Content Models (Shopify customers)

Overview

Our Performance starters (applicable in cases when Chord is using Shopify as an OMS) use existing content models that have been provisioned by the team at Chord Commerce when we bootstrapped your CMS environment.

You can use the (simplified) diagram below to learn more about how core models are interconnected:

Content model diagram (when using Shopify as OMS)



E-commerce Content Models

When starting with Chord Performance, your initial CMS space will come with more CMS types than what are listed here. You are free to remove/edit content types that are not listed here. The content types listed here are all required for Chord's to function properly. With that said, you are free to add whatever fields you would like to the following content types, so long as they do not clash with the fields explicitly listed.

Common Required Fields

Most of Chord's content types have a set of required fields across them that are required for Chord to properly function. These fields are frequently used so that our OMS / CMS Sync can sync changes between the CMS and Shopify. You should not remove these fields from content types as it will break syncing from the CMS to Shopify and vice versa.

Name

The name for an item that may or may not be displayed to your customers in the storefront's UI in Chord's Performance starters. We note cases where the name is displayed to customers in specific content types in this document.

It will be shown in the CMS as the title for a given entry and it may be synced to Shopify, in the case of content types like products and variants. Generally, the name for an item should make sense from an operational standpoint and not a marketing standpoint.

It is a required field and should not be removed from a content type if it's provided to you as a part of your initial CMS space.

Some examples of the name format are:

• The Plant Store
• Colorado Blue Spruce
• Poplar Tree

It is recommended that you add a name field to all custom content types that you end up creating, even if you do not display the name to a customer.

Slug

The slug field is a slugified string that is unique to that content type and is the human readable identifier for a given item. This field can be used in URLs to route to the item.

Some examples of the slug format are:

• the-plant-store
• colorado-blue-spruce
• poplar-tree

If this field is present in a content type provided to you in our initial CMS space, you should not remove it from the content type, as that will break elements of our OMS / CMS Sync from the CMS to Shopify.

It is recommended that you add a slug field (or something like it) to each custom content type that you end up creating in the CMS, even if you don't plan to route to it initially. Having a unique, stable, human readable identifier can be very helpful when querying for a single record. Changing the slug after it has been set can lead to some syncing issues with Shopify for certain content types. When changing it for types like products or variants, you should check Shopify afterwards to see if duplicate items were created.

Use Case

To illustrate the content models used by Chord Performance, we are going to imagine a store that sells a variety of plants called "The Plant Store."

Catalog

The catalog is the top level taxonomy for the items in a store. For most Performance based storefronts, there will be one catalog for all items in the store.

Required Fields

Use Case

The Plant Store should create multiple collections corresponding to their verticals (Houseplants, Shrubs, Flowers, etc.) and associate them with the singular catalog record with the slug of catalog.

Collection

A collection is a grouping of items for sale in a storefront. In the Performance default content model, a collection is a grouping of products and kits. It should be noted that products and kits can exist in multiple collections.

Required Fields

All of these fields are required for Chord's. Do not remove them from the collection content type.

Use Case

In order for The Plant Store to do this, they would:

1. Create their "Accessories" collection along with their other plant-focused collections, like "Flowers."
2. Add all their accessory products to the "Accessories" collection.
3. Add some of the vases to the "Flowers" collection.

Product

A product is an item for sale in a storefront. It contains information about the product, like the name, description, ingredients, and other metadata. Products can be managed in both the CMS and Shopify (if you have bi-directional syncing enabled, otherwise only CMS -> Shopify works).

An important fact to know is that the product content type itself does not have information like the price, SKU, weight, and other pricing/shipping information, nor should it contain this information. This information will be set in one or more of the product's variants.

Required Fields

All of these fields are used by the Chord's and should not be removed from the product content type.

Use Cases

To help illustrate some of the finer points of the product content type, consider the following use case:

In this use case, we are going to model The Plant Store's content to work with Chord's Performance starters, which have product display pages with select menus for all possible variants for the product. There is nothing stopping you from having variant display pages where customers can buy specific variants.

