Audience: Suppliers

Here are some guidelines to accelerate the product setup process using advanced catalog services and to ensure your products meet basic system requirements as well as your retailer’s requirements. These products will be processed for compliance, and any image errors can be found in the Catalog Exceptions page in CommerceHub's Dsco platform.

If your retail trading partner does not use advanced catalog services to manage their products, refer to Working with images for basic catalog for image guidelines.

Product Images vs. Item Images

Product Images

Product images should be used to showcase the various products you sell. You can add many different product images to each item in the Dsco platform. 

TIP: Product-level image fields should only be used if you're also using the Product Groups feature. See Variant SKUs and Product Groups for more information. If you're not using the Product Groups feature, use the item images option when adding images to an item. 
Item Images

Item images should be used to showcase the individual items/variations within a product group. Unlike product images, item images should be specific for each item in the Dsco platform.

Tip: Retailers using advanced catalog services will have image attributes with the images prefix, e.g. images.front_image, images.back_image, images.profile_view. Attributes with the images prefix must contain values that are unique across each item. Attributes with the product prefix must contain values that are the same across all variations.

Correct Example:

mceclip0.png

In this example, the supplier has correctly placed the color-specific images in the images.main column, and used the same image to represent the entire product group.

Incorrect Example:

mceclip1.png

In this example, the supplier has mistakenly used model-specific image variations (red, gray_peach, etc.) as product images across the same product group (AIR_SNEAKER).

Image Requirements

  • You must load images using the Add Products template or the Catalogs API. If you add images using the Add Images page in the Dsco platform, those images will not be processed for retailer catalog compliance, and they will not appear as an exception in the catalog exception report.
  • CommerceHub supports the following file formats for any sized images:
    •  JPG
    • JPEG
    • PNG
    • GIF
  • We recommend providing very high resolution images as we will resize them for your trading partners so that they get the best size for their needs. 
  • Some retailers have their own minimum sizing requirements, so be sure to follow your retailer’s requirements.
  • You must not include spaces in the image title. Using hyphens (-) or underscores ( _ ) is recommended to create more stable image links. Here’s an example: ABCDE_1234-1234.jpg.

Image Hosting Requirements

Images must be hosted in a PUBLIC repository/site. If you aren't sure how to host images online or do not have an internal hosting site that's public, you can use one of the following services:

  • AmazonAWS
  • Box
  • BOXcloud
  • Cloudfront
  • Drive.google.com
  • Dropbox 
  • Cnetcontent.com
  • Flickr  
  • Google Photos
  • Imgur    

 Important: Be aware that public hosting repositories/sites may have their own restrictions and limitations for data downloads, and this may affect how, or the speed at which, your images are downloaded. In some cases, the Basic/Level 1/Free contract with any service may not meet the Dsco platform's expectations for availability.

Image URL Requirements

  • You must use HTTPS. Here's an example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/85dxl67o4xinmlj/FW5033-MFW5223-M1.jpg.
  • You must not include spaces in the URL. Using hyphens (-) or underscores ( _ ) is recommended to create more stable image links. Here’s an example: https://www.dropbox.com/s/009988/ABC_12-12.jpg.
  • The image URL must: 
    • Be a valid format.    
    • Link to raw image data (not an image view).    
    • Lead to a downloadable image file. If the system cannot download the image, the URL will fail.    
    • Be an actual image file (JPG, JPEG, PNG, or GIF. Not a PDF) when downloaded by the system.
  • If images are rejected by the upload tool, you can visit the URL provided in the file to confirm the image will render in the browser (you must not be logged in to your image hosting site). When viewing images, there should not be additional navigational links/buttons on the page; only the image should show in the browser window.
  • Be aware that image preview pages with download buttons and other icons are not direct links to the images.

If you're using Dropbox to host your images:
Dropbox will automatically create a direct image link with a dl=0 extension at the end of each URL, which will result in an image error. You must change the dl=0 value to dl=1. Valid image URLs should look like this: https://www.dropbox.com/s/85dxl67o4xinmlj/FW5033-MFW5223-M1.jpg?dl=1.

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