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Before you start
METRO and Makro run one marketplace for professional buyers, with a storefront per country. The rules below are METRO's own. One METRO connection pushes to one destination market, so you write in the language of that market.
Pick your category at the lowest level of METRO's category tree. Which fields are mandatory, which values they accept and which type they hold all come from the category definition. e-tailize checks your content against that definition before anything leaves, so content that breaks a rule is stopped here and not at METRO.
Steps
- Give every product an EAN. e-tailize fills METRO's "GTIN" column from that EAN, and the METRO tab holds no MPN field, so a product without an EAN cannot go to METRO through e-tailize.
- Keep the product name within 150 characters of plain text. HTML is not supported here.
- Order the words in that name the way METRO asks: manufacturer, product type, series, further specifications, then the MPN. "Apple iPhone XS 64GB, silver" beats "iPhone XS Silver 64GB".
- Fill "Manufacturer" within 100 characters. METRO uses it to identify the product and does not show it on the storefront.
- Fill the brand as a separate value, spelled and capitalised as it should appear. This is the one your customers see.
- Write the description within 4000 characters. Basic HTML is supported, namely
<p>,<ul>,<ol>,<li>,<span>,<br>and<b>. - Keep out of that description: prices, price recommendations and discounts, the shipping method, delivery times, warranty periods, certificates and test seals, links, pictures and videos, the contact details of your own shop, and mentions of other models, colours or sizes. Bullet symbols are rejected.
- Add up to five key features, each a whole sentence in the language of the market, as plain text within 200 characters. They summarise the description, so no keyword lists.
- Add at least one image and at most ten, each a .png or a .jpg of at least 393 by 393 pixels and at most 20 MB.
- Give every image a public link that starts with https and does not redirect. A link on Google Drive or Dropbox is not supported.
- Put the product itself on the first image, on a white or a transparent background, without a logo, a watermark or a price on it. Lights may also have a black background.
- Show a different view on every following image, and never a placeholder.
- Validate the products, then list them.
What happens next
What passes the check goes to METRO as a product upload. METRO reviews an upload by hand, so the verdict does not come back straight away. The result comes back per row, with the field and the GTIN that caused it.
Images, size and brand are not kept per market. METRO takes them from your last successful upload and shows them in all your METRO markets. The name, the description and the key features do stay per market.
Common problems
A mandatory field without a value reads "Field value 'Brand' is required for this product", with the name of the field the category definition asks for. Map that field in your METRO tab or fill it on the product itself.
A value the category does not accept gives a message that "does not comply with the expected list", followed by the values it does accept. Text over its maximum gives one about "the expected max length", with the number for that field, and a sixth key feature is refused the same way on the count.
When the whole submission stops with "Listing content does not comply with category requirements. Please update the mapping and try again!", nothing was uploaded. Under that line stands one message per failing field per product.
FAQ
Where do the mandatory fields of my category come from?
From METRO. Pick the category at the lowest level of the tree, and e-tailize reads the mandatory fields, the accepted values and the field types of that category from METRO's category definition.
METRO says I may send a manufacturer and an MPN instead of a GTIN. Can I do that here?
No. That is METRO's own rule for its upload file, and e-tailize does not offer that route: the METRO tab has no MPN field, and e-tailize fills METRO's "GTIN" column from the EAN of your product. So give the product an EAN first.
My upload is reserved for a manual review. What do I change?
Nothing. "Listing has been reserved for a manual review by MetroMakro Product Data Team" is a wait state, not a fault in your data. List the same content again later to see the outcome.
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