Terminology
This section lists the most important terms, along with their definitions, used in Virto Commerce Catalog.
Store: Any digital means of marketing and/or selling products created with the Virto Commerce platform and its modules. Technically, this may be an ecommerce website, a mobile app, etc.
Catalog: A module offered by the Virto Commerce platform that allows you to create your own product catalog linked to one or more Stores. A typical catalog houses various Categories with Products and their Variations. The Catalog module consists of Store Front (the ecommerce website that faces customers) and the Admin Console or Back Office, which is used to configure your catalog according to the user’s needs.
Virtual Catalog: As opposed to a physical catalog, a virtual catalog enables regrouping the product list for different visualization, while keeping the original linking. For instance, you might want to create a virtual catalog when you have a website that sells medical drugs, and the drugs were originally listed by their active agents, but you want to display the brand names on your website instead.
Category: Any category acts as a container or ‘folder’ that houses various Products belonging to a particular type; those could be both Physical and Digital Products. For example, a consumer electronics website may have such categories as laptops, tablets, smartphones, cameras, etc.
Product: A basic entity in Virto Commerce Catalog module, a product is a basic type of item one can create and list on an ecommerce website. One may opt to create entries for both Physical and Digital products. There are also special types of products, such as Bills of Materials and Variations.
SKU: Standing for Stock Keeping Unit, SKU is an alphanumeric code used to track the product inventory. By adding SKUs to every Product Variation, store owners can easily track the number of available products and create threshold limits to determine whether a new purchase order is needed.
GTIN, or Global Trade Item Number: A part of a numeric code used to uniquely identify a product. Currently, GTIN is used exclusively with bar codes.
Property: Properties are customizable entities that any Catalog, Category, or Product (including its Variations) may have. For instance, typical properties for a Physical Product may include size, color, brand, etc.
Inheritance: A technique that allows entities of various levels to inherit tags. Tags may be inherited both ‘upwards’ (e.g. a Category inherits Product’s tags) and ‘downwards’ (e.g. a Product inherits its Category’s tags).
Physical Product: Any tangible Product the Store owner may list on their Store. Physical products have a unique Track Inventory attribute that Digital Products do not have. Shipping and Fulfillment Center attributes are also relevant to them.
Digital Product: Any intangible Product the Store owner may list on their Store. Digital products have such unique attributes as Download Type, Maximum Downloads, etc., as opposed to Physical Products; no Shipping or Inventory attributes may be applicable to such products.
Bill of materials: A special type of Product that is actually list of materials required for a specific item being purchased by the customer, which one may generate for internal purposes.
Note: Bills of materials are internal entities that cannot be viewed by customers.
Facet: A set of Properties grouped together (e.g. size and color).
Variation: Each Product may have one or more variations; for instance, a cell phone may come with various colors: blue, white, black, etc. You may create variations based on color, size, and other properties you configure.
Note: Any variation is a separate entity that is created as a new Product; however, it does have to be linked to its master Product.
Association: A tool that enables adding a block of related items to a Product or multiple products. For instance, that could be a widget with related products or accessories that go with the Product in question.
SEO: Virto Commerce Catalog offers dedicated SEO tools to boost ecommerce Store visits. In particular, one may add meta title, description, keywords, and image alt texts for a specific Product to make it better discoverable on the web.