What is a Loadsheet 🤷♀️
In the context of a marketplace, a loadsheet is a document that contains information about the products or services being sold by a seller on the platform. It typically includes details such as product names, descriptions, SKUs, prices, quantities, and other relevant information (attributes). It serves as a standard format for sellers to upload their product information and is used to ensure consistency and accuracy across all product listings. It is the link between the marketplace’s repository of items which are listed by
BARCODE and the seller’s repository of items which are listed by SKUWhy do I need it ? 🤔
Imagine you’re in Takealot’s shoes 👟 ….
Thousands of marketplace sellers trying to give you information about their products, all in their own weird and wonderful format. It would be nearly impossible to manage or even make sense of it.
If you’re selling on a marketplace, creating a loadsheet of your product data can make this process faster and more efficient. You can ensure that your product information is complete and accurate by organising your product data in a loadsheet that meets all requirements set by the specific marketplace. This makes it easier for the marketplace to process and display your products.
How are they created ?👨💻
Manually - Loadsheets can be created manually using a spreadsheet program like Microsoft Excel or Google Sheets. To create a loadsheet, you would need to first gather all the relevant information about your products, such as their names, descriptions, prices, SKUs, and other details. You can then organise the information in columns and rows in a spreadsheet, with each row representing a single product and each column representing a specific attribute of the product. You can also use formulas and formatting options to ensure that your data is accurate and consistent.Marketplace platforms provide templates or guidelines for creating a loadsheet, which can help to ensure that your data is formatted correctly and can be easily imported into their system.
Automation - If you have a large number of products or complex data, you may also consider using third-party software or services like wherehouse.co.za that can help you to create and manage your loadsheet more efficiently. These services can help you to automate the process of importing and exporting data between your eCommerce platform (or other source of truth for product attributes) and marketplace, saving you time and reducing the risk of errors in your data.It's important to note that Marketplaces have specific requirements for product feed formatting and product data, so make sure to carefully read their guidelines before creating your product feed. These requirements are pretty strict and marketplace systems will usually automatically decline a loadsheet with the incorrect format.
The loadsheets are usually required to be in CSV, XML or Excel format (depending on the platform) and they generally require the following fields (required fields depend on the platform):
Product ID: A unique identifier for each product
Product name: The name of the product
Brand: The brand of the product
Category: The category that the product belongs to
Description: A description of the product
Price: What you are selling this item for
Recommended Retail Price: What the market usually sells this item for
Image URL: The URL of the image for your product (this link should be publicly accessible on the internet)
Product Dimensions: Length, height, width, weight (in the correct measurement unit for each marketplace)
Shipping Dimensions: Length, height, width, weight (in the correct measurement unit for each marketplace)
Quantity/SOH: The number of items available for sale
South African marketplaces that support loadsheets 🛍️
- Takealot
- Makro
- Loot.co.za
- Leroy Merlin
Written by
