OTTO Market: marketplace guide

About this guide

This is a ChannelEngine guide on the Hamburg-based marketplace OTTO Market. Here you can find information on how to request an OTTO Market account, how to configure this marketplace on ChannelEngine, what the specific requirements are, and more.

Table of contents

Commercial information

How to request an account

Associated costs

Marketplace features

Settings and configuration

Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions

• Setup
• Categorization
• Product content
• Mappings
• Listed products

Additional information

FAQs

Commercial information

Founded	1949
Founder	Werner Otto
Headquarters	Hamburg, Germany
Area served (orders)	Germany
Revenue	EUR 14.3 billion (2019–2020)
Number of monthly visits	circa 60 million
Website	OTTO Market
Setup cost	none
Commission	7-18%, depending on the category
Other costs	EUR 39.90/month
Payment	weekly
Product categories	DIY, fashion, films, games, furniture, lifestyle, living, electronics, and more
Input language	German
Input currency	EUR
Content creation	yes
Minimum number of SKUs	no
Advertisement options	yes
Profile on ChannelEngine	OTTO Market

How to request an account

To start selling on OTTO Market, you need to make sure that you meet the requirements below. Once you do, go to their registration page and sign up.

• You have a business in Germany with a German legal form and a German tax ID.
• You present yourself as the merchant to end customers (OTTO Market is not a wholesale channel)
• You offer customer service in German.
• You dispatch from a German warehouse.
• You only offer products with VAT of 19%.
• You do not use graduated shipping costs (uniform costs for all products or EUR 0 are technically possible).
• You transfer to the OTTO Partner Portal the shipment number for the outbound shipment and the shipment number for the return shipment in advance.
• You sell mainly products from these categories.

Associated costs

OTTO Market does not charge any setup fees, but it does charge a monthly fee of EUR 39.90. It also charges a commission fee, which varies from 7% to 18% depending on the product category.

Marketplace features

Supported	Not supported
Product offers	Cancelations (marketplace)
Product content	Repricing
Orders	Marketplace fulfillment service
Cancelations (merchant)	Returns (merchant)
Shipments	Sales channels
Split orders
Returns (marketplace)
Product variations (sizes/colors)
HTML formatting

 

Settings and configuration

Setting up each marketplace on ChannelEngine follows the same flow, once you add the marketplace:

1. Go through the Setup.
2. Create a Product selection.
3. Complete the Categorization.
4. Set up the Mappings: content, offers, and carriers.
5. Configure the Pricing: rules and currency conversion.
6. Finish the Activation.
7. Check the Listed products overview.

 

Marketplace-specific requirements and exceptions

Setup

On OTTO Market

Go to OTTO Market's partner portal and retrieve your API username and API password.

On ChannelEngine

To connect OTTO Market with ChannelEngine:

1. Go to the Setup page of your OTTO Market channel and add the API username and API password to the respective fields.
2. Click Save to validate your credentials and complete the connection setup.
3. Navigate to Plugin specific settings section and in the Ship from address - country code field, add the ISO 3166-1 alpha-3 code of the country where you ship from. E.g.: if you ship from Germany, enter DEU.
4. In the Ship from address - city field, enter the city where you ship from.
5. In the Ship from address - zip code field, enter the zip code where you ship from.

 

Categorization

The size of OTTO Market's list of categories reflects the marketplace's broad range of products, but the categorization process is straightforward – and it uses attribute names in German.

Product content

On OTTO Market, merchants provide their own product content. This includes the text, images, and features associated with each product variant. Ultimately, however, the product content which is displayed to buyers is determined based on which content has the highest customer benefit. Each time a merchant uploads new content for the same product variant (based on matching EANs), the best quality content is re-determined. 

It is therefore encouraged to provide only high-quality images, product titles, and descriptions, and to provide as much feature information as possible to assist potential buyers in making a selection. this helps ensure that your content is displayed over that of your competitors and fellow merchants. 

