Maintaining a healthy Product Catalog is essential to ensure that your product data remains accurate, up to date, and reliable. A healthy catalog enables Insider One to consistently use the most current product information, such as availability, pricing, and attributes, across all campaigns and recommendation scenarios.
Catalog Manager is the central tool for monitoring and managing Product Catalog health, regardless of the integration method you use. This guide explains how to assess catalog health for XML, Catalog API, and Clickstream integrations.
Why is catalog health important?
Catalog health directly impacts the effectiveness of Insider One campaigns and recommendations. A healthy catalog ensures:
High data quality
Clean, accurate, and validated product data allows Insider systems to function reliably.
Better user experience
Users are more likely to engage with recommendations that reflect real-time availability, pricing, and product details.
Relevant recommendations
Complete and validated data enables Smart Recommender to deliver more precise and personalized product suggestions.
Monitor Catalog Health in Catalog Manager
Catalog Manager provides visibility into the current state of your Product Catalog and helps you verify that products are correctly ingested and ready for use in campaigns.
Catalog Health overview
The Catalog Health Dashboard provides a high-level snapshot of your catalog’s current state. Key metrics include:
Total Products: Total number of products in the catalog
In-Stock Products: Products currently marked as available
Out-of-Stock Products: Products marked as unavailable
Passive Products: Products that are inactive and excluded from recommendations
This overview allows you to quickly identify potential issues and assess overall catalog health.
Filtering products
You can analyze your catalog in more detail by applying filters based on locale and store, currency, and time range.
Additional filters allow you to segment products by:
Category: Filter products based on specific categories.
Brand: Select products from particular brands.
Stock Status: Easily filter products that are in stock or out of stock.
Tags and Other Attributes: Apply filters based on specific product tags or custom attributes to better understand product performance.
These filtering capabilities help you audit specific product segments, identify inconsistencies, and verify that updates are applied correctly.
Managing product status
You can activate or deactivate products directly in the Catalog Manager:
Active Products: Products marked as Active are eligible for use in recommendations and campaigns.
Passive Products: Products marked as Passive are excluded from campaigns, giving you control over which items are visible.
This functionality ensures that only relevant, approved, and up-to-date products are presented to users.
Product Validation Rules
Products missing required attributes are not ingested.
Products that fail type or size validations on required attributes are rejected.
If a non-required attribute fails validation, only that attribute is skipped while the rest of the product is processed successfully.
These rules help prevent invalid or incomplete data from impacting campaign performance.
Check Catalog Health for XML integration
If you are using XML Integration to manage your Product Catalog, it is important to regularly verify that XML files are correctly structured, synchronized on schedule, and contain all required product information.
Product data completeness
Ensure that all essential product fields in your XML file are populated and accurate. Missing or incorrect data can result in issues such as:
Missing or incomplete product descriptions
Incorrect or outdated prices
Inaccurate availability status (in stock or out of stock)
Reviewing data completeness helps prevent broken recommendations and misleading campaign content.
Attribute matching
Verify that product attributes in your XML file are correctly mapped to Insider One’s expected product attributes. Confirm that all custom attributes are properly defined and mapped
XML synchronization status
Confirm that your XML files are synchronized at the expected intervals. Outdated or failed synchronizations can lead to incorrect recommendations, pricing discrepancies, and stock inconsistencies.
In the XML Integration menu, use the Status column to:
Check the last successful synchronization time
Identify failed synchronizations and review related error messages
Address synchronization issues promptly to maintain catalog accuracy.
Error reporting
XML integrations include built-in validation checks to detect common issues such as missing required attributes or invalid data types.
If validation fails, you can download the validation report from the XML Integration page to review the listed errors and correct them in your XML file.
Regularly reviewing validation reports helps ensure long-term catalog stability and data quality.
Check Catalog Health for Catalog API integration
For Catalog API integration, maintaining catalog health requires monitoring the data sent through the API to ensure it is complete, correctly formatted, and synchronized in a timely manner.
Product data completeness
Verify that all required product attributes are included in API requests. Common required attributes include item_id, name, locale, price, in_stock, url, and image_url.
Missing or incomplete data can negatively impact recommendation accuracy and campaign performance.
Data synchronization
Ensure that API requests are sent consistently and on time so the Product Catalog remains synchronized with the Insider One’s InOne platform.
Delays or interruptions in data synchronization may result in outdated recommendations, incorrect pricing, or inaccurate availability information.
Attribute mapping and custom fields
Confirm that product attribute names used in API requests exactly match Insider’s default or custom product attributes.
In addition, verify the following:
Data types: Ensure each attribute uses the correct data type (for example, string or integer) as required by Insider.
Character limits: Adhere to defined character limits for each attribute to prevent ingestion errors.
Required fields: Confirm that all mandatory attributes, such as item_id and price, are always included.
Check Catalog Health for Clickstream integration
Clickstream integration relies on real-time user interactions—such as page views and clicks—to collect product data. Maintaining catalog health with this method requires verifying that product data is being captured accurately and consistently.
Product data completeness
Ensure that required product attributes, including item_id, name, price, and in_stock, are correctly captured during user interactions.
Real-time data capture
Because Clickstream depends on user behavior, it is important to confirm that product data is being updated as expected.
Verify that system rules are correctly configured to collect product attributes.
Monitor for delays or inconsistencies in product updates.
Ensure that stock and pricing changes are reflected accurately over time.
Final notes on Catalog Health
Regularly monitoring the health of your Product Catalog is essential for maintaining accurate, relevant, and high-performing recommendations.
By reviewing key factors such as data completeness, attribute mapping, synchronization status, and stock accuracy, you can ensure that your catalog continues to perform optimally.
Regardless of whether you use XML, Catalog API, or Clickstream integrations, Catalog Manager provides the tools needed to monitor and maintain catalog quality, ensuring customers consistently receive accurate and up-to-date product recommendations across all Insider One channels.