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## Getting started

### Installation

Installing our application in your store is easy. Head to the Bloomreach BigCommerce app page and click **Install**. You will be prompted with an Authorization screen. Click **Confirm** to install our application on your store.





### Linking the application to your Bloomreach account

After the Bloomreach app is installed, you need to link the app to your Bloomreach account. To do this, copy your Bloomreach account credentials into your BigCommerce app. You can find your credentials on your Bloomreach Dashboard, under the **API Details** tab.



Paste the keys into the BigCommerce app credentials form on the **Settings** page:



Copy and paste the following fields from the Bloomreach Dashboard to your BigCommerce app:

  • Account ID

  • Domain Key

  • Auth Key

  • Search Page - the Search Results page URL. This is required by the SDK to correctly set redirect links. In BigCommerce, the URL is always `/search.php`, for example: `https://store-domain.com/search.php`

After you have added your credentials and connected the application to your Bloomreach account, scroll down to the **Endpoints** form and select the endpoints you want to use for each feature.



## Configuring Bloomreach

Once Bloomreach is installed, you can start to configure it.

#### Bloomreach App

The Bloomreach app consists of seven pages:

  1. Dashboard: News and Analytics panel.

  2. Indexing: Configuration of the indexing.

  3. Search: Autosuggest and Search settings.

  4. Categories: Category configuration.

  5. Optimize: Configuration of search relevance.

  6. Recommendations: Recommendations Widgets.

  7. Settings: Credentials and Pixel settings.

### Autosuggest

To customize and start using the Bloomreach **Autosuggest** feature, navigate to the **Search** page, scroll down to the **Autosuggest** settings form, and click **Customize**:



From here you can:

  • **Enable** this feature globally for your store.

  • Change the **CSS selector** for the search input you wish to add autosuggest to.

  • Set the **number of terms** you wish to display.

  • Set the **number of products** you wish to display.

  • Set the **number of categories** you wish to display.

  • Add **Custom CSS** to alter the look of the autosuggest feature.

  • View & Customize the **Autosuggest Template**.

### Search

To customize and start using the Bloomreach **Search** feature, navigate to the **Search** page, scroll down to the **Search** settings form, and click **Customize**:



From here you can:

  • **Enable** this feature on the search results page for your store.

  • Set the **CSS selector** for the search results page content.

  • Set the **number of items per page** you wish to display.

  • Set whether you wish to **display variants** as individual products in the results.

  • Set whether you wish to **include facets** in your results.

  • Set the **number of facets** you wish to display.

  • Set the **number of facet values** you wish to display.

  • Set whether you wish to enable **infinite scroll** on your search results page.

  • View & Edit the **Fields** Bloomreach will return in its results.

  • Add **Custom CSS** to alter the look of the search feature.

  • View & Customize the **Search Template**.

  • View & Customize the **Search Product List Template**.

### Categories

To customize and start using the Bloomreach **Category** feature, navigate to the **Categories** page, scroll down to the **Categories** settings form, and click **Customize**:



From here you can:

  • **Enable** this feature on category pages for your store.

  • Set the **CSS selector** for the category page content.

  • Set the **number of items per page** you wish to display.

  • Set whether you wish to **display variants** individually in the results.

  • Set whether you wish to **include facets** in your results.

  • Set the **number of facets** you wish to display.

  • Set the **number of facet values** you wish to display.

  • Set whether you wish to enable **infinite scroll** on your category results page.

  • View & Edit the **Fields** Bloomreach will return in its results.

  • Add **Custom CSS** to alter the look of the search feature.

  • View & Customize the **Category Template**.

  • View & Customize the **Category Product List Template**.

### Recommendations

To customize and start using the Bloomreach **Recommendations** feature, navigate to the **Recommendations** page, scroll down to the **Recommendations** settings form, and click **Enable**. Once enabled, If your theme has regions available, the Bloomreach app will install five custom widgets for you to use within the drag & drop page builder. Once enabled, click **Customize**:



From here you can:

  • View & Edit the **Fields** Bloomreach will return in its results.

To start creating Bloomreach **Recommendations & Pathways** Widgets, navigate to the **theme selector** page, and click **Customize** on the theme you wish to customize.



The Bloomreach app supports five widget types:

  • Category

  • Global

  • Item

  • Keyword

  • Personalized

Select the widget type you want to display, then drag the widget to the region drop area to begin creating your widget.



