Retail & E-commerce
The DPP in E-commerce and Marketplaces
How to present a Digital Product Passport in online sales — marketplace verification duties, product page integration and data feeds.
Online selling is a two-sided surface for the DPP: an ideal channel for presenting passport data, and a new compliance gate because of marketplace verification duties.
Marketplace duties
ESPR and product legislation bring online marketplaces into the verification chain: passport and carrier existence must be checked before listing. The new toy safety regime introduces a similar duty. See the Toy Safety Regulation and the DPP and market surveillance and enforcement.
For a manufacturer selling from outside the EU the conclusion is simple: no passport, listing risk.
Product page integration
| Method | Description |
|---|---|
| Link | A link from the product page to the passport URL |
| Embedded summary | Key fields (materials, recycled content) shown on the page |
| Structured data | Machine-readable markup on the product page |
| Data feed | A passport URL field in the marketplace feed |
The most robust approach is to hold the passport URL as a field in your product master data and distribute it to every channel from there. See ERP integration for DPP.
The packaging trap
In e-commerce the customer does not see the product physically at the moment of purchase, so a QR on the packaging does nothing at that stage. The passport therefore has to be reachable from the product page. See packaging DPP and PPWR.
Returns
Returns caused by product information are one of e-commerce's most expensive lines. Preparing a passport forces you to clean product data, and the side effect shows up in return rates. See DPP data quality management and the ROI of a DPP.
Frequently asked questions
What will a marketplace ask me for?
Typically: the passport URL, the identifier and key fields in structured form. See what retailers ask suppliers for.
How should I show it on my own site?
A visible link on the product page plus a summary of a few key fields. Leave the full data to the passport page. See what consumers should see.
A separate link per variant?
It depends on granularity. If variants have separate GTINs, the links differ too. See choosing granularity.