 

Mappings

Content

Unlike most channels, all mappable attributes are nested under the Content mappings.

All products (required)

• Brand - the brand of the product. See the section Creating brands for more information about the creation of new and existing brands in OTTO Market. 
• Delivery time - the expected delivery time, in days. E.g.: 3.
• Delivery type - select the kind of delivery for the product. The options available are parcel (the most common), curbside, and preferred location (e.g.: a pick-up point).
• EAN - the 13-digit EAN or GTIN of the product. It must not start with a 2.
• Product reference - map this attribute if you want to group child products under a parent – or a grandparent, if you need to create a double variation). If you leave it empty, the SKU is used as the reference. Note that you can only use each Product reference once within your product catalog, so make sure to use a value that makes sense for all variations of the product – and does not refer to any specifics of a variation. The maximum number of characters is 50.
• SKU - your internal identifier, usually this is the Merchant product number. The maximum number of characters is 50.
• Standard price - the sale price of the product.
• VAT - the kind of VAT associated with the product. The options available are free, full, and reduced – with full being the most common.

All products (optional)

• Bullet point 1-5 - the features or highlights of the product.
• Bundle - defines if the product is part of a bundle or not.
• Description - the description of the product. The following HTML elements are supported: b, i, font, s, u, o, sup, sub, ins, del, strong, strike, tt, code, big, small, br, span, and em. The maximum number of characters is 2,000.
• Disposal - select Yes for OTTO Market to display information on the appropriate disposal of the product or parts of it.
• FSC certified - select Yes if the product is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council.
• Manufacturer - the manufacturer of the product.
• Max. order quantity - if a certain quantity of the product can be sold per customer, set the threshold here.
• Max. order quantity period - the period of time (in days) during which Max. order quantity is valid.
• MOIN - My OTTO identification number. This value must match the MOIN available in the back-end of OTTO Market.
• MPN - the manufacturer part number, if available. The maximum number of characters is 50.
• MSRP price - the product's manufacturer's suggested retail price (MSRP).
• Multipack - if the product is part of a set, specify it here.
• Packing unit count - the number of packages.
• Packing unit height/length/width - the package dimensions in mm.
• Offering start date - the date from when the product can be ordered on OTTO Market.
• Product name - the product's title. This should not exceed 77 characters in length. 
• Product URL - the link to the product on your own website.
• Production date - the date when the product was manufactured.
• Pharmazentralnummer (PZN) - only relevant for pharmaceutical products.
• Release date - the date when the product was made available for sale by the manufacturer.
• Sale end date - the date until when the product's sale price is valid, if applicable. The date format is YYYY-MM-DD (i.e.: ISO 8601). E.g.: 2023-12-25.
• Sale price - the product's discounted price, if applicable.
• Sale start date - the date from when the product's sale price is valid, if applicable. The date format is YYYY-MM-DD (i.e.: ISO 8601). E.g.: 2023-12-01.
• UPC - if the product has a universal product code, add it here.

Product image requirements

Product images are shared directly with OTTO Market from ChannelEngine's database, so there is no need to map them to a particular attribute.

However, as OTTO Market pays particular attention to the quality of product content provided by merchants, there are some requirements in regard to images. 

• OTTO Market enforces a minimum resolution of 500x1000 px and a maximum resolution of 4,500 px.
• The file name must not contain special characters or umlauts. 
• Images must be in file type JPG or PNG and in the color format RGB color. Other formats are not permitted. 
• The main image should be imported as a cropped image.
• The product must make up 85% of the area in the image. 
• The use of props or the inclusion of additional items in the image is not recommended. 
• If a background is present, it should be a light and neutral image background (beige, light grey, white, off-white, etc). 
• The image may only show the exact product matching the description and associated product variant
• Information about energy efficiency must be submitted in text and not included on the product image.

Carrier

Carrier mapping is required in OTTO Market, and several logistics companies are listed. However, only three carriers can be used for returns: Hermes, DHL, and GLS. Therefore, it may be preferable to stick to these three carriers when shipping too.

