Product data as CSV file

Create CSV file

To prepare your product data as a CSV file for the import, you have several options to choose from. We recommend using our Excel template, with which you can validate your column names with one click and then export the file as a CSV.

Alternatively, a CSV template is available, which you ideally use LibreOffice can open.

A NOTICE: Files in CSV format should cannot be opened and edited directly with Excel, as formatting errors may occur when saving due to incorrect decoding. For example, ä is displayed as ¤. This is because Microsoft Excel does not check the Unicode character set of CSV files and instead assumes unchecked that the contents of a CSV file conform to a Windows-specific character set (Windows-1252).
However, to open a CSV file with Microsoft Excel that uses UTF-8 as character encoding (like the CSV), please follow the steps below:

1. Open Microsoft Excel
2. Select the “Data” tab in the menu bar
3. Then click on the “From Text/CSV” option in the top left corner
4. A dialog box will now open. Navigate to the location of the CSV file you want to import and double-click to import it. Alternatively, select the desired file name and then click “Import”.
5. Now determine the format of the CSV file. To do this, select “65001: Unicode (UTF-8)” from the drop-down list as the file origin. Then select “semicolon” as the separator in another dropdown.
6. Then confirm the import by clicking on “Load”

As a further alternative, you can start with a newly created Excel document, which you must save as a CSV file. Here, too, select the file format CSV UTF-8 character code when saving.

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Configure results page using CSV column names

You can freely configure the results page to a certain extent. The respective columns that are named in your CSV file (e.g. productName, shortDescription, etc.) can be selected in the selector in the row DataSourceColumn be selected and assigned. These columns can be displayed on the results page.

To get to the DataSourceColumn option: Scroll down the menu under Result Page to the area Result Page Product Sections, click on AddSection and then select one of the building blocks displayed. For example, you can use the building block Title the product names (productName) and with the building block additional data display additional text such as the benefits (benefits) and descriptions (shortDescription) on the results page for each recommended product. In the Chapter to results page the other building blocks for the Result Page Product Sections are explained.

The connection of the CSV file with the backend to the frontend looks like this: 

You can configure the product recommendation for the user piece by piece in the frontend. You create the necessary information in the CSV file. This is uploaded under Product Upload. Per DataSourceColumn you can access the information in the column by choosing the column label. The corresponding product information is then displayed in the frontend.

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CSV file requirements

Create a working CSV file for your selector with the following requirements:

• The columns in the CSV can be named as you like, but the first column must be the unique one “id” (ProductID) be set.
• In addition, the field must “productName” (the product name) be supplied so that it is displayed in the matrix.
• Run a column "picture" (URL to the product picture) where you can enter your product images as a link to a publicly available source.
• In the column names may no spaces and umlauts happen. If you want to use several words as a column name, you can, for example, write them together with capital letters ("productName") or separate them with an underscore ("link_to_data_sheet").

• The contents of the CSV columns can be formatted with clean HTML code be imported and read out.
  For example, you want product benefits on the results page as List of bullet points represent? Lists can use
  • text1
  • text2
  as bullet points or with
  1. text1
  2. text2
  be displayed as a list.
  paragraphs will be with <br> inserted. Download our Excel template above to see an example bullet list in column E.

• The CSV file must contain the character code UTF-8 saved and semicolon as delimiter use. Our CSV template is already saved in this format.

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