My understanding is that PT expects every product name to be unique and the price comparison therefore compares prices for identical products across multiple vendors.
For my niche site I should like to be able to include in the price comparison products that are variants (pack qty and brand) of a "master" product specification.
An example (not actually the type of products on the site) would be:
AAA Battery 1.5V (the main product that people would search for). I should then like people to be presented with not just the search results list but the price comparison screen for the different brands (Duracell, Ever Ready, Energizer, Unbranded, etc. and pack sizes. For price comparison purposes these would all be treated as the same product, allowing the user to decide what represents best value, because I've already added a price per unit field
AAA Battery 1.5V 2pack unbranded $0.99 merchantA
AAA Battery 1.5V 4pack unbranded $1.49 merchantA
AAA Battery 1.5V 2pack Ever Ready $1.99 merchantA
AAA Battery 1.5V 2pack Ever Ready $2.20 merchantB
AAA Battery 1.5V 4pack Duracelld $2.49 merchantC
Does anyone have any ideas please? Thank you
Alastair
Hello David
Thank you for your prompt and helpful responses (as always!). I'll probably add a database field (option 2). My problem, however, is that I couldn't make use of the product mapping feature in PT Admin because there are about 2,000 products with (say) 4 or 5 variants each. Is there any way of creating the main item and its list of variants at the time of the feed upload? In the example above, the battery size, voltage, pack size and brand are all separate fields in the database so they can be concatenated easily.
Thank you.
Alastair
Hello Alastair;
Yes - you should be able to that using the "Text After" filters, which can apply to any field in the product record; so if you just register the battery size as the product name, and then a "Text After" filter, where you append the voltage:
%VOLTAGE%(note the space infront)
Then; if you add another field to hold the the "original_name" (as discussed); also register this as the battery size field, and then to its "Text After" filter use:
%VOLTAGE% %PACKSIZE% %BRAND%Cheers,
David.
Sorry if I'm misunderstanding something but all that happens on import is that all the variants get dropped and it just imports one product per battery and voltage combination and drops the rest. While PT can indeed add text to the back of the product name, isn't there something that means that it can only have a single unique product name per merchant? What I'mm trying to achieve is:
all the variants to be imported, with multiple variants and multiple merchants
the variants to be treated as if they were all the same product for the purposes of price comparison.
Hello Alastair,
My apologies - based on the above registering on the battery type + voltage will result in duplicates which will meant that they are dropped during import. This is moderated by the following block of code:
/* create dupe_hash value */
$dupe_key = $admin_importFeed["merchant"];
// uncomment any additional fields that you wish to filter duplicates on (description not recommended)
$dupe_key .= $record[$admin_importFeed["field_name"]];
// $dupe_key .= $record[$admin_importFeed["field_description"]];
// $dupe_key .= $record[$admin_importFeed["field_image_url"]];
// $dupe_key .= $record[$admin_importFeed["field_buy_url"]];
// $dupe_key .= $record[$admin_importFeed["field_price"]];
$dupe_hash = md5($dupe_key);You could experiment with changing the duplicate filter by adding or removing fields from that block of code (for example your new "original name"); but the results may be unpredictable.
I think to support this is going to need quite a bit of tweaking - I would be happy to look at the feed for you and see if there is anything straight forward that can be done - could you email it to me as an attachment (reply to your reg code or forum registration email is the easiest way to get me)...
Cheers,
David.
Hello Alastair,
I think there are 2 steps to a solution to this for you. This involves using the Product Mapping feature to change all the variants into a single product name; and then using some mechanism to display the original, unmodified product name (I can think of 2 ways).
Product Mapping is already a feature of Price Tapestry, so what you would need to do, taking your example above, would be to create a master product name:
"AAA Battery 1.5V"...and then list of variants each of the different quantity / brand names:
AAA Battery 1.5V 2packAAA Battery 1.5V 4pack
AAA Battery 1.5V 2pack Ever Ready
AAA Battery 1.5V 2pack Ever Ready
AAA Battery 1.5V 4pack Duracell
Now, to display the original product name; the first option is to either i) If you do not currently have a description field, register the product name field as the description; or ii) if you do have a description, use a Text Before or Text After filter to incorporate the original product name into the description using the placeholders. For example, if your product name field is called PRODUCTNAME, you could add the value of this field to the description by entering the following as the Text Before or Text After value:
%PRODUCTNAME%The second, more complicated but more flexible option would to add a new field to your site, for example "original_name"; by following the instructions in this thread:
http://www.pricetapestry.com/node/313
Then, you would have the variable $xxxxx["original_name"] (where xxxxx is the same as whatever is used in that location to display other field values, for example $product["name"]) to display throughout the site wherever product information is displayed (search results, main product display, and the prices table).
Hope this helps!
Cheers,
David.