Altering product references?

[Air-Tech]

I need to tidy up some product references & I'm wondering if there any implications that aren't obvious or that I may not be considering when altering references?

I don't have anything going on with components, but do have plenty of duplicates, although these seem to update without any issue.

Thanks.

[Andy@codepath]

Duplicates will update automatically (as would components, attributes, choices, permutations and any references to associated products within permutations if you had them).

I'm not certain of how Also bought, Best Sellers, New products and Related Products behave but bear these in mind too when testing.

The main things to consider are:

1) Any sales reporting by product is based on product reference so sales analysis over a period which includes the transition date would be incomplete.

2) If you use the Product Pages feature of Sellerdeck, changing the reference will change the URL of the page. This may cause you some SEO issues unless you change the URL back yourself after the amendment.

3) Any external systems (Soapbox Reviews, Sage etc) for the same reason as the point re sales analysis.

That's all that comes to mind for now.

[Air-Tech]

That's pretty much along the lines of what I had thought, loosing sales history is really all that's going to have any real effect & nothing that I can't work around.

Hadn't considered also/best/related, but only use related at the moment, so will need to check it out.


Thanks!

[brucet]

The Product Reference is used in the Product Page Name. If you are using Product Pages, changing the Product Reference will change the name of the Product Page, and you will lose any rankings you have for it.

This is a known bug (ref SD-3621). Unfortunately the only workarounds are to change the Page Name manually back to what it was before, or set up 301 redirects on the server from the old URLs to the new ones.

[Andy@codepath]

The Product Reference is used in the Product Page Name. If you are using Product Pages, changing the Product Reference will change the name of the Product Page, and you will lose any rankings you have for it.

Thanks Bruce - as per my point 2 above.

[Air-Tech]

I'm luck enough not be using that at the moment, so no worries there.

Cheers.

[brucet]

From v16.0.1, changing the Product Reference no longer changes the Product Page Name. So this can now be done without causing SEO issues or broken links.