Improvements of the Icecat Product Information Management (PIM) environment

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The Icecat ecosystem is continuously improved. Here a few major upgrades regarding our statistics engine, website, Icecat LIVE and Product Information Management (PIM) backoffice are highlighted.

Cleansing Downloads Stats

For years, the Icecat front-office was generating product data-sheet downloads based on batch updates by the Icecat website. These batch updates had originally a very low impact on the overall statistics that were generated by the use of the Icecat data by 3rd party users, i.e., channel partners.  As over the years, front-office batch updates had become significantly more frequent to support near real-time publication of updated product data-sheets, we have decided to exclude these front-office batch downloads generated by the front-office from the general statistic reports. In this way, the statistics give a cleansed and clearer view of third party use.

Further, we continue to stimulate heavy users to download information for only those categories for which they have a subscription. This to avoid blind downloads that might distort certain statistical results.

In the coming sprints the following updates will be live:

Icecat web site

The embed section on every product page on the Icecat web site provides example links and links to documentation for the most common Icecat integration methods, such as XML, JSON, CSV/Excel, JavaScript (Icecat Live) etc. The embed section will not only be shown for Open Icecat (sponsored) products, but also next to Full Icecat products for Full Icecat subscribers when logged in.

Icecat LIVE: improved look & feel

Icecat Live is the javascript service, serving product pages directly into client websites. Icecat LIVE pages will soon get a new look and feel. A sneak preview is given below.

Further, because of a request from HP (one of our sponsoring brands), a new multimedia asset will be included in their product datasheets: the HTML page. HP invests herself in digital assets and an HP styled html page, which are intended to highlight specific promotions and key selling points of products. This new HTML asset will be offered to the channel via all Icecat output formats and will be shown on Icecat LIVE under a separate tab.

Smart Assignment of Feature Logos

We will have the upgraded version of the feature logo assignment interface, for an example, of bluetooth (see the image below):

• The use of Feature logos can now be limited to specific brand and category combinations.
• Feature logos can now be assigned to products, based on a combination of several spec values.

Icecat PIM

The Icecat PIM is used by product managers of brand clients, and by our own editors. We are upgrading the product publication functions in our PIM (Product Information Management) system: EOL (End of Live) and release date can now be locally set. In this way users can control product publication on a country/language (locale) level.

Further, the Import/Export tool functionality has been improved. The system used to process/check all empty rows in the file uploaded. Now, the system stops processing the file as soon as it discovers the first empty row. In this way we decrease the time needed for processing a feed.