Editing a Recommendations Profile

Once you've created a recommendations profile, you will configure its template, filters, and precision.

Note: Each profile will show "Live" or "Paused" by the page title to show its current status. Click the toggle to disable (pause) the profile if it is live; once the profile is paused, click the toggle again to enable the profile (make it live).

Template tab

This is where you can change how the profile looks and behaves in your store. See also: Tailored Recommendations Templating

Template

Select a template from the drop-down menu. Athos Commerce templates will always be available to everyone. If any custom templates have been set up for your site, they will appear separately here. Template options in this example include the following:

• Carousel
• Default template
• Grid

Note: If your site is integrated with Athos via an API implementation, you can ignore the Template section; you do not need to select a template. Once the profile is created, take note of the profile tag (you can find this for each profile on the main Recommendations page of the Athos Search & Product Discovery console, which is linked here). In your API calls, you will use that profile tag to retrieve results specific to the created profile.

Minimum Threshold

The minimum threshold is the minimum number of products needed for this profile to display at all. For example, if this value is set to four (4) and a product only has two (2) recommended products to show, the profile will not show on that page of your site.

Title

Name the profile in this field.

Other Template Settings

Any other settings in this section are entirely custom, set by the creator of the template itself, and should have a description you can see by hovering over the question mark (?) next to its name. If there is no information about this setting, contact the template creator for clarification. 

Boost Rules, Sorts, and Filters (for Custom Recommendations)

If you've selected the Custom recommendations type, you can select the products to be recommended by applying boost rules, sorts, and filters.

Boost Rules

Just as with Boosting Rules in Visual Merchandising, boosting allows you to create rules that will dynamically boost products with certain attributes to the top of your recommended products. These rules will continue to stay in effect and re-group your products in real time as their information changes.

Although we show only the first 20 items in a recommendations profile, you can use Product Boosting Rules to elevate specific products to the top of the list. Each Boost rule separates products into an elevated group that meets the rule and a deprecated group that does not. Additional rules create sub-groups within the first set.

The higher the rule is positioned in the list, the greater impact it will have on the results. Boost rules are not required.

Sorts

The sorting rule forms the lowest-level order for the items shown. It is applied as a subordinate to any boost rules that may have been applied. For example, you could sort by the most sales to elevate popular items, or sort by the lowest days-since-published to elevate new items.

These sub-sorts are called "tie-breaker rules" and help the system determine which products to give priority in recommendations if they match in all other aspects, such as filters and boost rules.

Filters tab

Filters can be used to limit which products can possibly show up in a profile. This selection varies for different types of profiles. Note that recently viewed profiles cannot be filtered.

For custom profiles, the filters are applied in advance to help determine the set of products to recommend. A common use would be to only display products that have a certain tag. For example, if you only want to recommend products from a specific season, you could set up a filter requiring products to match a seasonal tag like ss_season is Winter. Any field that is available in the search index can be used for custom profile filters.

For other types of profiles (including similar, cross-sell, and trending), filters are applied at the time that the recommendations are requested by the website. That means the filters will reduce the number of results returned and may cause the profile to be hidden if no appropriate results are available. It is best to apply these filters only in cases where it is better to show nothing instead of the wrong thing.

Tip: See Personalization Settings for more details on how you can use business rules to influence recommendations instead of using filters.

Custom Recommendations (Static vs. Dynamic)

You can read about the options for custom recommendations profiles here.

Precision tab

The Precision tab is only available on Similar, Cross-sell, and Cart-Cross-sell profiles. Precision settings allow the service to present alternative types of recommendations to the shopper. A broader precision will allow other recommendation types to fill in where needed, depending on the seed product provided on the page. For example, a brand new item may not have enough data yet to provide good cross-sell results, so similar or trending results may be used instead.

A narrower precision will restrict the profile so that recommendations only show if they meet the most restrictive criteria for the selected type. In some cases, this may result in the profile returning less than the minimum threshold of products so that the profile will be hidden. A detailed description is available on the Precision page.

Previewing Recommendations

On the right half of the window, you can preview the results that will be shown on your site.

• For custom profiles, the preview will show you the actual product results matching your boost and filter selections.
• Similar, Cross-Sell, and Cart Cross-Sell profiles require a product seed for the preview.
• Category and Brand Trending profiles require a category or brand to be selected, and you can search for the appropriate input to see the results for that selection.

To view a preview, simply search for them on the left and instantly see results that show which products would be recommended based on that seed. This preview will update in real time depending on which product, category, or brand you select.

Note: These are only previews. When the profile is placed on your site, the seed product, category or brand will be captured from variables on that page and sent in the request.

Note: Previews are not supported for Personal, Session, and Recently Viewed recommendations, as they are entirely dependent on an individual shopper’s behavior.

When you click on a recommended product, it will show the details of that product and provide context on why that product has been recommended. For example, on a similar or cross-sell profile you will see:

• Total Sales and Total Views for the recommended product
• Common Sales or Common Views between the recommended product and the seed product
  • Common Sales will be shown for Cross-Sell recommendations while Common Views are used for Similar recommendations.
  • Common Views are calculated over 26 weeks. 
  • Common Sales are calculated over 18 months and measure how often a product is repurchased by the same shopper. The repurchase does not necessarily need to be on the same order to qualify as a common sale. 
• The Brand and the Categories associated with the recommended product
  • The preview will highlight the categories that the recommended product shares with the seed product

This preview will not exactly match what shoppers will see once the profile is implemented on your site. Depending on the individual shopper’s behavior, the order of recommended products will change in order to provide a personalized experience.

Ready to Install?

Check out Installing a Profile to continue.