Functional Specification for Bloomreach Connector Apps

As customers consider a Bloomreach Discovery integration through a connector, many still have goals to customize the experience on top of the connector. The table below lists the functional specifications of the different Bloomreach Connectors. The Discovery Connectors consist of a Product Feed export and an App User Interface (where a user configures the behavior of the sample UI that gets injected into the Commerce Platform) and is powered by an SDK that is used by the Shopify, Bigcommerce, & Magento apps.

Here is a breakdown of functional and technical details that clarify what is offered and how much customization is possible to help you understand when you may need to go down a custom integration path instead of a connector.

Product Feed

Connector	Functional Specification	Full Feed Supported	Delta Feeds Supported	Configuration
Shopify	See Product feed delivery in the Extension's User Guide.	Yes	No	Fully configurable by the customer.
Bigcommerce	See Product feed delivery in the Extension's User Guide.	Yes	Yes	No customer-facing configuration. The Bloomreach Services team can perform a moderate number of configurations.
Magento	See Product feed delivery in the Extension's User Guide.	Yes	No	Fully configurable by the customer if using the Reference Feed Module. If using the internal ETL tool, there is no customer-facing configuration. The Bloomreach Services team can perform a moderate number of configurations. Alternatively, other common methods have been to use the XTENTO Magneto extension to extract products from Magneto, transform them, and import them to the Bloomreach DataConnect API.

Autosuggest

Feature	Functional Specification	Configuration
Autosuggest	The Autosuggest UI renders data contained in the API response for: Suggested Terms Suggested Products Suggested Product Images Suggested Collections (known as Categories for Bigcommerce & Magento)	You can set the number that gets displayed inside the Commerce Platform App for Collections, Terms, Products. You can turn off Collections, Terms, or Products within the Autosuggest UI.

Keyword Search

Feature	Functional Specification	Configuration
Sort	By default, include sorting by: Title (A/Z and Z/A) Price (Low/High and High/Low) Best Seller (Default BR search response)	Not configurable in the Connectors. You do not need to select additional or exclude certain sort parameters.
Pagination	Desktop: Required by default. The default page loads 16 products, which can be increased by factors of 4 to a maximum of 48. Mobile: Not required. Uses Lazy load / infinite scroll.	You can select between standard pagination, or infinite scroll from within the app. If using standard pagination, you can select the numbers that are included in the grid page and in the grid page selector dropdown.
Redirect	Within the Bloomreach Dashboard, you can set up a redirect for a search term (i.e. "Chair" automatically returns a result for "Stool"). The search result will come back as the redirected term, but the UI also indicates "Redirected from [original search term]". If the API response contains "keywordRedirect", the Connector incorporates the redirected URL. Both relative and absolute redirects are supported to work with the connectors: If the redirect starts with a “/“ then it is a relative redirect (redirects internally within the domain/site) Anything else is treated as an absolute redirect (redirects to the exact URL inputted and can also include external sites), with “http(s)” auto-prepended The Search results page also includes the number of results found, and accounts for Bloomreach spell correction ("did_you_mean" section in JSON response).	N/A
Product Hierarchy	If a product has variants, the Product Grid includes variant images/color swatches. Feeds contain a full image and thumbnail image for every variant, so those images are displayed in the grid for both Search results and Categories.	By default, each variant is displayed in search results as its own product. You can collapse the variants under one product so that only the parent product will be displayed, which can be toggled under Search Options. In this case, the parent product displays swatches in the UI for different variants.
Product Item Display	In the Product Grid, each product returns the following: Title Original Price Sale Price (if present), Original Price (with strikethrough) If custom metafield attributes are present in the API response, the Connector SDK passes them through. In this case, you will need to custom build the UI, and cannot manage the UI in the app.Does not include: "On Sale" tag ratings promotions	The HTML of the Product Item cards is configurable directly within the app.
Pricing Display	See Product Item Display above for basic pricing (Original Price, Sale Price). For the Connector SDK, when swatches/variants are displayed, we also display a Price Range (for products whose variants have a range in price). Price Range is included in the API payload.	The HTML of the Product Item cards is configurable directly within the app.
Real-time Product Information (price, availability, etc.)	All pricing updates will be based on the latest feed we've indexed. No additional real-time capability is supported in the Discovery SDK.	Not configurable in the Connectors

Facets

Feature	Functional Specification	Configuration
Commodity Features: multi-select result counts	When facets are returned, the Connector SDK gives the option to select multiple facet values, and can display the number of items/results within that facet.	You can select how many facets to display in a standard Search Results or Collection page. If there are more facets to display, the UI includes "Show more".
Range facets	The Price Range facet is at the top of the facet list. The Connector SDK displays the facet value for Price Range if it exists in the API response. The ranges are set by Bloomreach in the Bloomreach Dashboard, and are included in the API response.	Does not need to be configured. The Connector SDK returns the result from Bloomreach and renders it as a Price Range facet
Facet Value Hierarchy	By default, Facet Value displays 4 values, and includes a "+ More" sign to expand the full list of Facet Values. This also applies to Facets.	Within the app, you can configure the number of values to display before the "+ More" sign.

Feature	Functional Specification
Category Banners	Not supported. Even if the API response contains banners, the Connector SDK does not need to display it.
Taxonomy	When making an API call to the Bloomreach Category API, the Connector SDK displays the correct category products in the front end.
Feature Parity with Search PLP	The UI for the Search Results Page and Category page should be at parity with each other.

Recommendations & Pathways

Feature	Functional Specification	Configuration
Pathways and Recommendations - Shopify	You can make a Shopify CMS component for Recommendations that can accept a Bloomreach Recommendations Widget ID. This widget ID is saved in the Shopify CMS and includes the pixel event for Recommendations.	This is configurable in Shopify.
Pathways and Recommendations - SDK	The SDK accepts a Bloomreach widget ID from the commerce platform front end, which will be passed in the API call to Bloomreach. The SDK takes the Bloomreach Pathways and Recommendations API and returns a 4 wide product grid that contains the image, title, price, sales price. The grid also has carousel arrows to display more items, up to 16 responses. When there are multiple Recommendations widgets on a single page, the SDK accepts and returns the correct widget ID for each widget's API call. Edge Case: If the API doesn't return any results, the product grid will not be displayed or included on the page.	You can drag and drop a new Recommendations widget from the commerce platform CMS. You can also select how many products are displayed in each grid (default: 4 wide), and the total amount of products to include in the carousel (default: 16). If the UI is responsive, the grid will auto widen/shrink.
MLT, JFY, Bestsellers	All Recommendations and Pathways widgets will be rendered the same, regardless of the underlying algorithm. Not supported in the Discovery SDK.

Pixel

Feature	Functional Specification	Configuration
Tag Management Solution	The Shopify App injects the Pixel throughout the front end powered by the commerce platform. The Pixel should be present on these pages: Home page Search Results page PDP Category page Checkout, Add to cart pages	Not configurable. The Pixel is automatically injected once the API Key/Secret has been configured.

Which Bloomreach features are not supported in the Connectors?

Feature Group	Unsupported Features
Autosuggest	Content Search suggestions
B2B	Contract / Entitlement Based Pricing Customer Part Number Lookup
Categories	Sub-category Product Lists Non-PLP Landing Pages Dynamic Categories Predictive result counts
Content Search	Content Sources
Facets	Mixed Display Conditional Facet Display
Keyword Search	Searchable ID Fields Collections / Bundles Keyword Banners Dynamic Grouping Group merchandising Predictive result counts
Personalization	1:1 Personalization Targeting / Audiences Relevance by Segment
Recommendations	Visual Search