Recommendation Filters

When setting your recommendation strategy, you can add dynamic filtering rules to customize the algorithm. These filters are based on inclusion/exclusion rules in addition to the algorithm chosen.

Filters based on the page type properties

Category filters

Category filters enable you to show only items from the same category or parent category as the currently viewed product page or category page. For example, use this filter if the user is viewing a shirt and you want recommendations to only show shirts.

Filter logic 

• Only include items that match the viewed item's category:
  Returns only products that match the full category path. It does not loosen the filter if no products are available that match the complete path.
  Example: Recommends: Current Product - 'Men' | 'Shoes' | 'Sneakers' does not show any other products aside from ones in this category.

• Only include items that match the viewed item's parent category:
  Returns products that match the category path without the last category. In this logic, it continues to loosen the filters if no products are available that match that path.
  Example:
  • Current Product: 'Men' | 'Shoes' | 'Sneakers'
  • Recommends products from: 'Men' | 'Shoes', 'Men' | 'Shoes' | 'X' or 'Men' | 'Shoes' | 'Y' and so on under 'Men' | 'Shoes'.
  • f there are still no products to show, it ignores the 'Shoes' attribute and fills the widget with 'Mens' products. The first category in the tree is never ignored, even if it means serving empty slots.

Product property filters

Product property filters ensure that recommendations match or do not match the currently viewed item's properties, and enable you to match the recommendations to the currently viewed product page by any attribute of the feed. For example, use this filter to show items of the same brand or gender.

Note: If the 'Categories' filter is used, it loosens the restrictions (see the 'Keywords' example below). We advise using this filter sparsely, and use the designated category filter instead.

Filter logic

• Exclude/Include items that match viewed item properties such as:
  'Brand' | 'Color' | 'Gender' | 'Keywords'
  • 'Brand' | 'Color' | 'Gender':
    Returns products that match all item properties, but loosens the restrictions if no products are available that match all of the properties.
    Example:
    • Recommends: 'Brand' | 'Color' | 'Gender'
    • If there are not enough products to complete the widget, the recommendations logic loosens the last property - 'Gender' - and recommends items that match 'Brand' | 'Color'.
    • If there are still no products to show, it ignores the 'Color' attribute and fills the widget with 'Brand' products. The first category in the tree is never ignored, even if it means serving empty slots.
  • 'Keywords':
    Returns products that match all item keywords, but loosens the restrictions if no products are available that match all keywords.
    Example:
    • Recommends: 'Material' | 'Pattern' | 'Size'
    • Loosens the restrictions in the same way as the previous example, leaving only 'Material', which is never ignored.

Filters based on past user behavior

User behavior filters ensure that visitors are not being recommended items that they have recently viewed or purchased, online or offline. In order to exclude offline purchases, you need to identify them.

Exclude items currently in cart

Filters out items the user currently has in their cart. To enable this filter, you must implement the Sync Cart event. To activate this feature, contact your Customer Success Manager. 

To implement the Sync Cart event:

• For site personalization 
• For API

Limitations:

• This filter can show excluded items if no Add to Cart or Sync Cart event occurred right before the campaign is rendered. And if the campaign is rendered right after one of these events, we recommend that you add a real-time filter to exclude the last item added to the cart.

• Filters only the first 100 products.

• Cart is relevant based on events from the last 24 hours.

Filter logic

The filter does not loosen if no products are available that match it, and in this case empty slots are displayed.