Amazon: creating product variations

This article describes how to create product variations on Amazon via ChannelEngine.

Table of contents

Introduction

Limitations

Requirements

Create product variations on ChannelEngine

Create product variations on Amazon

Best practices

Example - Apparel

FAQs

Introduction

Create product variations on Amazon via ChannelEngine. Variations are different versions of the same product, varying in size, color, or other aspects. The manner in which you vary your product, e.g.: by size or color, is called the variation theme or variation family. Variation themes and families allow buyers to easily compare and select options directly from a single product detail page.

Limitations

Not all Amazon sellers are allowed to create or update content on Amazon. These sellers are therefore not able to create product variations on Amazon. Pay special attention if you fall into one of the two seller profiles below:

• If you are a seller who is also selling on Amazon Vendor (through a 1P model), then you typically cannot overwrite the content that you have submitted on Vendor Central.
• If you are an authorized reseller or brand, then you have limited content creation rights by default. You should register on Amazon Brand Registry for more content creation rights.

In general, if you have limited content creation rights on Amazon, you can submit a ticket on Seller Central to request a change to your content creation rights.

Requirements

1. To set up product variations, you must set the given family's Export content attributes to Yes in Mappings, Content mappings.
2. You must have set up (grand)parent-child relationships in your product feed or via the Merchant API. (Grand)parents are not purchaseable, but their child products are.

Create product variations on ChannelEngine

Settings and Configuration

To set up variations in your Amazon plugin:

1. If your product structure contains grandparents, enable grandparents on Amazon. If your variations have a parent-child structure, skip this step. 
   1. Enable the Use grandparent products setting on the Setup step on Amazon. This tells ChannelEngine to treat the grandparent as the parent and group child products under it. (If you do not enable this setting, separate pages are created on Amazon per parent with each parent's related child products.)
   2. Enable the Include standalone and parent products without the grandparent setting. This ensures that standalone products and variations without a grandparent product are also exported to Amazon.
2. Go to Product selection and include child products in your selection. Adding (grand)parent products is optional. 
3. ChannelEngine automatically includes (grand)parents in the channel plugin, in any case.

Map child attributes

1. Go to Categorization and assign the correct categories to your products. It is essential to do this correctly because variant attributes are mapped in their respective categories.
2. Go to Mappings, Content mappings. From this point onward, you focus on mapping attributes for your product variants (child products). 
3. Select the category in which you have product variations. Ensure all required attributes are mapped and populated.
   
4. To speed up the mapping process, prefill the Relationship type attribute in bulk with a fixed value. To do this: 
   1. Select Fixed value from the attribute's dropdown.
   2. Select Variation.
      
      
5. Set up the Variation theme. This attribute determines what differentiates your variations. E.g.: if you are selling a T-shirt in different sizes, select the option Size or SizeName. If you are selling a USB stick in different colors, select the option Color. If your products vary both in size and color, select the option Size/Color.

8. Ensure that all attributes included in the variation theme are mapped with unique values for every child, e.g.: Variation theme - SizeColor, required child attributes: Size, Color.
9. After you map the variant attributes, set the content strategy. In Content mappings, All products, map the Update type attribute to Clear and overwrite so that the existing content on Amazon is overwritten with the mapped data on ChannelEngine.
10. Verify the mappings of your parent products. For guidance, check out the section Map baseline parent attributes below.

Map baseline parent attributes

The parent listing is not purchasable and exists only to group child variations. However, you must still map a handful of attributes for parent products. 

Parent attributes that are automatically copied from the child

Although parent products need values for all required attributes under All products, and all required attributes must be mapped to pass the validation process, some values are automatically copied from the respective child products. The attributes whose values are automatically copied from child products are:

• SKU
• Variation theme - copied from the child products
• Parent_child
• Item_name
• Recommended browse nodes - copied from the child products
• Brand - the brand name must be consistent throughout the whole product family
• Product type (category) - copied from the child products
• Department - only required in Apparel and other select categories

Delay mapping optional attributes

Try to avoid initially mapping optional attributes; that way, you reduce the likelihood of encountering errors that prevent your content from being accepted by Amazon. Once the content is exported successfully, you can gradually map more optional attributes – making sure to check for new errors each time.