There are two ways that The Plant Store could model their products and variants:

All Tulips On A Single Page

In this use case, The Plant Store would like all tulips for sale on a page with the URL of https://theplantstore.com/products/tulips. In order to do this with Chord's Performance starters, they do the following:

1. Create a product named "Tulips".
2. Create the option types for the "Size" and "Color".
3. Create the option values for the "Size" option type ("Small, "Medium", "Large") and "Color" option type ("Red", "Yellow", "Purple").
4. Add a variant for each combination of of the option types/values with names like "Red Small Tulips", "Purple Medium Tulips", "Yellow Large Tulips" and so on (there will be 9 variants attached to the "Tulips" product).

The biggest advantage to this approach is that you get a single logical product to manage all the SKUs in the CMS.

Each Color Of Tulip Has Its Own Page

In this use case, The Plant Store would like for each color of tulip to have its own page. To do this, they would:

1. Create a product for "Red Tulips", "Yellow Tulips" and "Purple Tulips".
2. On each product, they add an option type for the size of the order and create three variants on each tulip product corresponding to the size (small, medium and large).

The advantages of this solution include:

• Better search engine optimization, in the default product display page setup in our starters, as it's more likely to catch specific queries like "red tulips" with this approach.
• Easier top level product management in the CMS, as the individual colors are easier to view at a product level than they are at a variant level.

Variant

The variant content type corresponds to a type of item in your warehouse and contains all the pricing, discounting, shipping, and warehouse metadata for a product. All products must have one variant per combination of option types attached to it. If there are no option types on the product, the product must still have one variant record that represents its only variation.

To reuse an analogy from the product section, if you are selling a "t-shirt with the Chord logo," a variant of it would be a "medium t-shirt with the Chord logo."

If your customer is on a product page, they can be presented multiple variants of that product. The customer is able to select that variant by making selections of that product's option types which will map to option values placed upon the variant.

If you were selling a "medium t-shirt with the Chord logo," you would:

1. Create a product named "Chord T-Shirt"
2. Add a variants to that product named "Small Medium Chord T-Shirt," "Medium Chord T-Shirt," and "Large Chord T-Shirt"
3. Add an option type named "T-Shirt Size" to the "Chord T-Shirt" product
4. Add option values to the "T-Shirt Size" option type named "Small," "Medium," and "Large"
5. Add the option values to the variants ("Medium" option type to "Medium Chord T-Shirt" variant, repeat for the "Small" and "Large" option types)

The starters provided by Chord have product pages and checkouts already set up to work perfectly with this product/variant/option type/option value setup.

Required Fields

All fields listed here are required and should not be removed from the variant content type.

Use Case

In order for The Plant Store to offer sunflowers in such a fashion, they would:

1. Create a product named "Sunflowers."
2. Create an option type named "Size."
3. Create option values that reference the option type "Size," named "Small", "Medium," and "Large."
4. Create variants for the product "Sunflowers" named "Small Sunflowers," "Medium Sunflowers," and "Large Sunflowers."
5. Set the option values on the variants to match their size through the "Size" option type.
6. Set the prices and regular prices on the variants to match the one described in the use case.

Option Type

The option type content type represents an option for the customer to pick when adding a product to their cart. Imagine the option type as a dropdown in a form and the values in the dropdown would be option values. If you were selling t-shirts, the size of the shirt would be an option type with option values for "small," "medium," and "large."

Option types are part of the glue that binds a product to a variant. To make an analogy to HTML (and how it might show up in the Chord UI), the option type is a <select> element and the option value is the <option> element for that <select>.

It is encouraged that you reuse option types (where it makes sense) across your products.

Required Fields

All of these fields are required for Chord's to work properly. Do not remove them from the option type content type.

Use Case

For a detailed use case of how to use option types, please refer to the Content Models (Shopify customers).

Option Value

The option value content type represents an option for an option type. If you were selling t-shirts, the size of the shirt would be an option type and "medium" or "large" would be an option value.

Option values are part of the glue that binds a product to a variant through option types. To make an analogy to HTML (and how it might show up in the Chord UI), the option value is an <option> element to a <select> represented by the option type content type.

Required Fields

All of these fields are required for Chord's to work properly. Do not remove them from the option value content type.

Use Case

For a detailed use case of how to use option values, please refer to the Content Models (Shopify customers).