Create Products and Offers
Store Setup
As a new seller, creating products and offers is essential. Understanding the differences and how to efficiently upload your store’s offerings are important steps to get started.
In this article:
- What's the difference between a product and an offer?
- Methods to upload your products and offers
- Creating a single product and offer
- Creating a new product and offer for a single item
- Creating new products and offers for multiple items
- Create offers for existing products
- How to track your imports
- Product and offer attribute definitions
- Create products and offers via API
Product
The product is the actual content associated with a listing at Bestbuy.com. It contains all product attributes and “fixed” information such as:
- Product name
- Short and long description
- Color
Offer
The offer is the price and inventory associated with the product. This information (unlike the product) changes frequently such as:
- Selling price
- Stock quantity
Depending on the size of your product assortment, you can choose one of three methods to create new products and offers.
- For adding fewer than 20 products to the Marketplace, you can upload each one manually via single product creation.
- For adding more than 20 products, it's recommended that you upload your assortment in bulk using an Excel template.
- To automate the process, consider using one of the connectors available through Mirakl Connect or refer to Mirakl’s API documentation for custom API usage.
To get started, once you’re in the Best Buy Marketplace portal, go to: Price and stock > Offers > click
From here, you have two options:
Option 1 – Product already exists in Best Buy’s catalog
You can select Search for a Product in our Catalog to browse through existing products. To quickly identify which of your products may already exist in our catalog, we recommend starting with an offer template and referencing the article, Check for existing items in Best Buy’s catalog. Once you've found the product that you'd like to add an offer to, follow steps to Create offers for existing products.
Option 2 – Product is new to Best Buy’s catalog
If your product doesn't currently exist in our catalog, select Create a Product and follow the instructions below.
- To start the product creation process, select your primary category and any additional child categories from the dropdown menu(s).
- The product characteristics related to the category will appear below. Mandatory fields have a red asterisk (*). Please note, product characteristics vary by category and Best Buy’s Data Standards must be followed. See Product attribute descriptions (subsection below) for more information.
If your Brand is not available in the dropdown, submit a request. Please submit the exact spelling and capitalization of how the brand should be displayed. New brands will be available within five business days.
- Enter transactional information related to this product under Offer Characteristics. Note that Condition, Stock quantity, and Price are mandatory. Offer SKU is optional, and a random value will be assigned if left blank. We recommend using the UPC or another consistent identifier for your store to manage your offers more efficiently.
See Offer attribute definitions (subsection below) for information on remaining optional fields.
- Once you’ve completed entering the details of your product and offer, select the button
.
When a product is new to Best Buy’s catalog, it may show as Pending or Awaiting Product Creation until the Best Buy team reviews it. If any changes are needed, you will be notified, and the status may update to Changes required or Publication error. Contact your Best Buy Account Manager if any clarification is needed.
Excel bulk upload (recommended for uploading more than 20 products)
- To download a template, go to Price and stock > File Imports. Then, click the link for the Excel template under Products and offers.
You'll land on a new page to set up your template.
- Under Template type, choose one of three options:
- Product: To download a template for product creation only.
- Offer: To download a template for offer creation only.
- Products and offers*: To download a template that contains both product and offer information.
*If this is your first upload, we suggest downloading this template.
- Prices: To download a template for price updates to existing offers, and avoid touching other offer data, such as quantity.
- Product: To download a template for product creation only.
- Under Requirement level, choose one of three options:
- All: Contains all product attributes for that category. We suggest providing as much information as possible about your products, as it helps customers make a buying decision.
- Required: Contains only required attributes for that category.
- Required and recommended: Contains required and recommended attributes for that category.
- All: Contains all product attributes for that category. We suggest providing as much information as possible about your products, as it helps customers make a buying decision.
- Under Categories, select or search for your product category.
We strongly recommend selecting & working on one category template at a time and always downloading a current template. Attributes vary by product category and may change periodically. Reach out to your Best Buy Account Manager or Seller Support Analyst if you need assistance on which category template to select for your products.
If you have multiple product types within a category, you can select the parent category so that all child categories are available in your template. You will assign the child category for each product in step 7.
For example, if you have several types of products in Networking, you may want to select Networking. If you only have Mobile_Hotspots and Network_Routers, you can generate a template for only those two.
- At the bottom, select
.
- Once complete, your template will appear at the top of the page. Click Download.
- Open the downloaded file and in Column A, use the dropdown menu to select the appropriate category.
Once your category is selected, you may see the attribute fields change color:
If you take a quick scroll to the right, you will notice there are columns in green or blue:
- Fill in all applicable attributes. See Product and offer attribute descriptions (subsection below) for more information.
Tip: Use the dropdown and/or the Reference Data sheet on the template to see accepted values for any value list attributes. If there is no dropdown on the Data sheet, but the attribute exists on the Reference Data sheet, multiple values may be entered. Separate each value using the pipe symbol (“|”) in your file.
