Onboarding stage 3: Article mapping

Welcome to the third stage of your onboarding journey.

During this stage, you’ll provide the general mandatory details for every article you want to sell on Zalando. This process ensures your products are correctly categorised and visible to customers. Most tasks in this stage involve working directly with your approved integrator. Your Onboarding Manager will support you with mapping articles and conducting your test order.

Watch this short video to learn the first steps of your onboarding journey. We’ll cover how to access your account and set up your master data. Then, use the guide below to get your business ready for the Zalando catalogue.

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• Match your internal product information with Zalando’s attribute requirements.

• Provide accurate pricing and stock levels to make your articles timely online.

• If you use your own fulfilment or Zalando Return Solutions (ZRS), you’ll perform a test order to ensure your logistics are ready.

Please follow these four steps to complete your article mapping.

The exact steps you need to take (e.g., providing SKU, images, material information)  depend on how you integrate with us:

• • Article

  Seasonal timeline and season switch

• • Article

  Key dates for managing your articles

• • Article

  Article mapping guide

• • Article
  • Login required

  Material mapping guide

• • Article
  • Updated

  Zalando image guidelines

• • Article

  Introduction to silhouette guides, related status codes and how to resolve them

• • Article
  • Login required

  Zalando attribute requirements table

• • Article

  Zalando article naming guidelines

Once you’ve completed your article mapping, notify your Onboarding Manager. You must confirm that you’re ready to launch your chosen sales countries and channels. This is a critical step, as it triggers the data feed transmission and allows your articles to appear in zDirect.

If you’re using your own fulfilment (not ZFS) or ZRSpure/plus, you must conduct a test order. 

Follow these requirements and steps for test order option 1 to prepare for your test order. Your Onboarding Manager will assist you throughout this process.

Before you begin, please familiarise yourself with Zalando’s Order Quality Assurance requirements. You can find more information in the Order Quality Assurance FAQs.

• Ensure stock is available for each SKU and provide prices in zDirect or to your integrator.

• Review Zalando’s price validation rules, including minimum/maximum price thresholds and maximum discount percentages.

• • Article
  • Login required
  • Updated

  Understand Zalando’s price policies and price display

Zalando will share with you all master data details with all necessary attributes that are needed for article mapping.

Zalando will follow up with you on the article mapping process status to make sure everything goes smoothly and in a timely manner.

Zalando will perform the technical launch for the sales countries/channel(s) you wish to activate. After we are done, you should be able to see your articles on your zDirect account.

We’ll answer any questions you have during this process, such as those regarding article attributes. Your Onboarding Manager will help you ensure your delivery documents are correct for your own fulfilment or assist in adding Zalando Return Solutions (ZRS) to your logistics setup. Once we confirm everything is correct, you can start the test order process option 1 with your integrator.

A few days after the test customer receives your order, our QA team will check the parcel and the documents inside. We will then create a QA report with the outcome of your delivery test and email it directly to you.

• Focus on relevance: Onboard year-round basic or next-season articles to ensure they’re relevant once you go live. If you onboard articles from an outdated season, you must either apply a 10% discount or go through the retagging process to update the season. Doing this during onboarding will delay your launch and prevent you from selling at full price.

• Stay connected for a faster launch: Maintaining regular communication with us is the best way to ensure a seamless onboarding journey. If you become unresponsive, it can significantly delay your launch date. If you have any questions or feel stuck at any stage, please reach out to your Onboarding Manager immediately so we can provide the support you need.

• Follow guidelines: Strictly adhere to the Zalando article naming guidelines and image guidelines to avoid article rejections.

• If you use a third-party integrator: Handle all product mapping, data corrections and price updates directly on your integrator’s platform to ensure a swift launch. While Zalando syncs with integrators to track progress, you and your integrator maintain technical ownership of your products. Please communicate directly with your integrator’s support team for "deep-dive" troubleshooting and complex mapping to resolve issues quickly.

Your Onboarding Manager is your primary contact for this stage.

If you still need support after using the chatbot, contact your Onboarding Manager through your established communication channel.

You can also reach out to your Partner Consultant for additional guidance.

Next: Article onboarding stage