In a world of digitalization and significant rise of online merchandizing rich and full product content is a must for each and everyone involved in this process. The recent research shows that the amount of imagery created for online shopping is rising constantly. In fact, the better the ‘look and feel’ your product has the more chances are that someone will buy it.

Rising of the amount of digital assets means more challenges in their management. How do you combine the product photo shooting creative process and product information enrichment?

The easiest way to make product assets and product meet without the need of manual involvement is assets naming convention.

A naming convention is a convention (generally agreed scheme) for naming things. Wikipedia

Naming convention is a common instrument used to make life easier: systematic naming is used for name of streets, stars and other astronomic objects, tax documents and dogs breeds. Anything of the same type can be found mush easier if it shares common name pattern.

Naming convention best practices

For assets naming convention there are some common best practices usually used:

Name should be unique

The common recommendation is not to allow several objects share the same name. If the name would be unique, you would be sure that you would be able to find the exact asset you are looking for.

Name should be as brief as possible

The naming of the asset can be automated in many ways but remember that the longer it should – the more space there is for a mistake. Make sure that your naming rules only contains the absolute required minimum of the information. The best practice is to keep the name of the asset to 20-25 characters or less.

Avoid special symbols and characters

The best practice is not to use special characters like . \ / : ? * < > | “ , or even space in your asset names. Different systems have different level of sensitivity towards them. The best way is to only use underscore _ in your file name – this is the safest symbol recognized by the majority of OS and digital platforms.

Naming rules should be acceptable for all your digital channels

If we are talking about digital assets chances are that you would like to reuse them in many places: to have a look at the full product content in your product content/information management system, on your e-commerce or promotional website, in social media promotions or paper leaflets. There are hundreds of digital channels your assets may go to. In order to automate the reusage of assets the developers will build rules based on your naming convention structure. So, make sure your naming convention rules are unambiguous, concise, universal and are shared with all stakeholders.

Do not make it your main priority though. Even if your naming convention standard will not work for this or that reseller, there are always ways for them to configure renaming of your assets if it is unique.

Naming convention standard example

If we’re talking about product images specifically, the following components are usually included:

1. Unique product code

Any types of unique code or codes combinations that you use to identify your product with within your organization. It can be EAN/UPC, FDA, GTIN, ASIN or any other unique identifiers.

2. Shot type

Identify whether it is a photo of packaging or product itself, full-size or detailed shot, product detailed image or photo of product in the interior and so on.

3. Angle

Identify whether it is a front, back or side shot. You can use wording or even actual angle values (like 0, 30, 45, 60, 90 and so on). Using angles would be a great way to enable 360 ° preview of your products.

4. Sequence / Order / Serialization identifier

You may want your product images to be displayed in certain order on your website. While automatic rules can be built based on your shot types and angles, one more way of managing it is adding it to your naming convention standard. I.e. use identifiers like 01, 02 and so one or even use more human-friendly identifiers like main, secondary etc.

5. We recommend each component to consist of the same number of characters.

Even though there are always ways to process any files and asset names, the best and mostly used option is to have the same number of characters in each component of your naming convention standard.I.e. for product code to always consist of 9 characters, shot type of 2 symbols, angle of 3 and so one.

Using this you will make sure that the naming convention standard would be processable by the majority of digital platforms and channels.