- Once you have completed and saved your template, import it into the Mirakl Back Office:
- Go to Price and stock > File imports > Import File.
- Select the following criteria to upload your file:
- Source – Select the file from your computer
- File Content – Offers AND products
- Import Mode – Normal
- You should always use Normal import mode when adding or updating products. Using Delete and replace import mode will delete all existing offers immediately.
- Select Import when ready to upload.
- See How to track your imports (subsection below) for next steps
- If a product is new to Best Buy’s Catalog, the status may be Invalid Data, Pending, Changes Requried, Publication Error or Published. Products must have valid data before the Best Buy team will review them. Work with your account manager for more information.
- If a product is new to Best Buy’s Catalog, the status may be Invalid Data, Pending, Changes Requried, Publication Error or Published. Products must have valid data before the Best Buy team will review them. Work with your account manager for more information.
If your product(s) already exist in the Best Buy Marketplace Catalog, you can skip steps for product setup and add your offer to the existing product. See Create offers for existing products.
After you upload a Product and/or Offer template, you can track the status at:
Catalog > Product Imports
or
Price and stock > File Imports > Track Offer Imports
Within each section, you can see how many lines were accepted or if they have errors. If there are errors, an error report will be available for download. Please refer to Mirakl’s help articles for additional guidance:
- Product statuses in Mirakl Catalog Manager
- Fixing errors in your product content
- Import troubleshooting
All new product uploads must have valid data before they will be considered for Best Buy’s Marketplace. Once there is valid data, the status will show as Pending until the Best Buy team reviews the upload. Most reviews are complete within 24-48 hours.
If any changes are needed, you’ll be notified, and the status will update to Changes required or Publication error. Use the information icon to see the rejection reason and/or error message. Contact your Best Buy Account Manager if any clarification is needed.
Product attribute descriptions
Required product attributes vary by product category, aside from a few primary attributes such as Product name, GTIN, Brand and Description. Best Buy’s data standards must be followed when filling out all product attributes. See Global product data standards for more information.
Shop SKU, also called Seller SKU, is an optional attribute for all products. This is a product reference defined by each seller for their own products. We recommend using an easily identifiable value so that you can quickly locate products and assign offers to them. Alternatively, you can assign offers to products using the UPC or EAN, also referred to as GTIN.
Field Name * = mandatory |
Field Usage/Description | |
In Mirakl Back Office (Single Item) |
On Excel Template (Multiple Items) |
|
Offer SKU | SKU* |
The offer’s unique identifier. This isn't surfaced during the shopping experience. We recommend using UPC or Model Number so you have a consistent identifier; using varying offer SKUs will lead to more offer rejections from Best Buy if a duplicate or overlapping offer is submitted. |
-- | product-id* |
Shop_SKU, SKU or GTIN GTIN is also referred to as the UPC or EAN |
-- | product-id-type* | Select the corresponding product ID type that you filled for Product ID from the dropdown list. Most common: GTIN. |
Stock Quantity* | quantity** | The quantity you have in stock and ready to ship. **On the template, this is optional but highly recommended. Leaving it blank will default your quantity to 0 and the offer will be inactive. |
Condition**** | state**** | This refers to the product condition. Select New or RefurbishedExcellent from the dropdown menu. See the Best Buy Marketplace Secondary Products Guidelines for more information. |
Description | description | Offer description. This isn't surfaced during the shopping experience. |
Price* | price* | Product selling price |
Discount Price | discount-price | Use this field if you have any additional savings on your selling price. See Promotional Offers using Discount Price. |
Discount Period | discount-start-date discount-end-date |
Use these fields if your discount is for a limited time only. If no date is specified, the discount is applicable immediately and/or indefinitely. |
Lead time to ship | leadtime-to-ship | Use if a product’s lead time to ship differs from your store default. Please note, a maximum of two days still applies.
|
Availability | available-start-date available-end-date |
Use if your offer has a set start and end date. If no date is specified, the offer is applicable immediately and/or indefinitely as long as stock quantity > 0. |
Quantity Alert | min-quantity-alert | The minimum stock level that triggers an email alert. No alerts are sent if this field is not specified. |
Internal Description | internal-description | Additional information for reference. This isn't surfaced during the shopping experience. |
Price information | price-additional-info | Additional information for reference. This is not surfaced during the shopping experience. |
Logistic Class | logistic-class |
If your product is a different size than the default logistics class for the product category, you can change it using the dropdown menu.
|
--- | update-delete |
Only use with Normal upload mode. If this field is set to update or is blank, a new offer will be created if the offer SKU field doesn’t match any existing offer of your store. If the offer SKU field matches an existing offer, the offer is updated. We recommend using the same offer SKU so that offers are always updated. If you need to change your offer SKUs, you must delete existing offers first. |
*** Important note about offer condition or state: This value cannot be changed after an offer is created. If you need to change the offer state, please end the existing offer and create a new one.
To see a list of connectors and API integrations to help automate this process, see Mirakl’s help articles on Seller connectors and/or API documentation.