What is Group Merchandising

Group Merchandising feature allows you to group similar products together, such as products of the same type, products of the same color, and so on.

Grouping similar products together makes product discovery a breeze! Shoppers don’t need to scroll through long lists of products. They can quickly navigate to the group of their interest and explore the products in that group. Such browsing convenience eventually leads to more conversions.

Group Merchandising also allows you to optimize the ranking of product groups as per your business goals. For example, you noticed that the “Jeggings” product group is trending on the "pants" search page. You can boost the “Jeggings” product group to position 1 and turn the trend into sales.

Feature Scope

The Group Merchandising feature powers your Search and Category pages.

How does Group Merchandising work end to end

Group merchandising requires the following workflow:

API Side for rendering results

• Firstly, you’ll need to integrate your site to apply grouping on the API.

API request - Pass the “groupby = attribute” parameter in the request. E.g., groupby=product_brand

API response - Read the grouped API response. This is different from the regular Search API response. Visit this article to learn more.

Dashboard Side for merchandising groups

• Using the dedicated group merchandising module on the dashboard, you can merchandise and customize the look and feel of grouped search results. Jump to the next section to learn the process of creating Group rules.

Applying Group Merchandising rules to the API

• To apply the Group rules on the front end, the API requests must have the groupby param with the attribute value you specified on the dashboard. Suppose you saved a Group rule for a ‘category_id=dresses’ with groupby=product_brand. This rule will only apply when the API request for the category ‘dresses’ has the parameter groupby=product_brand.

How to Group and Merchandise Search Results

1. Navigation

1. Go to Search & Merchandising > Site search > Ranking rules.
2. Click the Add Rule button and choose “Search rule with group-by” from the dropdown. This opens up the Product Grid Editor.

2. Group Results by an Attribute

1. Enter the search query in the Search Terms field.

2. Now go to the Attribute tab and click Group-by attribute. This opens up a list of product attributes to group the search results. Select the desired attribute and then click “Done”

3. The Visual Editor now shows search results grouped by the selected grouping attribute. The groups are ranked based on the score of the best-performing product of the group, which is by default ranked at position 1 by the algorithm. Products within groups are ranked based on the score in descending order.

3. Explore Products Within Groups

Click the button at the bottom of the group to view the products in that group.

You can also switch to a different product group using the dropdown at the top of the group view panel. After viewing the products, click Back to view the grid with all the groups.

4. Merchandise Product Groups and View Changes

1. Click the three-dot icon in the group card's top right corner. This opens up a dropdown with the available merchandising operations:
   [Group] Boost to top: Rank the group at the 1st position in the recall.
   [Group] Bury to bottom: Hard bury the group in the recall.
   [Group] Block: Remove the group and its products from the recall.
2. Choose the desired merchandising operation for the product group.
3. To see a summary of the changes, you can go to the Changes tab and view all the merchandising operations applied to the groups.

5. Make Attribute-based Customizations on Groups

In this feature iteration, you can make attribute-level changes at the group level. Attribute boost/bury/include/exclude within each group is currently not supported. For instance, when an attribute boost rule is applied, the products in every group will be given a boost first. Then, the groups will be re-ranked based on the top products within each group. This also applies to other attribute-based operations such as bury, include, and exclude. To apply group attribute rules, follow the steps below:

1. Click “Create New Attribute Rules.”
2. Now click “Product Description Attributes” to reveal the list of product attributes. In the example below, we chose the colors attribute.
3. Choose the desired attribute value that you’d like to boost/bury/include/exclude. In the case of boost/bury operations, set the strength of the attribute rule. In the example below, we set an attribute boost rule that’d boost the groups with the highest number of blue tables.
4. Hit Done. The groups are now ranked as per the new attribute rule.

6. Save the Group Rule

Once you’re satisfied with the changes, click “Save.” Now you can see your group rule listed on the Search Ranking Rules homepage. The group rule can be identified by the “Group by” label under the query name. The Group by label also specifies the attribute that you’d need to send in the Grouping API request. For instance, the illustration below shows “Group by: color_gen” for the bed query rule. To get the merchandised results on the front end, you must pass the “groupby=color_gen” parameter in the Grouping API request.

Points to remember

1. Products that do not have a value for the selected grouping attribute will be clubbed under the Others group. We currently do not support boost/ bury operations on this group. The option of viewing products in this group is not available.

2. An attribute can be used for grouping results if it satisfies the following conditions:

• It must be an indexed, single-valued text attribute.

• It cannot be a numeric attribute.

• It cannot be a SKU attribute.

Please note that Reserved attributes, such as PID, brand, etc., cannot be used for grouping. The selection for unavailable attributes is disabled.

3. To change the grouping attribute, click the edit [✎] symbol on the Group-by attribute panel and choose another attribute as needed.

👍

You can also directly group products by a specified attribute at run-time on the API. Visit this guide to learn more.

How to access Group Merchandising

• Live Customers: If you are already live, please reach out to Support for help with this feature.
• Integrating Customers: Please reach out to your Technical Services representative who is helping with your integration.

⚡ Coming Up

We will be adding the following new functionalities in the upcoming feature iterations:

• The capability of merchandising products within groups.
• The capability of sequentially locking groups for a more curated experience.