Once you have selected a Bloomreach widget type to add to your page, you’ll be able to pair that widget in BigCommerce to the widget you’ve created in the Bloomreach Dashboard. On the widget create page, you can:

  • Add **Widget Title** (Can be any title you select. This is only for BigCommerce’s front end)

  • Add **Widget ID** (Must be the Widget ID you created in the Bloomreach dashboard)

  • Add **Category ID** (For a Category widget, it must be the Category ID used within the Bloomreach dashboard for Category ranking)

Then click **Save** to see the widget display:



Each Widget type has different customizable options:

Widget typeCustomization options
Category<li>Widget Title</li> <li>Widget ID</li> <li>Category ID</li> <li>How many items to show</li> <li>How many items to Fetch</li>
Global<li>Widget Title</li> <li>Widget ID</li> <li>How many items to show</li> <li>How many items to Fetch</li>
Item<li>Widget Title</li> <li>Widget ID</li> <li>Item IDs</li> <li>How many items to show</li> <li>How many items to Fetch</li>
Keyword<li>Widget Title</li> <li>Widget ID</li> <li>Keyword</li> <li>How many items to show</li> <li>How many items to Fetch</li>
Personalized<li>Widget Title</li> <li>Widget ID</li> <li>How many items to show</li> <li>How many items to Fetch</li>



**Note**: All widgets rely on information provided by the tracking pixel. If the pixel is not enabled for your store, your widgets will not display properly.

### Pixel

To start using the Bloomreach **Pixel**, navigate to the **Settings** page, then scroll down to the **Pixel** settings form:



From here you can:

  • **Enable** this feature globally for your store.

Once enabled, the Bloomreach app will inject the pixel into your theme. The pixel will track users as they navigate and interact with your site. This information is passed back to Bloomreach and adds behavioural learning data to the Bloomreach algorithm.

#### Pixel Page Views

The **Bloomreach pixel** tracks 7 types of page view:

  • Global Page View

  • Virtual Page View

  • Product Page View

  • Content Page View

  • Category Page View

  • Search Result Page View

  • Conversion Page View

#### Pixel Page View Data

On each page view the Bloomreach pixel collects page specific data including:

  • Page URL

  • Customer ID

  • Product ID

  • Product SKU

  • Product Name

  • Order grand total

  • Order item info (sku, qty ordered, name, unit price)

  • Event type

#### Pixel Events

In addition to page views and conversions, the Bloomreach pixel also tracks specific **interactions** the user makes on your site. The interactions tracked are:

  • Add-to-cart Event

  • Search Event

  • Suggest Event

  • Quick View Event

**Search & Suggest** events are captured automatically by Bloomreach. However, if you wish to capture **Add-to-cart** & **Quick View** events, you will need to make changes to the **Add-to-cart** & **Quick View** buttons throughout your themes.

For example, if you are using BigCommerce’s Roots theme, you can track **Add-to-cart** events on your product page by editing the following files:

  • _templates/components/products/card.html_

  • _templates/components/products/list-item.html_

Add the following html data attributes to the add-to-cart button(s):


If your theme also supports **Quick View**, you can repeat the **Add-to-cart** process and add the following html data attributes to the **Quick View** button:

#### Pixel Validator
To validate and inspect the data captured by Bloomreach pixel events, you can install the [Bloomreach Pixel Validator](🔗) for Google Chrome. For more details on the Pixel Validator, read the [Pixel Validator documentation](🔗).
### Syncing scripts
If you deleted one of the Bloomreach scripts and wish to reset it, you can **sync** all your installed scripts again. Syncing scripts allows you to re-install Bloomreach and fetch the latest versions of each file. To sync your scripts, navigate to the **Search** page, scroll down to the **Sync Scripts** settings form, and click **Sync Scripts**.
## Customizing Bloomreach
To extend the data available in the Sample UI, if the data is included in the API, you can customize the autosuggest, search results page, and product card templates. So for example, if you want to add Brand before the product title, you would need to amend the autosuggest template to render out that variable. 
This is done by modifying the HTML template inside the Bloomreach Discovery app. For example, you could add the Brand attribute for a product by adding code to the HTML template. If you want to add some custom CSS, just wrap the data in the class you want.

## Uninstalling Bloomreach
If you wish to uninstall the Bloomreach app from your BigCommerce store and you have **Recommendations & Pathways** enabled, we recommend first disabling this feature before you uninstall the app. If you uninstall the app before disabling this feature your theme may end up with some leftover widgets, which will no longer work as expected without the app installed.