Cart Page Best Practices

Overview

The objectives of recommendations on the Cart page are to secure conversion and Increase basket size.

• Quantity: 1-2 placements. As with Add-to-Cart, the number of placements can depend on the vertical. We should plan to enable two by default and reduce to one if we feel that the second placement is not adding value or disruptive to the shopping experience.

• Location:  Since recommendations only support the secondary objective of the page, be extremely sensitive to placement positioning here. For example, adding two rows of recommendations to the very top of the page will distract customers and drain checkout momentum. Instead, consider a vertical placement to the right of the Cart contents or, at worst, beneath.

• Strategies: Similar to the A2C page, we prioritize Cross-sell recommendations on Cart. It is common that non cross-sell recommendations will be chosen for this placement when the KoTH Success Metric ("per placement uber metric" in Site Config) is set to CTR. Two ways to get around this:

  1. Test the Success Metric for deeper in the funnel pages ("per placement uber metric for order pages") - This site configuration enables you to set the deeper in the funnel pages to a different metric. Testing those metrics is the best way to find the right fit.

  2. If you don't have time to run the success metric test, but want to prevent RecentHistoricalItems and other non cross-sell strategies from getting selected ahead of cross-sell strategies, the best thing to do is create a Strategy Rule that prefers a few of the cross-sell strategies suggested below. The engine will first look at these strategies before moving on to the rest.

• Special Case Strategy: For categories where it is common to purchase the same product regularly, the Personalized Replenishment strategy is a great one to play here. https://help.richrelevance.com/Z_Z_I..._Replenishment

  • Include this strategy alongside the other cross-sell strategies in any strategy rules. If customer does not have a product in their purchase history that fits, the engine will simply go to the next best strategy.

• Rules: If you have taken the steps laid out under "Strategies" above to curb non cross-sell strategies from playing, but you are still seeing a lot of traffic go to RecentHistoricalItems and other strategies that are likely causing cannibalization and/or pulling customers out of the funnel, this means there just isn't enough purchase co-occurrence data available for the products in cart. In this situation, the best thing to do is:

  Create a Restriction Rule: Using "Recommendation Restrictions" found in the dashboard:

1. create a "Do not recommend" rule.

2. Set the wanted context - in this use case, it should be:

   • Cart page, or the specific cart placement you want this to apply to.

   • The specific strategies you are seeing the engine select on this page that you are worried is causing cannibalization (RecentHistoricalItems, any Similar Product strategy outside of the apparel vertical).

3. In the "Do Not Recommend" section, check "Use categories from Pending Purchase items" - this removes any products that are in the same category as any of the products in your cart, avoiding cannibalization.

Strategy	Family	Description	Comments
PurchaseCP	Product Bought Bought	People who bought this item also bought   Products other customers have bought given they bought the current product	Also enable the V2 version of this strategy, which de-prioritizes general top-sellers
PurchaseEV	Product Bought Bought	People who bought this item also bought  SSame as PurchaseCP but bias toward higher-priced items	Also enable the V2 version of this strategy, which de-prioritizes general top-sellers
SessionPurchase CP	Product Bought Bought	People who bought this item also bought   Same as PurchaseCP but purchases must be from same session
CategoryDiverse PurchaseCP	Product Bought Bought	People who bought this item also bought   Same as PurchaseCP, but does not recommend products belonging to primary category as seed and only recommends one product from each unique category	Includes name of category to which recommended product belongs; can be exposed in layout
CategorySiloed PurchaseCP	Product Bought Bought	People who bought this item also bought   Same as PurchaseCP but results are filtered to match the category of the seed item	Only use in verticals where same-category cross-sell make sense, e.g. Apparel but not Consumer Electronics
MultiItemPurchase CP	Product Bought Bought	People who bought items in your cart also bought   Same as PurchaseCP but uses multiple items as the seed	Also enable the V2 version of this strategy, which de-prioritizes general top-seller
RelatedToCart	Product Bought Bought	People who bought this item also bought   Products frequently purchased with items in the customer’s cart	Also enable the V2 version of this strategy, which de-prioritizes general top-sellers
RelatedToCart ViewCPFiltered	Product Bought Bought	People who bought this item also bought   Same as RelatedToCart but filters out similar items as deemed by their ViewCP score	Also enable the V2 version of this strategy which de-prioritizes general top-sellers
RelatedToCart CategoryFiltered	Product Bought Bought	People who bought this item also bought   Same as RelatedToCart but filters out products in the same (leaf) category as the seed item	Also enable the V2 version of this strategy which de-prioritizes general top-sellers
MutlItemViewCP	Product Viewed Viewed	People who viewed items in your cart also viewed   Products other users have viewed given they viewed products in cart	Only use in verticals where same-category cross-sell make sense, e.g. Media but not Consumer Electronics
MultiItem Personalized PurchaseCP	Personalized	People who bought items you purchased also bought   Products other users have bought given that they bought products the customer recently purchased	Also enable the V2 version of this strategy, which de-prioritizes general top-sellers
RecentHistorical Items	Personalized	Recently Viewed Items   Items viewed during current and previous sessions	It is best to use this strategy with a restriction rule as called out in the above "Rules" section
TopProducts	SiteWide BestSellers	Shop $STRATEGY_HINT$ Top Sellers   Top products in the based on views, clicks and purchases	It is best to use this strategy with a restriction rule as called out in the above "Rules" section