Set over 13,000 square feet, it showcases thousands of pieces from established and emerging independent designers. Paris has Colette and I trust that we can now say we have a serious contender as its London counterpart. Located at 155 Farringdon Road, Clerkenwell London is not so much a shop as it is a concept store and comes complete with a vinyl lounge, an in-house perfumery, a beautifully-designed restaurant and bar, a wine library, a piano lounge, the Well London and 155 Bar & Kitchen.
I worked on product uploads, amending live products, new descriptions and specific requirements for the functionality of the website mainly using Excel and Shopify.
I also monitor key performance indicators, work on finding a solution to solve any technical issues and supporting the Digital Marketing team
One key problem
Whilst working for Clerkenwell London I started to notice a few errors in the product descriptions online. Random characters would begin to appear.
"your most prized possession.Â"
"the ‘British Made’ collection"
"love U’ Tea"
I suspected that the problem had to do with file encoding used when saving the Excel file. Some versions of Excel have trouble opening CSV files that use a UTF8 form.
I found that these are the Common errors with CSV imports:-
Errant Commas:
Double commas and commas in unusual places (e.g. before an entry) may cause the CSV import to reject.
Unusual characters:
Anything that is not an alphanumeric character in the SKU or handles field may cause the CSV file to be rejected; these can include:
Apostrophe ( ' )
Grave accent ( ` )
Parentheses ( )
Square brackets []
Hyphen (-)
Period (.)
Comma (,)
Colon (:)
Ampersands (&)
Quote Marks (")
Asterisks (*)
My walk around
When Importing files onto Shopify, they must be encoded as UTF-8, (international standard for text-based files). It seems that Excel only saves CSV files as "ANSI", which could be a variety of different Windows-only or Mac file encodings.
In Windows open up Notepad or text edit on Mac.
Open the CSV file, don't edit anything, but save the file that you want the encoding to be UTF-8.
Sometimes simply opening the CSV file in Numbers or Google Docs can solve this and making sure excel is always up to date.
Product Images
I often found that product photography was the weakest point, I would have to scour the web for decent images of the products as some of the designers were new to the industry often images on their websites would suffice. I managed to convince the team that hiring a product photographer would be the way forward- although investing money initially is costly, a potential buyer is more likely to purchase a product with clear imagery of said product.
Cats Brothers Tassel Jumper- stock image
Cats Brothers Palm tree coat
Example of a product description for the coat-
"Make a statement and let your dreams of paradise and warmer weather carry through the winter months with this eye-catching, 100% wool jacket. In a daring shade of red with delicate hand-embroidered appliqué details, it is a must have statement piece for your winter outerwear.
Cats brothers are a luxury brand who have an award winning and innovative approach to street style apparel. Original artwork and slogans, combined with textural embellishments enables them to create one of a kind garments with a sense of humour."
Product view on the website
Emails
I would source images, product names with the correct descriptions and content for the emails which were sent out weekly and monthly.