Product Type

Choosing the Product Type

Every product should have an assigned product type.

Use this litmus test when assigning product type:

If you blurred out the title, showed it to a random person, and asked "What is this?" what would they say?

They'd probably say something like "Stickers" or "A book." They probably wouldn't say "It's a math." If you show them something like a paperclip, they'd say "A paperclip," but we don't have a product type specifically for paperclips. You could followup with "More generally?" and they'd probably say something like "Office supplies."

Educator's Resource has over 300 product types! Some of their types only have 2 or 3 items. That's too much to show a customer, so we have to compromise that sticky notes, scissors, and paperclips are going to share the same product type (School & Office Supplies). When the number of SKUs for a proposed product type is large enough (like pencils), we'll create a dedicated product type.

Focus more on what the product IS, and less on HOW it's used.

The Product Type / Category Conundrum

Item type should not be confused with E-Commerce Category, though there can be overlap, and the two work closely together to thoroughly describe every product.

Consider some of the following products where the category is shown in green, and the product type is shown in purple:

• Addition Flash Cards
• Spelling Workbook
• World History Bulletin Board Set
• Colors & Shapes Puzzle
• Christian Stickers
• Subtraction Manipulatives
• Algebra Banner

If we describe a product only by its category (Addition) we won't know if it is a book, flashcards, or a game. Conversely, if we describe a product only by its type (Flash Cards) we won't know if it is for learning ABCs, Subtraction, or States & Capitals.

We use this two-part classification system intuitively every day. A customer might walk in and say "I'm looking for flashcards." You probably respond "For what subject?" Or a customer walks in and asks for "Help with my child's math" and you might ask further questions like "Are looking for a workbook or flashcards?"

We want to provide customers three ways to find products online:

• By Category (Math, Science, Art, …)
• By Product Type (Workbook, Border, Stickers, …)
• Combining both to "filter" products within a category (Math→Flashcards, Math→Workbooks, or Math→Charts)

Sometimes — especially in the decor and motivation categories — the product type and category are the same. This is okay!

If we removed redundant product types, we'd lose the ability to filter for math bulletin boards (because we'd have deleted the "bulletin board" product type).

If we removed redundant categories, we wouldn't have anywhere to put purely decorative bulletin boards (because we'd have deleted the "decor: bulletin boards" category).

We could change the product type to wall-mounted paper adornments instead of bulletin boards to avoid the duplication, but that's just crazy talk.

The overlap is a side-effect that's worth accepting for the filtering value it provides.

• The list of product types on the website is a subset of category, so if there aren't any "borders" in the spelling category, it won't even be an option.
• It's unlikely that a customer would feel the need to filter stickers by stickers or borders by borders, so the "problem" won't be very apparent to customers browsing the website.

CounterPoint

Separating product type and category solves an age-old dilema in CounterPoint as well.

Because we want to run reports like "Compare sales of workbooks to manipulatives" and we want to run reports like "Sales by Category," we will need to accept that there will be some duplication across categories and product types.

Reader? Book? Workbook? Reproducible Workbook?

What's the Difference?

Reader

• Targets the very early stages of reading
• Usually only a few pages
• Often just one or a couple of sentences per page
• Focuses on one specific skill such as letters of the alphabet, phonemic awareness, or sight words

Book

If you think of a traditional public library, "books" are what you'd find at the library.

• Longer than a reader in page count & words per page
• Picture books like The Very Hungry Caterpillar
• "Chapter" books like Little House on the Prairie or The Hobbit
• Dictionaries, encyclopedias, and illustrated encyclopedias
• How-to books
• "Coffee table" books

Workbook

• Students are expected to write on the pages of the workbook (example: color things in, fill in the blank, or circle an answer)
• The workbook is expected to be used once, by one student, and then discarded

Reproducible Workbook

• Students could write on the pages of the book, but are generally expected to work on photocopies of the reproducible workbook's pages
• The reproducible workbook explicitely grants permission to the owner for making photocopies

Consumable Books

A book that is consumed — like an origami book where the user removes the pages and by the end the book is "destroyed," so to speak — could be a book or a workbook. It's a grey area, but in general a "fun" book is probably a BOOK whereas an "educational" book is probably a WORKBOOK

Lesson Plan Books & Record/Attendance Books

These spcialized books have a dedicated product type: PLANRECORD.

All of the Above?

How to deal with a product that's a mix of product types:

Choose the product type that describes the majority of the product. For example:

• A workbook that has 2 pages of stickers, 3 color-your-own bookmarks, and a completion certificate is primarily a WORKBOOK
• A science kit that contains an illustrated booklet, colored pencils, and a fidget-spinner is primarily a KIT

View ER's Web Product Types:

Many of ER's "Web Product Types" are actually categories. Example: Math or Sight Words are not product types! Is the item a math book? flash card? manipulative? learning chart?

SELECT DISTINCT er.webProductType FROM ercontent.contenthtml er ORDER BY webProductType ASC;

SELECT webProductType, COUNT(*) AS count
FROM ercontent.contenthtml
GROUP BY webProductType ORDER BY count DESC;