Personalization Settings

This page is a part of Searchspring's Personalized Recommendations product offering. 

Searchspring’s personalization settings allow you to manage the types of products that will be recommended to shoppers, add configurations to guide which products should be recommended together, and promote products that will increase order value.

Changes to these settings will only take effect after Searchspring’s personalization generator runs an update. These updates are scheduled to occur at least once per day, commencing immediately after your product data is updated. You can trigger an unscheduled personalization update from the settings page if settings changes need to be pushed live immediately. 

Global Settings

Global Exclusions

Global Exclusions can be used to remove products from recommendations. To create a global exclusion, choose an attribute from your product data and the value within the field that you wish to exclude on, and products that contain that value will be completely excluded from recommendations.

Contextual Exclusions

Contextual Exclusions can be used to prevent certain products from being recommended in unwanted contexts. To create a contextual exclusion, choose an attribute from your product data and the value within the field that you wish to exclude on, and products that contain that value will only be recommended when the shopper is viewing products that also contain the excluded value. Products that are not covered by a contextual exclusion or contextual grouping are considered “universal” and can be recommended in any context.

Contextual Groupings

Contextual Groupings can be used to group products so that they are only recommended when shoppers are viewing a product that is also a member of that group. Groupings will dynamically update as product data changes to account for new values (e.g. brands.) Products that are not covered by a contextual exclusion or contextual grouping are considered “universal” and can be recommended in any context.

Generator Status

The Generator Status page shows the status of recommendations updates. Typically, recommendations are updated after your product data is indexed. If there has been an error with updating recommendations, those errors will be reflected here. This page also allows you to manually re-generate product recommendations if you have made a change to your configuration settings that needs to be processed before your next scheduled update.

Upsell Filter

The Upsell Filter applies a price filter to Similar recommendations so that all profiles using the Similar recommendations type will recommend products at a higher price than the seed product’s price. This filter will apply to all Similar profiles after it is set, it cannot be set on a profile-by-profile basis.

Advanced Rules

Category Rules

Category Rules can be used to curate the type of products that will be recommended in Cross-Sell profiles. Based on the category of the seed product, you can either boost a category of related products or block a category of products from appearing in cross-sell recommendations. 

When a shopper is viewing a blouse you may want to promote recommendations of slacks. To do this, you would create a category rule on the category “Blouses” to add “Slacks” as a boosted category. After that rule is incorporated into the recommendations generator, products from the “Slacks” category will be boosted when shoppers are looking at products from the “Blouses” category.

NOTE: If there are no recommendable products from the boosted category, it will be ignored and the system will default to recommending products based on the individual shopper's history and aggregate crowd data.

Brand Rules

Brand Rules can be used to curate the type of products that will be recommended in Cross-Sell and Similar profiles. Based on the brand of the seed product, you can either boost a brand in cross-sell recommendations or block a brand from being recommended in both cross-sell and similar recommendations.

When a shopper is viewing a Nike product, you may want to block recommendations of Adidas products. To do this, you would create a brand rule on the brand “Nike” to add “Adidas” as a blocked brand. After that rule is incorporated into the recommendations generator, Adidas products will not be recommended in cross-sell or similar profiles when shoppers are looking at Nike products.

Product Rules

Product Rules can be used to boost or block specific products in Cross-Sell or Similar profiles. Based on a specified seed product, you can either boost a specific product to ensure it’s recommended alongside that seed product or block a specific product to prevent it from being recommended for the seed product.

You can create separate product rules for cross-sell recommendations and similar recommendations, as promoted cross-sell products may not make sense as similar products.

Category Rules, Brand Rules and Cross-Sell Product Rules apply to both Cross-Sell and Cart Cross-Sell recommendation types. Any profile using either of these types will be affected by rules set here.