Variation themes

Ensure that children and their parent share the same, exact Variation theme.

Attributes to never map for parents

Parent listings must not contain: 

• Price
• Quantity
• GTIN
• Images specific to a variation

Map strongly recommended child attributes

While not required, ChannelEngine strongly recommends mapping the following attributes to make your listings successful:

• Additional images - improves conversion. 
• Bullet points (Key features) - improves SEO and discoverability.
• Product description - gives the buyer clarity.
• Size map - essential for apparel categories.
• Color swatch image - required for some apparel categories.
• Material/fabric type - improves filtering and search on Amazon.
• Dimensions and weight - streamlines fulfillment and buyer expectations.

Create product variations on Amazon

To create variations directly on Amazon, consult the Use 'Add a product' to create variations article on Seller Central.

Best practices

To ensure that your product variations are correctly set up, pay careful consideration to the following:

1. Generate Amazon templates - Amazon's content requirements may not always match the content attributes that must be mapped in a given product category on ChannelEngine. This mismatch is due to Amazon's vast number of categories and the frequent updates to its templates. As a result, attributes that may be required might be marked as optional, and vice versa. 
   • The best practice is to generate the category-specific template on Seller Central and compare the Amazon-generated template to the mappings available on ChannelEngine. 
   • By generating category-specific templates on Seller Central, you know for sure which mappings are required and which are optional.
2. Make sure that the set of mapped attributes per child product is unique. E.g.: if you vary on color and size, do not have two child products that are each red and XL.
3. Amazon often does not group products on Seller Central if they have a lot of errors in their content. So make sure the product is at least discoverable via search before checking if it is shown as a variation.

4. Keep parent titles generic; put variation values in child titles.

5. Ensure brand, product type, and browse node match across all children.

6. Use distinct images per variation (especially for color).

7. Avoid confusing variants of the same product model with different product models.

8. Limit variation counts to maintain performance. Large families may be suppressed by Amazon.

Example: Apparel (T-Shirt)

Parent

• Parent SKU: TSHIRT-PARENT

• Parentage: parent

• Variation Theme: Color

• Title: “Men’s Cotton Crewneck T-Shirt”

• Brand: Acme Apparel

Child 1

• SKU: TSHIRT-RED

• Parent SKU: TSHIRT-PARENT

• Parentage: child

• Color: Red

• UPC: 123456789012

• Price: 12.99

Child 2

• SKU: TSHIRT-BLUE

• Parent SKU: TSHIRT-PARENT

• Parentage: child

• Color: Blue

• UPC: 123456789013

• Price: 12.99

FAQs

I am using Amazon in a country other than the United Kingdom or the United States. How do I identify the 'Relationship type' and 'Variation theme'?
Below you can find the translation of those attributes per country. Note that for the UAE, the Relationship type is under the All products category, while the Variation theme is category-specific. For all other countries, both attributes are category-specific.

• Canada - Relationship Type, Variation Theme
• France - Type de relation, Thème variation
• Germany - Produktbeziehungs-Typ, Varianten-Design
• Italy - Tipo di relazione, Tema variante
• Mexico - Tipo de Relación, Tema de Variación
• Netherlands - Type relatie, Variatiethema
• Poland - Typ Relacji, Motyw zmiennosci
• Spain - Tipo de relación, Tipo de variación
• Sweden - Relationstyp, Variationstema
• United Arab Emirates (UAE) - Relationship Type, Variation Theme

Why doesn’t my parent title show on Amazon?
ChannelEngine automatically uses the first child’s title if the parent title is not mapped. Moreover, parent content is only displayed in the Clothing, Accessories & Luggage, Sporting Goods, and Beauty categories. If you are using a grandparent-parent-child structure, remember that ChannelEngine treats grandparents as parents when your product data is exported. 

My child/parent product is stuck on Create and does not have errors. What does that mean?
This usually happens when the Use grandparent products setting is not enabled or standalone/parent products are excluded. If you enable the setting Use grandparent products, then you should always enable the setting Include standalone and parent products without a grandparent.

Amazon says, “Child SKU is not unique.” What should I do?
Check if any two child products have the same variation values, e.g.: two sizes M or two colors red. Each child must differ by at least one attribute.

Common errors