The most powerful E-Commerce segmentation is possible when your data platform knows everything about your products. Then you can segment, personalise, experiment and sell to customers who are interested in various types of products.

This post explains how you can easily extend your product catalog data in ODP with First Three Things ODP Product Attribute Add On.

Optimizely’s ODP Commerce Cloud Integration

Optimizely’s Commerce Cloud integration is a no-code solution that uses Service API to sync Contact, Product and Order data to ODP.

https://docs.developers.optimizely.com/digital-experience-platform/v1.5.0-optimizely-data-platform/docs/import-data-from-optimizely-commerce-cloud

In terms of Product data, the integration sends universal catalog data such as product & variant codes, product/variant relationships, product name, image & price.

However every catalog is different with each company having their own metadata that provides additional context around each product. In an Optimizely product catalog, this data will be managed as properties attached to Products and Variants.

Sending this data to ODP allows you to create much more powerful customer segments and this is what our ODP Product Attribute Connector is responsible for.

Installation

Code is open source and available at: https://github.com/first3things/ODP-ProductAttribute-AddOn

Install the package directly from the Optimizley Nuget repository.

dotnet add package First3Things.ODPProductAttributeConnector

Add the following to your StartUp class. This extension will register the necessary dependencies.

using First3Things.ODPProductAttributeConnector.DependencyInjection;

…

services.AddOdpProductAttributeConnector(_configuration);

Add your API credentials to the appSettings.json file

  "ODPConnector": {
    "apiHost": "<-- host name e.g. api.zaius.com -->",
    "apiKey": "<-- your public api key retrieved in the admin area -->"
  }
}

Configuration

Create fields in ODP for product attributes you want to sync to ODP by logging in as an administrator and proceeding to:

Settings -> (Data Management) Objects & Fields -> Products

Additional information on that step is available in this blog post:

Update your Content Types

Add the ODP Sync attribute to any Product or Variant content type properties you want to sync.

Set the ODP Field Name within the attribute.

[OdpProductSync("brand")]
[CultureSpecific]
[BackingType(typeof(PropertyString))]
[Display(Name = "Brand", GroupName = SystemTabNames.Content, Order = 15)]
public virtual string Brand { get; set; }

Scheduled Job

An “ODP Product Attribute Connector” scheduled job will be installed in the CMS Administrative area.

This job uses reflection to retrieve your commerce content types and send property values tagged with the ODPProductSync attribute to ODP.

Additional Notes

Retrieve Catalog Business Logic

Multiple catalogs are not supported out of the box.

The business logic executed by the Scheduled Job picks the first Catalog.

If you need to overwrite this logic, inject a new implementation for

ICatalogService.GetCatalogRoot()

Useful Optimizely Documentation

Product Batch Request API: https://docs.developers.optimizely.com/digital-experience-platform/v1.5.0-optimizely-data-platform/reference/batch-requests

Recommended Product Fields: https://docs.developers.optimizely.com/digital-experience-platform/v1.5.0-optimizely-data-platform/docs/usecase-products#recommended-fields

The most common concern I’ve seen raised in Europe is how best to integrate ODP with your website in accordance with GDPR compliance data protection regulations.

Some ODP Background

ODP consists of the following key data entities that will be synced between your website and ODP.

Products Product catalog structure and master data

Customers The Visitors profile data telling us who this customer is such as Name, DOB, Language etc

Events A visitors various interactions with the website such as page views, login, add to cart, orders

Orders Orders that the visitor has placed in your E-Commerce system

Out of these 4 entities, all but the synchronisation of the Product feed is typically subject to GDPR compliance regulations.

Commerce Cloud Connector

Optimizely’s Commerce Cloud connector is a no code add on that can be used Optimizely Commerce Cloud’s Service API to synchronise Product, Customer Contact and Order data entities.

In Europe you would be best advised to enable Product imports but disable Contacts and Orders so that you can do the relevant checks to make sure that your customers have first agreed to the relevant cookie policies.

Note: ODP’s Commerce Cloud Connector is due for release in EU H1 2022

GDPR Friendly Integration

My advice is to separate your ODP tracking implementation from your websites code base by using a Tag Manager that forwards data to ODP only for requests that adhere to the relevant cookie policies.

I’ll assume you are using Google Tag Manager for the rest of this post.

Use your Cookie Opt In Trigger

You will likely already have an Opt-In performance cookie trigger set up in GTM to manage the execution of your Tags. The set up of your trigger will depend on the product you use to manage cookies but it should look like something similar to the below.

All ODP Tags should use this trigger to make sure that only customers who agree to share their data are synced to ODP.

Load the ODP JS Tag

As you are tracking a session, you need to load the ODP JS tag on each page. The JS tag will include the PageView event by default.

