How to update existing and onboard new articles with product standard (sustainability) attribute data

As of Q2 2024, significant updates have been implemented in our sustainability-related customer experience, in alignment with current and future EU regulations. You can find more information and visual examples of the changes to the Fashion Store Catalogue and Product Detail Pages (PDPs) in this article, or in our updated Sustainability product standards at Zalando: Full guide.

The previously-used icons have been phased out from the catalogue. Instead, sustainability-related product information is now prominently featured for customers through the Product standard filter. This filter enables customers to efficiently browse the catalogue for products certified by third-party standards. To prevent misunderstandings, the filter is limited to one criterion, indicating that each product possesses only one sustainability-related standard. Additionally, the search results will exclusively display products with full claims, ensuring a minimum of 30% certified materials.

Furthermore, on the Product Detail Page (PDP), customers now receive both a quick overview and detailed information about the product standard. The top section of the PDP provides a preview of the article’s product standard, while more detailed information is accessible in the Product standard section. Effective 1. April 2024, the PDP will also incorporate our updated attribute groups, providing customers with enriched information to make informed decisions.

In the following guide we have outlined the steps you need to take to share the required sustainability-related product standards (previously: sustainability attribute data) with us.

To ensure that your existing articles with sustainability-related product standards (previously: sustainability attributes) are updated with the required data, please follow these steps:

How you onboard and update your impacted articles depends on whether it is sold on Zalando via Partner Program, Wholesale, or Connected Retail.

The following steps are relevant only for your Partner Program articles. Therefore, it’s important to first identify which articles you want to update and then follow by identifying which of these are sold via our Partner Program.

If you are unsure which of your articles are eligible to show product standards information, based on our new requirements, please refer to the Sustainability product standards at Zalando: Full guide.. It outlines the eligible certifications as well as what data and calculation methods are needed to highlight sustainability-related information on your articles.

Under 'Downloads', you will find the ‘Sustainability Attribute Update’ template as a linked attachment.

In the template, you will find two tabs. Please carefully read the instructions provided in the first tab (titled: How to use, displayed in the image below), to understand how to fill in the sheet, before filling out the required attribute data.

Use the second tab (titled: TEMPLATE) to fill in the required attribute data using the examples (e.g) shown in the top row (highlighted in blue in the screenshot below).

Please watch the following video to understand in more detail how to fill in the template correctly.

Once you have completed the template by adding all the required data, please save it as an Excel file. Once saved, please login and send it to us via the ZPU contact form, after selecting topic Article onboarding and request type Sustainability.

The following video explains the steps after you have submitted your template.

Please watch the following video to learn about best practices for filling out the template and the most common mistakes to avoid.

If you want to highlight product standard (previously: sustainability-related) information on your new articles in the new customer experience, you are required to onboard all new articles with two additional sustainability/product standard attribute data points.

You will find more details on this required data and the corresponding product standard (sustainability-related) information shown to our customers in the full guide.

The process of onboarding new articles with the required data will not change and remains dependent on your chosen method of integration. Please see below more details for each integration method:

As of now, you can submit the sustainability attribute (product standard) data points via the Article creation UI in zDirect. Please see how to do so here. 

If you use direct integration via API, please be aware that we have notified your in-house technical team of the upcoming changes. Please reach out to them for more information on the method and timings.

If you, or your technical team, have any further questions, please take a look at our FAQ article here.

Please be aware that we have notified all of the integrators and service providers listed below* of the upcoming changes. Please reach out to them directly to find out when the new sustainability data requirements will be updated.

If the integrator you're working with is not amongst those listed below, please contact your chosen service provider if the new product standard attributes are not visible. 

^{*Tradebyte, Channel Advisor, Lengow, Fortune Globe, Neteven, Novomind, PlentyMarkets, Channel Engine, Channable, ChannelPilot, xSale (formerly: Futuriti), Gyan Singh, Sello, ShoppingFeed}