Finally, including track-and-trace codes is also required. Bear in mind that if you use DPD as your shipping carrier, you can only use a return tracking code from DHL.

Listed products

If you have problems with products not appearing on OTTO Market (especially if you are trying to create products that do not exist yet), check the Listed products section for more information.

You can either filter on Channel status (Invalid for all products that ChannelEngine has not exported, such as products with an empty EAN or products that currently do not exist on OTTO Market) or use the Validation and feedback tab to see all known validation/feedback errors for specific products.

Creating brands

If the specific product variant you want to list does not already exist on OTTO Market, you can create it yourself by going to Produkte (Products), Neues Produkt anlegen (Create new product), + Neue Marke anlegen (Create new brand), and then entering the brand details and trademark. It is important that you enter the trademark name exactly as it is registered, as it's not possible to change this later. 

It is advised to be very sure that your brand is not already present in the system before creating a new one. You can double-check this via the drop-down Marke (Brands) menu in the Neues Produkt anlegen (Create new product) window. Enter the first letter of your brand and then check if it already appears in the list of brands that are already present in Otto. 

It can take up to two hours for your newly created brand to appear on Otto, as it must be checked by Otto before it is accepted. If you are working with a service provider, it can be that the OTTO brand list is only fetched up to two times per week. It may, therefore, take a few days before you can see your brand in the system of your service provider. 

Additional information

Order extra data items

When an order is imported to ChannelEngine, ChannelEngine also fetches extra data items related to the order itself – or to order lines. This extra data is specific to this marketplace. An explanation of each can be found below: 

Order extra data

Key	Conditional*	Description
orderNumber	No	The order number of the channel order.
order.InitialDeliveryFees.Name	Yes	The delivery fee amount, as taken from the initial delivery fee in the channel order. The value is the name of the delivery fee.

 

Order line extra data

Key	Conditional*	Description
WEEE Pickup	Yes	If this field is present, it indicates that the buyer requested a disposal service as per Waste from Electrical and Electronic Equipment (WEEE) regulations. This is an optional field, and will not be present in the order lines if the buyer did not select this option.
discount	Yes	If any discounts were applied to the order line, ChannelEngine subtracts the gross discount amount from the item value gross price and indicates this calculation as the UnitPriceInclVat. An order line extra data entry will be created for the applied discount in the following format: E.g.: Discount: 9.99.

* Conditional fields only display if the channel provided a value. 

FAQs

How often does each task run on OTTO Market?

Tasks run according to the following schedule on OTTO Market:

Task	Frequency
Export product data to channel	every 60 minutes
Export product offers to channel	every 15 minutes
Import product offers from channel	every 15 minutes
Import orders from channel	every 20 minutes
Import returns from channel	every 60 minutes
Export order shipments to channel	every 60 minutes
Export returns to channel	every 60 minutes

From October 2022, OTTO Market no longer delays the transmission of new orders by 35 minutes. Therefore, when ChannelEngine's order import task runs, it imports all new orders.

The products I loaded are stuck in the status 'Under review'. What is wrong?

Go to your OTTO back-end and check if the display restriction (DR) setting is active. If so, make sure to deactivate it. This is a safety net feature, which allows you to prepare your products for sale without exposing them to customers. Note that deactivating the display restriction can take a few working days.

How are offer rankings determined by OTTO Market? 

OTTO Market takes a number of factors into consideration when determining which product offerings by which merchants to display to buyers: 

• Gross sales price and discount promotions 
• Shipping costs, shipping cost-related discounts via promotions (flat rate not taken into account)
• Average delivery time in days (e.g. 3-5 days vs 3-4 days)
• Selected services and their costs, e.g.: delivery to the place of installation, removal of old furniture, assembly service, and installation service. These services can currently only be offered by OTTO and therefore OTTO may be given preference in the ranking.