Question about product codes

[Vickie]

The store I'm working on is being moved to Miva Merchant from other software and it contains just over 500 products. The client has not really used product codes in the existing store. The SKUs are associated with the products in that store, but she deletes them when creating reports. She wants me to just number the items consecutively. Do you see any issues with doing this?

[Bruce - PhosphorMedia]

Re: Question about product codes

Aside from making it difficult to tell what product you are working on (i.e., assigning to categories, working with "lists" of products in the templates, etc.) the only significant downside is loosing a small amount of SEO 'weight' when creating a link for that product. For example, https://www.mydomain.com/product/thi...rched-for.html, works better than www.mydomain.com/products/12345.html.

[Vickie]

Re: Question about product codes

Thanks, Bruce. That helps and is kind of what I figured.

[Vickie]

Re: Question about product codes

Can you suggest an ideal product code system?

[Gordon - Phosphor Media]

Re: Question about product codes

An ideal product code system is one that balances brevity with meaning - and is one that you can understand and use.

A hairbrush with a code of 12345 is a short (hopefully unique!) code but confers no meaning.
Common approaches include putting a manufacturer or brand as a prefix or suffix, possibly including 'brush' or 'hairbrush' in there somewhere, and other identifiers that either help the store owner recognize items or give some help to search engines.

Many SKUs are created more for the internal organization needs of a company rather than readability and SEO.

[Vickie]

Re: Question about product codes

Thanks Gordon!