The Ecommerce simulation allows you to test your products in realistic online environments — such as Amazon, Walmart, Target, Nike, Costco, or a generic web store — by adding products, pricing, descriptions, and images to your survey to simulate a directed shopping environment for respondents.

In This Article

• Adding Ecommerce to a Survey
• Customizing Products
• Adjusting Layout and Cart Settings
• Adding Child SKUs (Product Variants)
• Previewing an Ecommerce Simulation

Adding Ecommerce to a Survey

To add an Ecommerce Simulation to your survey:

1. Drag and drop the Ecommerce icon into the Survey Editor, or click the icon to insert it directly.
2. Type or paste a list of products into the Product name text fields.
3. Click the image upload icon next to a product to add images from your computer. Alternatively, use the Search API field: pick a marketplace (Amazon, Walmart, or Target), enter a search term or product identifier, and aytm imports matching products — including their images, prices, and other details.
4. Use the Web dropdown to select a store type: Amazon Web, Walmart Web, Target Web, Costco Web, Nike Web, Chewy Web,  or Standard Web.
5. Use the SKUs dropdown to set the maximum number of products to import (default 10). You can import up to 10 SKUs when the child SKUs checkbox is checked, and up to 50 when it is unchecked.
6. Click Import to retrieve product details — images, titles, and descriptions—and populate the product cards. If you import more products than the simulation's limit, click the X next to any product to remove it.

⚠️ Note: While you can edit the default instruction text shown to participants, clear and specific instructions help reduce confusion and improve the quality of responses.

Customizing Products

After importing products, each element on a product card is fully editable. Click on a product card to:

• Add, rearrange, or replace product images, including an optional 3D model
• Edit the product name
• Set pricing—regular price, discounted/sale price, per-unit price and units, and (on Amazon) a Subscribe & Save percentage; per-unit pricing isn't available on Nike
• Apply badges and labels based on the selected web store (for example Best Seller, Amazon's Choice, Prime, Featured, Best Seller, Highly Rated, Limited Stock, and many others)
• Add a star rating, review count, and (on Amazon and Standard) purchase-frequency social proof like "10K+ bought in past month"
• Write a custom product description

Adjusting Layout and Cart Settings

Further modify the layout and cart settings to help simulate a realistic shopping experience and ensure a more controlled testing environment.

1. Click the Desktop layout and Mobile layout drop-downs to select how many products appear per row on each screen type. Desktop offers 3, 4, 5, or Automatic (default Automatic); Mobile offers 1, 2, or Automatic (default Automatic).
2. Open the Cart settings dropdown to implement purchase limits:
   • Max #/product—check this box and enter a maximum number of each product a respondent can add to their cart. 
   • Max #/cart—check this box and enter the maximum total number of items a respondent may add to their cart, counting all quantities of every product together (not the number of different products).
   • Max spend—check this box and enter a maximum amount of money each respondent may spend on their cart.

For products with variants, each child SKU counts as its own product—all three limits apply to each variant separately. See Adding Child SKUs (Product Variants) for details.

⚠️ Note: The Mobile layout dropdown is available for the Amazon Web and Standard Web storefronts. For Walmart, Target, Nike, Chewy, and Costco, mobile layout stays at Automatic and can't be changed from the editor.

Adding Child SKUs (Product Variants)

Many real products are sold as a family of related variants — for example a t-shirt offered in several sizes, or a sneaker offered in multiple size-and-color combinations. In the Ecommerce simulation, these variants are called child SKUs. A product family is a single parent product plus one or more child SKUs, where each child is distinguished by one or two axes (such as Size, or Size and Color). This lets respondents shop the way they would on a real storefront — choosing a variant from the product detail page — while keeping the shelf tidy, since only the parent product appears as its own card.

⚠️ Note: Child SKUs are available on every storefront except Target Web and Nike Web . Other stores support product families of up to two axes (for example Size × Color).

Ways to add child SKUs

You can build a product family in three ways:

1. Import them automatically. When importing from Amazon Web or Walmart Web via the Search API, check the with child SKUs option so the search pulls in each product's variants alongside its parent. Each imported family is capped at 50 products (one parent plus up to 49 children) to keep imports manageable. When importing multi-axis families with child SKUs enabled, the product-count selector is limited to smaller values so a large search doesn't fan out into thousands of variants.
2. Build them manually. On any parent product card, click the product family icon to open the family editor. From there you can Add axis (e.g. "Size"), add the values for that axis, and click + Add child SKU to create each variant. You must add an axis before you can add a child SKU, since a variant's identity is its (axis, value) combination. A second axis (e.g. "Color") is available when multi-axis variants are enabled for your account.
3. Upload them via CSV. Build the whole family in a spreadsheet, one row per product, then upload it. Two things turn those rows into a family:
   • A dimension column pair names each variant's axis and value. Use dimension name / dimension value for a single axis, or dimension 1 name… and dimension 2 name… for two axes.

