Conditional slot merchandising

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Beta

Conditional slot merchandising 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.

What is Conditional slot merchandising

Conditional slot merchandising lets you control which type of products appear in select slots based on your chosen attribute conditions. This helps you find the right mix between manual grid curation and relying entirely on the algorithm. You pick the slots and the product type, while our algorithm places the top products in those slots.

This allows you to flexibly tailor the product grid to your merchandising strategy. Suppose you're running a Men’s footwear promotional campaign and want to promote brand X. To improve brand visibility and conversions, you set a conditional slot rule to fill slots 1 to 4 with products where the brand is "X" and products are new using product attributes. The layouts below illustrate brand X's products in prime spots for shoppers.

• Layout 1

  

• Layout 2

  

You can alternatively set a conditional slot rule to fill slots 2, 5, and 8 with products where the brand is "X". Customize the layout to your preference!

Business use cases

Following are some of the many business use cases of Conditional slot merchandising:

1. Monetise and sell prime slots in the product grid.
2. Showcase certain brands next to each other.
3. Honor brand agreements for particular slots and ensure that competing products don’t appear together.
4. Curate the shopper’s browsing experience with custom visual layouts.
5. Showcase complementary products. For instance, always show premium brands next to the in-house ones, or always show t-shirts next to shorts.

Feature access in dashboard

Conditional slot merchandising is available on the following merchandising pages:

• Search term ranking rules
• Category ranking rules (including Dynamic categories)

You can define conditional rules at the site, site group, and account levels.

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Note

The upcoming feature iterations will add support for Global ranking rules, Recommendation widgets, and Thematic pages.

Conditional slot merchandising workflow

Here’s the high-level merchandising flow for Conditional slot merchandising:

1. Pick your desired slots in the product grid.
2. Define attribute conditions to narrow down the products displayed in those slots. Conditions are based on product attributes, both numeric and descriptive.
3. The top-ranked products that meet these conditions fill the picked slots.

The Bloomreach algorithm sets the order of products in the remaining slots with the applied ranking rules (if they exist).

Visit the step-by-step workflow article.

Limitations

• Conditional slotting can be applied to the top 50 slots using the top-ranking 200 products.
• Group merchandising is out of support scope.

FAQs

1. Can I A/B test conditional slot rules?
   Yes, conditional rules can be tested just like ranking rules. To learn more, visit the step-by-step dashboard guide.
2. Can I schedule conditional slot rules?
   Yes, conditional rules can be scheduled in advance to support marketing activities just like ranking rules.
3. How do attribute rules differ from conditional slot rules?
   Attribute-based rules let you influence the ranking of a set of products based on specific attributes. They don’t target specific slots but rather the entire result set.
   Conditional slot rules allow you to define conditions for a group of slots using Product description or Numeric attributes. They provide a more comprehensive and flexible way to manage the placement and ranking of products within certain slots based on defined conditions.
4. How do sequential lock rules differ from conditional slot rules?
   In sequential lock rules, you lock specific products sequentially in a set range. All products that fall in the sequential lock range are locked, regardless of the type.
   In conditional rules, you don't choose specific products but just a product type. The Bloomreach algorithm populates matching products in the slots based on the attribute conditions you define.