Find out how to use Merchandising Rules and Basic Filters in order to take control over the products displayed to your users and achieve goals like optimising for stock, margin, brand, category and other.
Aqurate Merchandising allows you to influence what is presented to your users via Aqurate Personalize, so that you can achieve your marketing and business goals while using the power of AI-based personalization.
Check out our video that goes over what Aqurate Merchandising is, the different types of rules, and examples for each rule in an applied scenario. We have added chapters so you can easily navigate the video.
Frequently Asked Questions for Merchandising
What happens if a product is affected by multiple rules?
There is a pecking order in which the rules are applied. The highest-priority rule will be applied first, and the following will be disregarded.
Pin to Top > Filters (i.e. Basic Filter, Filter out, Match Attribute) > Nudges (i.e. Boost,Weaken)
What is the difference between Basic Filters and Merchandising Rules?
Basic Filters are built so that products can be easily and quickly removed from all recommendations. This is a simple tool that only requires the upload of a CSV file containing the products to be filtered.
Merchandising Rules offer full flexibility by providing control over when in time the rules should be applied, multiple sorting methods, the ability to apply the rules based on specific attributes, to set complex conditions and to narrow down the scope.
You can achieve the effects of a Basic Filter with a Merchandising Rule (type = Filter out). However, if you only need the general exclusion of some products, we recommend using the Basic Filter instead of the more complex Merchandising Rule.
How do Merchandising interfere with Aqurate Personalize?
The AI algorithm for Aqurate Personalize is tailored to generally increase Sales via Conversion Rate and Average Order Value. Merchandising introduces biases that are likely to interfere with the main goal, in favor of other specific business goals.
What is the difference between Rule and Condition?
Both the Rule and the Condition offer similar tools to narrow down products attributes while using boolean operators like AND and OR, so it can sometimes be hard to understand the difference between them.
The easiest way to separate them is to us the following framework:
👉 The Rule operators help you choose what products should be directly affected by the rule.
Examples:
Boost Nike shoes.
Pin to top Product 123.
👉 The Condition operators narrow down when and where the Rule should be applied.
Examples:
Boost Nike shoes when the user is looking at Adidas products.
Pin to top Product 123 when the user is looking at products with a price above 50.
What product attributes can I use to build the rules?
The product attributes are inherent to the shop platform you have connected. While attributes like product name, price, stock, and category are available in most platforms, other ones like margin might not be available.
If your shop is connected via a native integration and you want to use attributes that you have defined in your shop, but are not appearing in the list, please contact us at support@aqurate.ai and we will try to bring in those attributes for you, if possible.
If your shop is connected via API and you want to use new attributes, you can use the API to upload custom attributes. Please note that doing so requires you to keep such attributes up to date as your product catalog evolves. Otherwise, the Merchandising Rules will not produce the desired effects.
The custom attributes upload is only available for shops connected via API.
Not sure where to start?
Reach out at support@aqurate.ai to schedule a call, and we will help you set up Aqurate Merchandising.