   • The parent product column links children to their parent. Leave it blank on the parent row, and on every child row enter the parent's market place id. 

     When the file is ready, upload it using the Product sheet dropdown. 

     💡 Tip: When the file is ready, upload it from the product list: click the Product sheet dropdown at the top-right and select Upload. Choosing Download first gives you a sheet with the columns already in place to fill in.

See the examples below.

CSV examples

Example 1—single axis (Size). The TEE-S row is the parent, so its parent product cell is left blank. The other three rows are children, each pointing back to TEE-S.

Copy this as a starting point:

name,regular price,market place id,dimension name,dimension value,parent product
Classic Cotton Tee,$24.99,TEE-S,Size,S,
Classic Cotton Tee,$24.99,TEE-M,Size,M,TEE-S
Classic Cotton Tee,$26.99,TEE-L,Size,L,TEE-S
Classic Cotton Tee,$26.99,TEE-XL,Size,XL,TEE-S

Example 2—two axes (Size and Color). Same idea, with a second dimension pair added. The SHOE-M-RED row is the parent (blank parent product), and the remaining rows are children pointing back to it.

Copy this as a starting point:

name,regular price,market place id,dimension 1 name,dimension 1 value,dimension 2 name,dimension 2 value,parent product
Trailblazer Running Shoe,$89.99,SHOE-M-RED,Size,M,Color,Red,
Trailblazer Running Shoe,$89.99,SHOE-L-RED,Size,L,Color,Red,SHOE-M-RED
Trailblazer Running Shoe,$89.99,SHOE-M-BLU,Size,M,Color,Blue,SHOE-M-RED
Trailblazer Running Shoe,$94.99,SHOE-L-BLU,Size,L,Color,Blue,SHOE-M-RED

💡 Tip: Every product in the family gets its own row—parent and children alike—and each row carries its own regular price. The parent is simply the row whose parent product cell is empty.

Editing a product family

In the family editor you can:

• Rename an axis, or remove an axis and its values
• Add, rename, or remove axis values
• Drag value chips to set the order in which values appear to respondents
• Add or remove individual child SKUs, and set each variant's own name, price, and images

⚠️ Note: Before launching, make sure every variant has a value for each of its axes and that no two variants share the same combination of values. Blank axis values and duplicate combinations are flagged and will block launch until resolved.

What respondents see

Only the parent product appears as a card on the shelf. When a respondent opens a product's detail view, a variant selector lets them switch between family members—one row of buttons per axis. On Walmart, single-axis families also surface inline variant tiles directly on the product card. Each variant carries its own images, price, and rating, and each can be added to the cart as an independent line item, so cart limits and spend caps count every variant separately.

Child SKUs in analysis

In your results, each child SKU appears as its own row in the per-product statistics—there is no roll-up or aggregation between a parent and its variants. This means you can read purchase intent, add-to-cart, and other metrics at the individual variant level (for example, comparing how the "Small / Red" SKU performed against the "Large / Blue" SKU), just as you would for any standalone product.

Previewing an Ecommerce Simulation

Before launching an Ecommerce Simulation, aytm encourages previewing the experience to ensure everything is functioning as intended and aligned with your research goals.

1. Click the Preview button located above the research test. This will launch a full simulation of the selected storefront, allowing you to experience the interface exactly as your respondents will. 

What you can do depends on the survey's mode:

• Shopping mode (or Focus mode)—respondents browse, add items to a cart, and check out, just as they would on a real storefront.
• Find mode—there's no cart. Clicking a product selects it, which submits the answer immediately and moves on to the next question.

In either mode, you can:

• Scroll to browse products.
• Select a product's image to view its detail page, where you can switch between variants if the product has any—see Adding Child SKUs (Product Variants).
• Zoom in on images.
• Read descriptions, pricing, and customization details.

In Shopping or Focus mode, you can also:

• Add items to the cart and adjust quantities as needed.
• Click Buy Now on a product's detail page to add it and go straight to checkout.
• On Amazon, subscribe to a product using Subscribe & Save.
• Select Cart, remove any items you no longer want, and click Check Out to finalize your selections and proceed to the next survey question.

Click Exit Simulation to leave the experience without completing it. If a product includes an N/A option, selecting it submits the question immediately without adding anything to the cart.

⚠️ Note: Actions unrelated to the task, such as filtering or searching, are intentionally disabled to maintain focus and consistency.