To take full advantage of Flowbox's Commerce platform, you need to create a Product Catalog from a Product Feed.
At Flowbox, we support Product Feeds in both .XML and .CSV formats. This file must be hosted elsewhere, usually somewhere on your website and it should contains all of your products. Ideally it'll updated in real time as you add, edit or delete products in your e-commerce system.
First, read our in-depth article explaining how to ensure your Feed is formatted correctly.
The number of product catalogs available to import depends on your Flowbox plan. If you wish to add more catalogs, please contact us to discuss upgrade options.
Adding a Product Catalog
Log into Flowbox, then select 'Commerce' in the right-hand menu.
Click on 'Import Catalog'.
Add your Catalog name, link to the feed and username and password if needed.
Then add more detailed information, such as locale, market, region, price format, etc.
Once you're finished, click on 'Save and import', and your catalog will begin importing immediately. You will now see products being added to your Products menu.
Product identifier
When importing the product catalog to Flowbox, we need to specify which identifier attribute, from the ones available in your Product Feed, to use when identifying the different products. There are four ID-attributes in a catalog:
<id>
<gtin>
<mpn>
<item_group_id>
Once a Catalog has been created, the Product Identifier can't be changed without losing all product assignments that have been already done.
Automatically updated
Catalogs are automatically updated 4-6 times per day by Flowbox, which ensures your stock is always up-to-date.
You can always log into Flowbox and manually update your catalog, whenever you want.
Click on the Product Catalog that you want to update, and select the meatball (three-dot) menu on the right-hand side. This will give you access to a menu with multiple options, including 'Update'.
It is not recommended to deactivate auto updates to your Product Catalog unless you have a manual update process in place.
Deleted products/out-of-stock settings
As the product catalog is automatically updated on a regular basis, Flowbox will keep track of which products get deleted from your feed. In order to ensure that you don't lose any data, deleted products will not be removed from tagged posts but will instead show up as out-of-stock. This means that, should you carry this product again, all the tagged posts in your Flowbox library will be available to distribute again.
You can easily edit the settings in your Flow to hide out-of-stock products so that they do not show up in the Flow.
Product categories
If you plan to use Flowbox’s Dynamic Product Flow on your product pages, the product category attributes have a big impact on the behavior of the Flow. The script will show posts depending on what product page you are visiting. The Flow will first show posts tagged with that exact product, then fill in with products from the same product category, and lastly posts from a specific ‘Fallback Flow’ (eg. your Instashop flow).
There are two different product category attributes:
<google_product_category>
<product_type>
Flowbox will always default to <google_product_category>, but you can choose between either attribute when importing a product catalog to Flowbox.
It's best to read through our in-depth article explaining how to ensure your Product Feed is formatted correctly before importing a catalog.