Do you have a validation message “The given description does not comply with the Allegro format, the description provided by Allegro will be used instead, or the offer will be published without a product description” and you don’t know what to do with it? In this article we will explain everything to you.
Our app has now also started sending the offer title, images and product description to Allegro. These elements are optional when creating a campaign, but if you decide to pair them, we will try to send these elements to Allegro.
If you get the orange message “The given description does not comply with the Allegro format, the description provided by Allegro will be used instead, or the offer will be published without a product description” in the validation, you don’t need to worry about it. We will upload the offer to Allegro even though your description does not meet Allegro’s requirements. In this case, we will use the description that Allegro has for the product card. If you would like to have your offer on Allegro with your own description, you need to have the data in the “DESCRIPTION” element formatted correctly using HTML.
Would you like to have a custom description for your offers on Allegro?
If you wish to have your own product description on Allegro, you must format the text according to Allegro’s requirements. If you make changes in the Mergado Editor, don’t forget to regenerate your feed after you have made the changes, which will also regenerate the data in the Mergado Marketplaces application.
How to format the labels correctly?
Allegro only supports the following HTML tags:
- h1 - title
- h2 - subtitle
- p - paragraph
- ul - bullet list
- ol - numbered list
- li - list item
- b - bold font
Another restriction by Allegro is that the h1 and h2 tags must not be formatted.
If you have formatted the labels but only need to replace <strong> with <b> for example, you can apply the “Find and Replace” rule in the Mergado Editor. For more information about this rule, see here.
If your product descriptions contain characters that are not allowed by Allegro, you can also use the “Strip HTML tags” rule via Mergado Editor and then just add <p> at the beginning of the text and </p> at the end using the “Rewrite” rule, where the new value will be <p>%DESCRIPTION%</p> (instead of DESCRIPTION, add the name of the element in which you have product descriptions). You can also use this override rule if your DESCRIPTION element is completely unformatted.
Example of correctly formatted text:
<h1>Heading</h1>
<p><b>Sample of properly formatted label</b>. Below is an example of a numbered and bulleted list.</p>
<ul>
<li><b>The first bulleted item in bold.</b></li>
<li>Second bulleted list item.</li>
</ul>
<ol>
<li><p><b>The first item in the number list in bold.</b></p></li>
<li><p>The second item of the number list.</p></li>
</ol>
In the Allegro menu you have both your product images and some other people’s?
If you wish to have only your own images in the Allegro menu, you must provide a properly formatted product label. If you do not pair the DESCRIPTION element or if the DESCRIPTION element is not formatted correctly, Allegro will add your product images to your offer, in addition to your product images, also images of the product from the Allegro product card.