Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs)

What is Advanced Merchandising?

Advanced Merchandising is a scalable manual merchandising tool built upon business rules and product specifications.

By combining insight about individual behavior with product attributes, Advanced Merchandising provides merchants with an extra layer of intelligence for personalized recommendations.

Using business rules supported by product attributes, merchants can enable dynamic compatibility-based bundling and attribute-based upsell.

How is Advanced Merchandising different from Recommend?

Advanced Merchandising is similar to Recommend; however, it operates from a rules-based approach as opposed to a behavioral approach. For example: With Advanced Merchandising, a merchant can recommend compatible accessories to a selected product based on brand, price, or margin, as opposed to employing a Recommend behavioral recommendation such as “people who bought this also bought this.”

Merchants that stand to benefit the most from Advanced Merchandising are those with rich product data and a structured catalog. For Computers, Electronics, Office Supplies, and Appliances categories, DataSource can be used to supplement product attributes.

How does it work?

The Advanced Merchandising interface is accessible through the Dashboard. By making product associations and authoring business rules in the user interface, the merchant can customize product recommendations for delivery to the merchant’s shop through standard Algonomy website instrumentation or via APIs to the storefront.

What will this do for me?

Advanced Merchandising provides retail merchandisers the ability to create compatibility-based bundles, enabling retailers to bundle accessories and cross-category items to ‘complete the look’.

  • Enables product compatibility in recommendations

  • Provides an accessory assortment per placement similar to the Amazon ‘frequently bought together’ user experience

  • Recommends targeted upsells based on price and superior product specifications

Do I need to have Recommend to have Advanced Merchandising?

Yes. Advanced Merchandising is an additional functionality that works in concert with Recommend. Advanced Merchandising is a distinct Algonomy offering and is materially different from other recommendation products in market.

What reporting will be available?

The same full reporting capabilities available for Recommend are also available for Advanced Merchandising and found in the Personalization Dashboard.

Will we be able to test performance of the rules?

A|B and MVT (multivariate) testing will be enabled to test performance of the rules. This is a core feature of the Recommend product as well as Advanced Merchandising.

Are there limitations for global usage - language & currency?

Advanced Merchandising supports any country, language, or currency that is contained within the UTF-8-character set. DataSource covers 35 markets and 18 languages.

How do Advanced Merchandising Rules work with existing merchandising rules?

Advanced Merchandising results take priority over any other recommendations. Other merchandising rules (such as boosting or manual recommendations) will only apply to Advanced Merchandising results if the "Enable system filters and rules" option is enabled in the Advanced Merchandising rule.

What is Advanced Merchandising NOT supposed to be? 

Advanced Merchandising is NOT meant to be used to compete against our behavioral recommendations product as the purpose of Advanced Merchandising is very different from Recs. While Recs is based upon the behavior of masses, Advanced Merchandising is a manual merchandising tool that is used to force specific items with specific qualities (attributes, category, price) into specific slots in a placement. 

How much work is required to get started?

If the retailer is already a Recommend customer, the only additional work required is creating the merchandising rules desired to curate product associations and recommendations.

If the retailer is a DataSource customer, their DataSource ID will need to be included in the catalog feed to Algonomy.

If the retailer is not a DataSource customer, the data provided in the catalog feed can be used to create similar product relationships for recommendations.

How do I get started?

Advanced Merchandising is now included in the Recommend license. If the retailer is already a Recommend customer, but has not yet implemented Advanced Merchandising we suggest adding professional services hours within this contract to provide basic consultation, implementation, and rules authoring training.

A sample breakdown of the implementation steps:

  1. Retailer provides additional product specifications (for recommendations targeting purposes) in their catalog feed to Algonomy (retailer time)

  2. Conducts training on rule authoring in the Dashboard (1-2 days)

  3. Defines merchandising rules in the Dashboard (retailer may be ready after training or may

  4. Requires additional professional services hours to assist in rule authoring)

  5. Previews rules and test

If the retailer is not yet a Recommend customer, standard Recommend product implementation and instrumentation is required. It will take approximately 6-8 weeks to integrate and 1 week consulting/training for Recommend and Advanced Merchandising.

How long does it take to process a new rule?

The short answer: 4-6 hours

If I disable a rule, how long does it take before it stops showing on the site?

4-6 hours. Disabled rules go through the same process as new rules.