Attribute value
An attribute value is what an attribute holds for one product, such as Navy for Colour, 595 mm for Width or Acrylic for Material.
What it means
If the attribute is the column, the attribute value is the cell: what one product actually is for that property. Shoppers tick values in a filter and searches match against them, so each real thing needs to be written one way.
Supplier files rarely manage that. Freestanding and Freestanding Baths are two ways of writing one value, but to software they are two values, so a filter offers both and each shows only part of the range. Folding them onto one agreed word is normalisation.
Some attributes accept only a fixed list: Google’s availability attribute takes in_stock, out_of_stock, preorder or backorder.1 Others prefer one. eBay asks sellers to “use eBay’s suggested values as much as possible rather than creating your own custom values”.2
Think of it like this
On a paper form, the attribute is the printed heading and the value is what someone writes in the box. Write one postcode two ways and a sort puts the same street in two piles.
For example
One supplier’s Colour column for a hoodie holds Navy, navy blue, NVY and NAVY. They are four spellings of one attribute value, so every row becomes Navy, and the colour picker offers one navy instead of four.
Why it matters
A filter is usually built from the distinct values in a column, so every stray spelling becomes an option of its own. Baymard Institute, which researches ecommerce usability, says vendors’ product data needs to be post-processed into “common name” attributes before it can be used to filter product listings and search results.3
Not to be confused with
A placeholder is not an attribute value. “N/A”, “TBC” and “see image” fill a cell without describing the product, and Google’s colour attribute rules out N/A,4 so they are emptied rather than mapped.
Sources
- Google Merchant Center Help. Product data specification.
- eBay UK Seller Centre. Item specifics.
- Baymard Institute. Filter List Design: Have Filters for All Displayed List Item Info (38% Don’t).
- Google Merchant Center Help. Colour [color].