Store of the official distributor: brand, catalog, dealers

It is possible, the only question is how much work is left for a person. The price, article number and name are almost always present in such a file - this is enough to open items and show availability. Photos and specifications have to be obtained from the brand's PDF catalog or from its website, and this is a separate stage with its own deadline. In the audit, we count the fraction of items suitable for automatic import, and it is this that determines how long this part will be.

By groups of buyers: after entering, the dealer receives his price level, multiple and minimum lot, the unauthorized visitor remains at the retail window. The logic is simple, the details are not, and they must be decided before assembly: whether to show the dealer the retail price for comparison, whether to place orders below the minimum lot, how to calculate the volume discount, and what to do with the dealer who ordered from his own retail account.

Yes, if the guideline is formalized by a document: it is included in the TOR together with the logo, series names and mandatory designations, and the design is adopted according to it. But correspondence with the manufacturer is conducted by the customer. The contractor does not have the mandate to approve the layouts on your behalf, and it is more honest to say this at the start than at the stage when the brand manager sees the layout for the first time.

Because without canonical, each path to it becomes a separate address, and the search engine spends a detour on copies of one card. For distributors, this is a systemic thing: the position lies both under the brand, and under the type, and in compatible with the equipment. We measured it at four official stores, and the picture is the same everywhere: 4,236 sitemap entries for 1,300 addresses, 33,493 for 8,690, 25,537 for 6,857. 3.3 to 3.9 duplicates per address is a niche pattern, not someone's random mistake. It is treated as follows: for each position, one category is designated as the main one, canonical points to it, the rest of the ways remain for the buyer. A fair limit: cleaning duplicates does not add new traffic, it stops scattering it, and the number of pages in the index may even drop for a while.

Yes, via an XML feed from the same catalog: prices and availability are pulled from the same source, so storefronts don't diverge. It works in the stores of official sellers of garden equipment that we measured, and in one the site is also connected as a delivery method. You should know the limitations in advance: the feed does not make your price competitive. When a brand dictates MSRP, you're standing in the checkout line next to everyone else of the same brand, and availability and delivery time win, not price tag.

Import according to the schedule. The periodicity is selected according to the speed of movement of the remains: once a day for a stable nomenclature, more often for a rolling stock. Two-way exchange with 1C or BAS is a separate task on top of the store, it is calculated after the audit. Practical advice: before starting work, ask the brand manager for a technical feed, not a PDF catalog. If there is no feed and will not be in the near future, put the content stage in a separate line and do not put the launch date at the beginning of the season - that is where those weeks are lost.

30–50 working days from the approval of the TK. These are six stages: price analysis and TOR 3–5 days, catalog structure 4–6, design 5–9, assembly with two checkouts 8–13, price import and dealer prices 6–11, testing and transfer 4–6. The lower limit is when the price comes as a machine file with characteristics, and the brand guideline is already on hand. Upper - when specifications are collected from the PDF and submission requirements are refined along the way.

This decision is made based on the audit numbers, not the design impression. We look at three things: does the catalog have a structure suitable for the brand nomenclature, does the platform hold groups of buyers, how many duplicates are there in the site map. If the catalog is alive, and there are problems with duplicates and lack of dealer prices, it is cheaper to complete, and we will say so. Separately, we check the PHP version: in three of the four measured stores of official representatives, it is PHP 7.3.33, without support from December 2021. The status of a brand representative does not change anything here, the risk lies with the site owner.