What is a CSV and Why does it Matters for eCommerce?

CSV is another one of those acronyms we love so much.  It stands for Comma Separated Value(s).  If you own or work with an eCommerce store with more than say 30-40 product you probably have worked with a CSV and if you haven’t you are in the right place to learn how.

A CSV is a portable data file in text format.  It allows you to take ALL of your data such as customer data, order data, product data and move it around and manipulate it.

You will also find as your shop grows and as you gain more SKUs that

Microsoft’s Excel is surely the most widely used spreadsheet software and we us it A LOT, but we would recommend Open Office Calc as the best software for managing CSVs for eCommerce.

We typically use Excel for manipulating data, because our experts know Excel.  If you don’t know concatenate, try it. Concatenate has many practical purposes in managing eCommerce data, however for simple tasks and the final import / export files we almost always use Open Office Calc.

The reason for this is that traditionally Excel has done a poor job of preparing CSVs and adds strange encoding or other stray values that break or damage imports.

Note:  This article is for informational purposes only and expresses our life experiences with the aforementioned software(s) your experience may differ and we do not receive any compensation nor have any affiliation with the aforementioned companies.