Today, let’s talk about the design ideas of product categories.
Commodities are the foundation of e-commerce, and the core goal is sales, that is, selling goods. Selling goods can be understood in multiple layers, including who to sell to, how to sell, and what goods to sell. In fact, it is the concept of a people-goods yard.
The goods I understand are not only at the commodity level, but also the transaction structure built around the goods, from the production of the goods to the circulation of the goods. In the new retail era, the definition of goods has been reconstructed. Goods can independently meet user needs. It can also be said that goods come from user demand data and from C2B customized data.
We have learned the concept of commodities in politics class. It is the product of the development of the productive forces of human society to a certain historical stage and is a product of labor used for exchange.
It is a medium of exchange and can satisfy human needs. The existence form of goods is not limited to physical form, but also includes virtual goods such as extended warranty services, after-sales services, etc.
The emergence of e-commerce products has moved offline product forms to the online environment, which means that huge offline product data has also been brought online. When the scale of products is small, it is not very complicated for the platform to manage. As the number of merchants increases, the number of products will grow exponentially.
At this time, if there is no good product management method, the pressure on platform operations will be unprecedentedly huge. At this time, a product management system that is “comfortable to use” is needed, and the foundation of the management system is the product category library.
Product category api access test
taobao.cat_get obtains Taobao classification information: by passing in cid: product classification ID, you can use cid=0 to obtain all first-level categories.
taobao.item_cat_get obtains the category information of Taobao products: the category and subcategory of the product can be obtained by passing in the product ID.
jd.cat_get obtains JD classification information: By passing in cid: product classification ID, you can use cid=0 to obtain all first-level categories.
Lao Wang divides the product management system into the following three parts, namely:
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Product information: includes basic product information, title, pictures, product attributes, product brand, product inventory and product price distribution, as well as coding, qualifications, etc.
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Product library: Products can be subdivided into two models: SKU and SPU
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Category library: divided into front-end categories and back-end categories
The product management system of e-commerce refers to the management ideas of traditional industries. After all, traditional industries have been developing for many years and eat more salt than e-commerce.
Its significance is that for users, they can quickly find products and view product details; for the platform, it reduces operational workload and rocket-likely improves efficiency.
Now when selecting products on Taobao JD.com, users can quickly locate their favorite products through category navigation, or search for products by keywords, and big data will recommend products that users like.
Users can also learn all the information about the product through the product details page and product reviews, and this information is richer than offline. These capabilities are all attributed to the product management system.
Necessity of product category
In the early stage of the product, since the number and types of products are not very large, the product categories can be simply described using 2-level classification. For example, first-level classified mobile phones, second-level classified brands, or directly placing products on the navigation, such as the category navigation of Xiaomi e-commerce website.
But if the types of goods are complex and the number of goods involved is huge, this classification structure will become deeper and deeper. For example, men's clothing under clothing, jeans under men's clothing, style under jeans, size under style, and so on.
So many category levels will confuse operations and users. It is difficult for users to find such deep-level products on the page, and operations cannot maintain such a huge amount of data.
Therefore, Taobao, which was the first to take the initiative, formulated a set of rules, introduced the concept of category attributes for the first time, and formulated a product management form of "category-led + attribute-assisted", which is still in use today.
It also stipulates that the number of categories cannot exceed 4 levels. This set of rules is also widely circulated in the industry. Currently, JD.com also uses this set of rules to manage products.
Managing product categories is of great significance. The author believes that the main points are as follows:
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Help platform, merchants efficiently manage the product system and reduce unnecessary workload.
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Improve the efficiency of shopping guides at the front desk and provide corresponding category shopping guide strategies at specific points in time.
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It is convenient for users to conduct category searches and find products quickly.
E-commerce product management is oriented to three parties: merchants, platform operations and consumers. The platform operation sets the category management standards of the backend, and sets the category display form of the frontend according to the situation.
Merchants perform store product entry, product maintenance, brand management and final product release according to the categories in the operation backend.
Consumers conduct category searches at the front desk and find products based on categories. View product combinations for specific scenarios through the front-end categories set by the operation.
The product category management of e-commerce is inspired by offline physical stores. After years of development, offline entities have summarized a set of efficient product management models, that is, a large front desk and a small back office.
To put it simply, product categories are divided into front-end categories and back-end categories. The front-end categories are user-oriented, highlighting the shopping guide content so that users can see and touch it to attract purchases. The backend category is oriented to operations or merchants and is responsible for the maintenance and construction of the bottom layer of products, operational efficiency, and convenient management.