Log into your instance of ODP and copy the ODP Integrations -> Javascript Tag option .

Then in Google Tag Manager you can simply add a custom HTML Tag using the Opt-In Performance trigger

This will load the ODP JS script and fire the “pageview” event for customers who have accepted the configured cookie policies.

Using the Tag Manager Data Layer

Using this approach you can push any Tag Manager data layer events you are already firing to ODP and push new data layer events for any other data you want to track.

Customer Profile

As you learn new profile information on your customer, push a “CustomerProfile” event to the data layer with the customer profile object.

Then create a Tag to push that data onto ODP as demonstrated below.

Note the timeout wrapping the ODP API push. This is because of an intermittent issue with a race condition that sometimes caused this event to fire before the JS script was loaded resulting in the event failing to fire.

Event Tracking

Events are actions the customer takes on your website. They can be anything from page views to keyword searches or completing a checkout.

The below example triggers the Tag when a “Search” event is pushed to the data layer and the customer has accepted the relevant cookie policies.

Conclusion

Using a Tag Manager is a great low code option for integrating ODP into your website while maintaining your GDPR compliance.

ODP has a turn key Integration app called the Commerce Cloud Connector which can be responsible for the synchronisation of Contact, Order and Product data between your Optimizely Commerce Cloud instance and ODP.

However in Europe the Commerce Cloud Connector is not due to be released until the end of June 2022.

In Europe, due to GDPR guideline compliance you may not ever be able to turn on the connector for Customer Contact or Order data . I can cover that in a separate blog post but you will need to make sure that the relevant cookie policies have been selected by the customer.

While waiting for the connectors release in Europe, a manual product data export and import to ODP is a low cost interim solution. The key is to make sure that the schema you choose to save the products in ODP will be maintained when you turn on the connectors product import.

Key Product Data Schema Import Considerations

ODP currently supports 1 currency with that currency in the UI showing as USD. It is on the product roadmap to support additional currencies but for the moment you will have to choose whatever you determine to be the default currency on your website for the product export.

ODP is flexible with regard to your product data structure. However if you intend to use the connector, it’s best to follow a Product->Variant model to match your Commerce catalog so that the consistency of your data will be maintained.

Exporting Product data

Assuming your default market is GB, the following script will export your products from the catalog in GBP£.

SELECT
CN.[Name] as category,
CE.[Name] AS [name],
(
       CASE
              WHEN Charindex('_',CE.Code)> 0 THEN CE.Code
              ELSE CE.Code
       END
)AS sku,
min(PD.UnitPrice)AS price
,
(
       CASE
              WHEN CEChild.Code IS NOT NULL THEN CEChild.Code
              ELSE CE.Code
       END
)AS parent_product_id
FROM [dbo].[CatalogEntry] CE
		INNER JOIN NodeEntryRelation NR ON NR.CatalogEntryId = CE.CatalogEntryId 
		INNER JOIN CatalogNode CN ON CN.CatalogNodeId = NR.CatalogNodeId
       LEFT OUTER JOIN [dbo].[CatalogEntryRelation] ER ON ER.ChildEntryId = CE.CatalogEntryId
       LEFT OUTER JOIN [dbo].[CatalogEntry] CEParent ON ER.ParentEntryId = CE.CatalogEntryId
          LEFT OUTER JOIN [dbo].[CatalogEntry] CEChild ON ER.ParentEntryId = CEChild.CatalogEntryId
       LEFT OUTER JOIN [PriceDetail] PD ON PD.CatalogEntryCode = CE.Code
WHERE (PD.MarketId ='GB'OR PD.MarketId IS NULL)
GROUP BY  CE.CatalogEntryId, NR.CatalogNodeId, CN.[Name], CE.ClassTypeId, CE.Code, CEParent.Code, CE.MetaClassId, CEParent.MetaClassId, CE.Name, CEParent.Name, CEParent.CatalogEntryId, CEChild.Code, CEChild.MetaClassId
Order BY CE.CatalogEntryId

The output of the script can be copied to a CSV file for import to ODP.

Row 1 of the above export is the product with the variants linked by the parent_product_id

Price in this example is pound price for the GB market. You can update the Where clause to isolate the prices for your default market of choice. Support for multi-market & multi-currency pricing is on the roadmap for ODP so i look forward to hearing more on that in the coming months.

Importing to ODP

Copy the output of this script to Excel to convert to a CSV file before doing the following:

• Do a Find/Replace to convert any “NULL” values in the price column to empty
• Update price values to 2 decimal places

The name the file odp_products.csv and drop into the ODP Integration CSV Upload interface

Conclusion

While you’re waiting for the ODP Commerce Cloud connector to be released in Europe, this simple Export/Import process will help you migrate product data into ODP in a way that will be consistent with the connector schema.