Personalization studio

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Beta

Personalization studio is in BETA. If you want access to this feature, please contact your Bloomreach representative. We welcome and encourage your feedback as we refine capabilities for future iterations of this feature. After its General Availability, this feature will be part of the Discovery Standard package.

Enabling 1:1 Personalization on your site dynamically ranks products differently for each shopper, in an order that is most relevant to their preferences. This personalized product ranking makes finding products easier and can nudge the shopper toward making a purchase.

The shopper's affinities for products with certain attributes are determined by the shopper's interactions. These interactions can include product or category views, query searches, add-to-carts, purchases, and more.

For example, Bloomreach observes how a site visitor (new or returning) interacts with different products. If they tend to view and buy shirts from certain brands over others, then our algorithm will boost the products of the preferred brands in the search results of similar queries like “formal wear” for this particular shopper.

Enable 1:1 Personalization

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Note

The 1:1 Personalization feature can be accessed if a Bloomreach user has the IAM “Personalization user” role assigned to them.

Run personalization setup

1. To set up 1:1 Personalization for your site, go to AI Studio > Personalization studio in your Bloomreach dashboard.

   

2. Under the Setup tab, click the Set up personalization button.

   

3. In the pop-up panel that appears, select the catalog for which you want to enable personalization and click Start setup.

These steps will trigger the pipelines required to capture the user profiles of your site visitors for personalization. It takes 24 - 48 hours for the initial setup to complete, until which the catalog’s status will be indicated as setup in progress.

Once the setup is complete, you can enable the personalization experience for your shoppers across different levels of your site. This is explained in the following section.

Create personalization rules

Personalization can be enabled at the Global level, Query level (site search), or Category level by creating personalization rules.

1. Navigate to the tab of the level you want to create the rule for (Global rules, Site search rule, Category rules).

   

2. Click the + New rule button:

   

3. Select your catalog from the dropdown.

   

4. Here are the details of the further options for each type of rule:

   1. You can create a Global rule to enable personalization for All queries / All categories or both at once.

      

   2. You can create multiple Site search rules to enable personalization for specific search queries. This means that the search results for these queries will follow personalized ranking.

      Type and hit the return key after each search query in the Select queries field.

      

   3. You can create multiple Category rules to enable personalization for specific categories. This means that the products displayed in these categories will follow personalized ranking.

      Select the categories from the dropdown.

      

5. Preview and save your rule.

   

Preview and debug personalization

To better understand the impact and experience of personalization for visitors on your site, preview your rules before enabling them.

The Preview panel can be accessed by the button on the top right corner while creating or editing any personalization rule.

Follow the steps below to use the preview panel:

1. Enter the search query / select category in the search box for which you want to test.

2. Enter the User ID or the cookie2 value of a site user in the field next to the search box (highlighted in the image above). For testing purposes, you can fetch this value using the Bloomreach Pixel validator Chrome extension.

   

3. Review the search results in the Preview panel. On the left side, the top attribute affinities associated with the user that govern the personalized product ranking are displayed (and the number of interactions they made with the attribute).

4. You can view the exact impact on the product ranking in the following ways:

   1. Toggle the Show Changes checkbox at the top right. This will highlight the changes in position of the adjusted products.

      

   2. Switch to the Side-by-Side Preview tab to compare the search results with and without 1:1 Personalization applied.

      

Debug personalization

Ranking diagnostics is an important tool for debugging product ranking. It can be used to identify the overall impact of enabled personalization rules on different queries or categories.

1. Go to Search & Merchandising > Ranking diagnostics in your Bloomreach dashboard.

   

2. Click the pencil icon to set up an Additional scope definition.

   

3. Enter the User ID or cookie2 value of a site user under the User ID field. Click Update to apply the configuration.

   

4. Enter a search query (or category) for which personalization has been enabled in the search field and hit Enter.

5. This will show the search results for the specified user. The Personalization indicator (On or Off) and badge on top of the products can be used to validate 1:1 personalized ranking.

   

How personalized ranking works

User profile creation

1:1 Personalization uses user data from Bloomreach Pixels to create an anonymous user profile of the site visitor. User journeys are created by monitoring the user’s interactions with different products and pages.

• If it is a returning visitor and has an existing user_id, their long-term profile will be remembered for up to three months.
• If it is a new visitor, the br_uid_2 (cookie2) parameter from the Pixel is used to create their short-term profile for up to one month.

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Note

More information on the data collected by the user cookie and its sensitivity can be found in Pixel data protection.

Affinity-based ranking

For each user profile, 1:1 Personalization operates by monitoring the user’s interactions and remembering affinities for different product attributes like brand, color, size, etc. It automatically learns which attributes are relevant for creating and matching affinities.

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Important

Numeric attributes are not used for personalization right now.

The feature uses a multi-attribute personalization approach. Here are the key objectives it achieves:

• It can track the user’s preferences on different pages based on context.
  For example, a ‘Dresses’ page might identify a preference for color or size, while a ‘Perfumes’ page might focus on brand preferences.
• It can transfer relevant affinities from one query or category to another related one.
  For example, if a shopper shows a preference for “size: S” on a ‘Dresses’ page, this preference can also influence related categories like ‘Gowns’ but not unrelated categories like ‘Sandals’.

Personalized ranking precedence rules

1. Bloomreach Merchandising rules will always take precedence over personalized ranking.
2. The latest query intent always takes precedence (for example, a search query “Red shirt” will always override any previous shirt color preferences).
3. In-session affinities take precedence over long-term user profile data.

Understanding session-based personalization

Personalization works over multiple user sessions for both new users (non logged-in) and repeat users (logged-in).

Personalization for non logged-in users

For a new site user with no past interaction data, products are initially ranked using the Bloomreach default algorithm. After the user makes at least 3 interactions on the site, affinities start building up, and personalization starts applying to their subsequent relevant searches.

At this point, the user profile for this visitor would have been generated, and they would get personalized results on later visits for up to a month (unless they log in).

Personalization for logged-in users

For a returning site user with at least 6 past interactions, personalization is applied from the start of a new session (based on their previous affinities). After the user makes at least 3 new interactions on the site, affinities start updating, and real-time personalization starts applying to subsequent relevant searches.

All the interaction data collected over the session is added to the user’s past interaction data, which is stored for up to three months.

Personalization across devices

• 1:1 Personalization will continue to apply to logged-in users with valid user_id, and personalization data will be collected even if they log in from a different device.
• 1:1 Personalization will not apply over multiple devices for non logged-in users (without a user_id).