Prepare your list of locations in the template

In this step, you’ll prepare the Excel file that contains the list of locations to be tested in your project. Whether you’re evaluating new potential sites or testing changes to existing ones, this file is the starting point for uploading your data into the module. 

Hotspot exercise projects

The following information needs to be provided for each of the locations / lines: 

Step 1: Fill in the required characteristics in the "General Information" section

The columns in bold are mandatory. All the other columns can be left blank or can be removed. In that case the default value will be considered.

Here you need to give information on the localisation of the location:

• The location name, this will be the name you will see in the results table
• The name of the brand for which you want to test the locations (in order to know which brand you can choose, the tab "Guidelines" gives a full overview) 
• Country of the tested location; BE, NL, DE, FR, ES,UK... Use the official two-letter ISO country codes.
• Either address fields (address, postal code, city) or coordinates (lat, lon) must be provided (see note below).

Additional information on address fields & coordinates : 

Locations must have or coordinates or either the full address fields or both. You can provide:

• either coordinates without any address information; the address fields will be found by reversed geocoding.
• or complete address fields without coordinates; these will be assigned by geocoding the indicated address, in case of low accuracy of the address, you will get notified in the following step.
• or both coordinates and address fields; the tool will always prioritise coordinates for the geographical positions. 

Step 2: Fill in the segment information

Here you can give extra information on each of the segment(s) you have in your platform (eg. Garden & Pets, DIY , Retail, etc.), if you don't know what to enter values in these columns you can leave them blank, neutral values will automatically be attributed to them.

• All values ​​that can be entered are listed in the second tab "Guidelines", this tab will give you an overview of the expected values ​​in each column, whether they are predefined information (e.g: choice type as it can be for visibility), or numerical values ​​(like surfaces).
• For all the State columns: enter "Open" for each segment you want your location to be tested in (They are "Open" by default). 

This is an example of how the file can be filled out:

Important remark : The number of lines to be processed per file is limited to 3 000.

Optimal characteristics projects

The Excel file you downloaded contains the full list of your actual network (based on the period you previously chose), with their actual characteristics.

You have to edit the Excel file to change the location characteristics you want to test. We recommend changing only one location characteristic at a time (per row)  to accurately assess its impact. Changing multiple characteristics simultaneously will result in a combined effect, making it harder to isolate individual influences.

From the column "General attributes", you can change the characteristics of your locations, previous columns are mandatory and they must not be modified.

Once your file is ready, you can go to the next step: Upload the template