select and checkbox attributes allow you to define a list of values for your sellers to choose from while text attributes accept free-form input.

 

Linking attributes to categories

Product attributes can be enabled globally via the default field configuration or linked to individual categories on the category form.

Globally enabled attributes will be available to vendors listing items into any category.

You can override the global configuration for individual categories and their children, which will make attributes available to vendors only if they list an item into a particular category.

For example, you could create a following attribute hierarchy:

• by default, Color and Style attributes are available in all categories
• the Clothing & Footwear category additionally offers Material attribute
• the Clothing & Footwear > Shoes category also offers a Shoe type attribute

Simplifying things here, but you get the idea.

 

Attributes and faceted filters

MultiMerch will automatically use product attributes for faceted category filters with no additional configuration required to make your life easier.

This allows your customers to quickly sort and filter products by every attributes in the current category selection.

To make things even better, the upcoming MultiMerch version will allow marketplace owners to modify the filter configuration and enable or disable specific attributes in product filters.

 

MultiMerch 8.25 will become available for download to all existing MultiMerch clients shortly.

If you're not yet using MultiMerch to power your marketplace platform, sign up today and get your new marketplace running in no time!