Front desk category
The front-end category is the category displayed to consumers. Different category characteristics will be displayed according to seasons, time, festivals and other scenes. Mainly to structure category information so that users can intuitively find the products they need.
Sometimes for the purpose of promotion or sales increase, some products will be placed in a conspicuous place. For example, there are no more than 3,000 products on the shelves of Japan's 7-11 convenience stores. In order to maximize profits, the fresh food products in the store must be sold daily, which means that the daily inventory of each product is very limited.
A new clerk ordered 30 bottles of breakfast yogurt instead of 3 bottles. If she doesn't sell it, she'll pay for the remaining yogurt out of her own pocket.
But she was smarter and put the yogurt on another shelf with other breakfasts, and wrote a note: Yogurt for breakfast is more healthy~ In the end, the yogurt was sold out. Since then, 7-Eleven has passed on this mix-and-match model.
Let's go on to say that front-end categories also present a tree structure, from first-level categories to leaf categories. The first-level category is the most basic category, and the leaf category is the last category. The former is similar to the roots of a tree, and the latter is the leaves.
In order to facilitate users to find products, the number of categories generally cannot exceed 4 levels. This seems to be a consensus among the entire e-commerce industry.
The picture above is an example of the front-end category. The leaf category is level 4. All products can only be listed under the leaf category. The secondary category is not only divided into men's tops and men's summer clothes, but also adds two new categories: trend and season according to the scene.
Although the front desk only displays trends, there may actually be many leaf categories hanging on it in the background. Trend belongs to the common attributes of these products (about attributes, I will talk about it next), and the subcategories listed in the background all have the same attributes, which means that all products related to men's fashion will be combined.
Taobao has more than one billion products, and it is basically unrealistic to display all categories of products at the front desk. Front-end categories are very expensive, and there are generally three forms of presentation:
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One-to-one relationship category. That is, the category relationship between the backend and the frontend categories is one-to-one and directly mapped. For example, the backstage category name is men's clothing, and the front stage is also called men's clothing.
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One-to-many relationship category. The front-end category is associated with multiple leaf categories in the background. For example, trendy men's clothing corresponds to multiple trend-related leaf categories.
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Keyword categories. Search for keywords to query the corresponding category product list. A typical example is that when the iPhone is launched, when promoting the phone, a text link to the iPhone will be added to the front-end category list.
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Link category. Displayed in a certain style, you will actually enter a landing page after clicking.
The first category form can be directly reused in the early stages of the product. Once the volume of products on the website increases dramatically, the management method of a large front desk and small back office is indispensable. To satisfy the above category forms, a flexible category management system is required.
Backend category
Backend categories mainly deal with merchants and platform operations. They are responsible for building categories and mounting products to leaf categories. Some well-known companies will hand over part of their store operations to third parties, such as agency operating companies, that is, outsourcing companies.
There is also a scenario where when the e-commerce product A you are responsible for has a greater influence, it will attract platform e-commerce company B to settle in. For example, Suning settled in Tmall and No. 1 store settled in JD.com.
The amount of B's product data is also huge. At this time, you need to obtain the products through other methods and map them to A's backend categories. Generally, matching is performed through a set of general docking solutions, combined with category prediction and category error correction algorithms. Of course, manual participation is also required.
Backend categories can be divided into three states according to usage:
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Available status: The category is a normal category status that can be used
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Blocked status: The category is blocked and cannot be seen by merchants.
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Unavailable status: The category is no longer available. Generally, the merchant will be prompted with the status.
The picture above shows Taobao's backend categories. When each product is created, it must have a corresponding category. Only after selecting a category can you fill in the product attributes.
Generally speaking, in order to prevent backend data from being redundant and disorganized, the product backend category level does not exceed level 4, and level 3 category forms account for relatively more.
On the background category tree, many "fruits" can be produced. Includes the following aspects:
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Attribute library: expresses the characteristics of products and categories, such as color, size, specifications, etc. Attributes are divided into product attributes and category attributes, including key attributes, sales attributes, product attributes, binding attributes, and special attributes.
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Brand library: Brand data management of products. The basic fields of the brand are composed of logo, Chinese and English name, place of origin and other data. Multiple categories of products can be mounted under the brand.
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Model library: basic information of the product, indicating different specifications of the same product, using coding to indicate that the purpose of differentiation has been achieved
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Barcode library: Contains barcodes and QR codes. After scanning, you can query all information about the product.
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Qualification database: self-made products, production standards, patents, certifications, etc. Product database: also known as SKU database, a collection of one type of products.
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Product library: SKU library, the minimum collection of inventory units.