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  • Catalogue naming standards
  • benz
    Free Member

    From a school homework question….about how best to ensure folks pick the most appropriate item from an electronic catalogue….

    Are there any specific standards which should or could be used?

    I’m aware of short and long descriptions, so let’s test this…

    Imagine a ball valve with stainless body and 6″ diameter.

    And IT system limited to 50 characters, long description 500 characters.

    Short Description:

    Valve: ball, 6″, stainless

    Long Description:

    Repeat short description plus add further characteristics such as manufacturer, manufacturer part number, etc, etc

    Anyone experienced and knows what best practice in terms of naming conventions would be – to support folks at a minimum narrowing down their search to smallest possible number of possible items?

    Thanks. This is not my area of expertise…..

    poly
    Free Member

    I think the short description you use makes sense if it is a “product tree”

    Valves > ball valve > 6″ > stainless

    Each element of the tree is getting more specific. However I don’t think is makes much sense from a human readable sense, compared to:

    6″ Stainless Ball Valve

    “Valve: ball” seems unnatural and will make it hard(er) to search for ‘ball valve’

    In terms of “long description”, then:

    1. Does it make sense to repeat the short description at all (thats 50 chars wasted – but may mean you only have to search one field).
    2. I wouldn’t start with a repeat of the short descr. In any table view etc you are likely to trim the latter part of the field, so if including it, I would add at the end!

    Is the question actually about the field content or ensuring the user picks the correct item – which might be about filters etc.

    However your question seems slightly artificial (and if you are brave enough you might answer something along these lines):

    The most efficient manner of presenting information in an electronic catalogue depends significantly on the intended end user of the catalogue, the potential number of items, and their similarity, and the display device for the electronic catalogue. It would be wrong to design the field structure without having an awareness of these use factors. Even where the intended user is clear, products are distinct, and the device platform is well defined it may be that the intuitive choice of field content is not actually the most effective at guiding the user to making a decision and some element of “A / B” testing or machine learning may support the selection of the best field content.

    Usually however for school homework the concept behind the “right” answer has been taught in class or alluded to in reading material.

    samunkim
    Free Member

    Its kinda my field

    You don’t want to abandon the familiar whole phrase “Ball Valve” as google is more specific when a search phrase is enclosed in quotes

    So
    Valve – Ball Valve
    then the products attributes with the most important first. lastly part number and supplier.. a EAN code is always nice as well
    size in mm is useful without a space ( 185mm )

    The NHS have a 340,000 catalogue as do this fairly well

    Catalogue Here

    but ebay do it better with full bolean search engine

    Ebay advanced search

    So for example
    wheel, disc -(disc cover) -front -(disc wheel stickers) -(valve covers) -bmx -24″

    Will find Rear Wheels which are disc specific and not 24″

    HTH

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    Cougar
    Full Member

    Keywords.

    Look at Richer Sounds for a great example of this. Say you’re looking for a TV. Select “all TVs.” Big long list right? But then there’s a set of filters on the left; you can refine your search by brand, size, price etc as they’re all stored as separate fields.

    I had to buy a fridge a year or so ago. I was limited by space due to the existing worktop depth / height. On John Lewis’s site it’s a similar design, so narrowing down options to return suitable products was trivial, searching for “x height or lower and y depth or less” by description alone would’ve been a nightmare.

    antigee
    Full Member

    used to deal with this stuff but more on the business to business inventory side – getting salespeople to quickly find appropriate items was a key issue

    not sure if helps but a bump and maybe some useful terms – as much as I can remember

    Hierarchy – typically:

    Product Category yr example plumbing
    Sub Category yr example valves
    Item yr example 6″ stainless ball valve

    the item has descriptions
    short form often replicate category/sub cat used in older systems for searching and generating reports probably redundant?

    long description freeform – helpful to have “rules” so information is consistent in appearance and layout

    next are product attributes

    eg height, length, width, weight, finish, brand, – typically to be consistent the headers for the attributes would be set back at the sub category level so they are consistent in the sub category though freedom for product managers to easily add attributes that they think are important is good

    to go to Cougar’s comment

    “you can refine your search by brand, size, price etc as they’re all stored as separate fields.” … these have been set up as item attributes

    can also throw in Alternative items and Related items down at the attributes level

    sure a pro’ will be along shortly

    edit for the homework maybe some screen grabs – labelling the elements used to arrive at the item level – category pull downs, sub category menus, filters using attributes

    bencooper
    Free Member

    Tree systems are great if you have an idea of what you’re looking for, but tricky if you don’t know the hierarchy. I quite often have to find a “widget” – something I’ve seen somewhere and want to use, probably not for its intended use – so I’ll search on a bunch of keywords based on what I think it’s like.

    Sometimes it takes ages to get that “aha, what I want is an xxxx” moment.

    So it really depends on the products and the audience.

    Dorset_Knob
    Free Member

    Wow, they teach this stuff in schools now, do they? </old>

    Don’t make the mistake a certain seller of screws made when they named all their “electric cable” parts, and didn’t bother asking electricians until after they realised nothing was being found, who all said something along the lines of …

    “yeah, I wouldn’t think to look for ‘cable’ – we call it ‘flex’ … “

    Whatever hierarchies of products you have and information architectures and truncation principles … don’t forget to check what the people who use the parts call them 🙂

    (The sooner this lesson makes it to schools the better…)

    #ux #researchfirst

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