02Catalog
Product type and attributes
What you sell, which fields it asks for, and how imported products get classified.
The product type is what the thing IS: a phone, a T-shirt, a bike. It is not the same as categories, which organize YOUR catalog and can be several. The type is only one, and it decides that a phone asks you for storage and RAM, and a T-shirt does not.
Why it exists
What you knew about your product had nowhere to live. If you typed the RAM when publishing on Mercado Libre, the data stayed on that channel and did not exist for the next one you connected. Now it is written once, on the product, and travels to the channels that accept it.
Pick the type when creating
«New product» starts by asking what you sell. Type two letters and search among more than six thousand product types. When you pick one the tabs appear, and the form already knows what to ask you. You can change it later without losing what you wrote.
Mock-up: the creation start page, with the product type search Fill in the attributes
The «Attributes» tab brings the fields of that type: internal storage, RAM, dual SIM, carrier. The ones with a list open with a search —«color» has 51 options—. If your value is not there, type it and choose «Use …»; if a channel requires that list, like Mercado Libre, a note tells you that channel will not receive your value. Fields without a list accept whatever you type. «Add attribute» creates one of your own, but it does not reach Mercado Libre or Tiendanube. Nothing is required here: if something is missing, Koalab tells you when publishing, only for the channel that asks for it. For Mercado Libre, «Fill in bulk» completes what is missing on many products at once, from «Publish the N» or from «Data quality».
Mock-up: the fields the product type asks for, with a closed list that accepts your own value, free text and value with unit Imported products classify themselves… sometimes
It depends on the channel. Mercado Libre brings the category with a code Koalab recognizes, so the type is worked out on its own. WooCommerce, Shopify and Tiendanube share no codes: their «Phones» is free text of that store, and there you say it, once per category. In Shopify, do not mix it up with its «Product type» field: on import it becomes one of your categories, and Koalab writes it again on every save with the product's first category (see «Categories per channel»).
Classify the catalog by category
In the menu, Catalog → «Classification». It starts with what is pending: each category with products without a type, with their photo and the channel they came from, and at the top what you lose without classifying them (with Mercado Libre connected, they do not go out when publishing in bulk). It is fixed by category. With «See all N», review all its products without a type and, for the one that does not fit, give it its own with «Give a type to this one only». Then «Assign a type to the category» classifies its products without a type at once, and the ones that arrive later; those that already had a type keep it. If you got it wrong, «Undo» removes the type from the ones that assignment classified, if nobody changed them since. If your access is limited to some channels, only the products you can see are classified: the number on screen is the one applied.
Mockup: the classification tray, with a pending category and its products
Details worth knowing
- The type also decides the Mercado Libre category when there is no other: not chosen on the product page, not from an earlier listing, not mapped in «Categories». If a type matches several Mercado Libre categories, Koalab uses the most general one, the one with most listings in your country. If your product belongs in a more precise one, choose it on its page before publishing.
- What cannot be worked out stays unclassified on purpose. Guessing by name would misclassify silently, and a misclassified catalog is worse than an unclassified one: the second one shows.
- Classifying never overwrites what was already set. If you corrected a product's type by hand, neither a new import nor its category's type changes it. Changing the category's type does not either: it only applies to its products without a type, the current ones and the ones to come.