Merchandise reporting allows you to track information about your products, including how many individual products are viewed, added to a shopping cart, and purchased. This includes SKU information, number of units sold, and revenue per product.

For reporting purposes, you may wish to organize your products according to custom merchandising categories. To do this, you must first create merchandising categories using the Yahoo! Web Analytics reporting interface, then upload product information.

1. Add a merchandising category

1. In the Yahoo! Web Analytics reporting interface, click the "Settings" link at the top of the page.
2. On the Settings page, locate the Merchandising Categories section (Figure 1). Click the "Customize and upload merchandising categories" link.
   
   
   Figure 1. The Merchandising Categories section of the Settings page.
   
   
3. On the Custom Merchandising Categories page, locate the Define Product Categories section. Enter a category label in the "Category label" field (Figure 2).
   
   Yahoo! Web Analytics also offers pre-defined category names to use:
   
   Category #1: Product Name. (This category label cannot be modified.)
   Category #2: Product Type
   Category #3: Product Subtype
   Category #4: Brand.
   
   The pre-defined labels for Categories 2, 3 and 4 are suggestions only, and may be modified by entering a new label into the category field.
   
   
   Figure 2. Define product categories.
   
   
4. Click the "Enabled" checkbox for your new category. Once you've enabled the category label, you may choose whether or not to display it in reports.
   
   Note: If only enabling the category label, but not displaying it in reports, the category will be included in the Custom Report Wizard and drill-down options. When "Display in reports" is enabled, the category will also be displayed in your Products Conversion report.
   
   
5. Click the "Update" button to save your category label and settings.

2. Upload product information

Once you've finished creating categories, you must associate product names and categories with each product SKU.

First, download the CSV template file:

1. Click the "Next" button, located in the Upload CSV file section of the page. The "Merchandising Categories Upload" window will open.
2. Click the "Download Template file (CSV format)" link.
3. Save the CSV file.

Next, enter product information to match the merchandising categories you've created. The CSV file should include the product SKU and information for each merchandising category you've created.

Figure 3 shows an example CSV file for a project that includes Product Name, Product Type, Subtype, and Brand merchandising categories.

Figure 3. Example of a merchandising categories and product information CSV file.

The CSV file can have a maximum of 60,000 rows and a file size no larger than 6 MB. Each cell of the CSV file may contain up to 90 characters, and must use ASCII characters. You may not use any ASCII CTRL characters (for example, a tab).

When you've finished creating the CSV file, you must upload the file:

1. On the Merchandising Categories Upload page, locate the Upload CSV File to the System section.
2. Click the "Browse" button and locate the CSV file on your computer.
3. Click the "Upload" button.