ATG Recommendations Catalog Format Guide

Catalog Delivery

XML catalogs should be submitted via FTP at ftp.cleverset.com using the same username and password you use on our Retailer Site (http://recmanager.estara.com).

Catalog Formatting

ATG Recommendations presently accepts the Google Base Bulk Upload Format in XML (RSS 2.0) format.

To be well-formed XML, a catalog must extend the RSS 2.0 standard. It must also group all product information within <rss> and <channel> blocks.

Your file must look like this:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0" xmlns:c="http://base.google.com/cns/1.0">
  <channel>

    Your Product Information Goes Here

  </channel>
</rss>

Individual products may then be inserted inside <item> tags. All data inside an <item> block must be within appropriate definition tags. There are tags within all three defined namespaces which you may wish to utilize.

A list of fields that ATG Recommendations expects and their corresponding XML tag follows.
The format is <tag>ATG attribute</tag>.

Required:

• <title>title</title>
• <description>description</description>
• <link>link</link>
• <g:id>id</g:id>
• <g:image_link>image_link</g:image_link>
• <g:price>price</g:price>

Required (if available):

• <g:category>category</g:category>
• <g:brand>brand</g:brand>

Recommended:

• <g:instock>instock</g:instock>
• <g:quantity>quantity</g:quantity>
• <c:recommend type="string">recommend</c:recommend>
• <c:sku type="string">sku</c:sku>
• <c:tags type="string">tags</c:tags>
• <c:related type="string">related</c:related>
• <c:recommended type="string">recommended</c:recommended>

Optional:

• <g:expiration_date>date</g:expiration_date>

So an example file with only one product and only the required information would look like:

<?xml version="1.0"?>
<rss version="2.0" xmlns:g="http://base.google.com/ns/1.0" xmlns:c="http://base.google.com/cns/1.0">
  <channel>

    <item>
      <title>Blue Jeans</title>
      <description>A rugged pair of pants</description>
      <link>http://mystore.com/clothes/mens/pants/bluejeans.html</link>
      <g:id>43920</g:id>
      <g:image_link>http://mystore.com/images/bluejeans.jpg</g:image_link>
      <g:price>$50.00</g:price>
    </item>

  </channel>
</rss>

Required Fields

There are up to eight attributes that must be included for every product in the catalog feed.

• title – The product’s name or title as it appears on the product page.
• description – The product’s description as it appears on the product page.
• link – The full URL of the product page (including ‘http://’).
• id – A unique identifier, preferably a number. e.g. The product’s SKU
• image_link – The full URL of the product image (including ‘http://’).
• price – The product’s price. This must match the price listed on your site.
• category – The product’s category structure on your site. Use a ‘>’ to separate category levels. e.g. Clothes>Mens>Pants
• brand – The brand of the product.

If your catalog includes brand and category information about products, you must include these attributes as part of your catalog feed. If you do not use brand or category information on your web site you may omit the unused attributes.

Optional Fields

Ideally, retailers should also pass as many as eight additional attributes.

• instock – Whether or not this product is in stock (‘Y’ or ‘N’).
• quantity – The number of products available.
• recommend – Whether or not to recommend this product (‘Y’ or ‘N’).
• sku – The SKU of the product. A SKU is a custom identifier used by some retailers.
• tags – A comma-separated list of tags, or keywords, associated with the product. For example, a T-Shirt might have the tags ‘short sleeve,blue,men’s,outdoor’
• related – A comma-separated list of product Ids (taken from the same catalog) closely related to this product.
• recommended – A comma-separated list of product Ids (taken from the same catalog) that have been hand-selected to be recommended with this product.
• expiration_date – The date on which this product expires from your catalog. After this date, the product will no longer be recommended.

About Expiration Dates

ATG Recommendations allows you to specify optional expiration dates on your products. When a product’s expiration date passes, ATG Recommendations will stop recommending that product.

Expiration dates are specified in the format yyyy-MM-dd [HH:mm:ss [z]], where the items in brackets are optional.

The year, month, and day are specified using the ISO-8601 format for dates:

• yyyy is the four digit year
• MM is the two digit month
• dd is the two digit day of the month

The time of day is optional. If you choose to provide it, use the following format:

• HH is the two digit hour using 24 hour notation
• mm is the two digit minute
• ss is the two digit second
• z is an optional timezone offset from UTC

Month and day numbers, hours, minutes, and seconds should be padded with leading zeros if necessary to make them two digits each. The timezone offset should be specified as the number of hours and minutes difference from UTC.

The following are all examples of properly formatted expiration dates:

• 2009-03-01 means March 1, 2009 at midnight UTC
• 2009-03-01 14:30:00 means March 1, 2009 at 2:30 pm UTC
• 2009-03-01 14:30:00 -0600 means March 1, 2009 at 2:30 pm Central Standard Time

If you use expiration dates in your catalog, make sure you provide ATG Recommendations with updated catalog data on a regular basis so your entire catalog does not expire, leaving no products that can be used as recommendations.

Getting the Most Out of Your Catalog

Additional product information makes recommendations smarter! ATG Recommendations uses this data to make stronger targeted Recommendations and provide additional Recommendations functionality. The more data you supply, the better Recommendations work, and the easier we can provide you with features like:

• brand exclusivity rules
• same-category recommendations
• category filtering
• cross-selling
• and more!