Use merchandising blends to automatically sequence your products on different page elements.
For example, you might want to promote products with higher stock, or products part of a special promotion, best sellers, or newer products so that store visitors see them first in search results pages.
You can use merchandising blends:
- As part of your merchandising strategies to set conditions for your customers' onsite experience.
- In your merchandising templates
- In your product groupings
How merchandising blends work
Merchandising blends are combinations of metrics, e.g. price, margin, views, etc. that determine product sequencing.
You can give each metric a different weighting to define its importance, e.g. if price is weighted higher than views, then products with a higher price are prioritised over products with the most views.
Once you've set up a merchandising blend and added it to a strategy on a page element, all of the products that display on your chosen page element are given a score based on the metrics you set in your blend.
This score determines the sequence in which those products display.
You can create as many merchandising blends as you like.
Merchandising blends aren't live until you've applied them to a Merchandising strategy.
Are merchandising blends right for me?
Merchandising blends are dynamic and automated based on the metrics you've configured.
This means they can change throughout the day, e.g. a blend with a heavy weighting towards views might show different products as more customers visit your online store and views increase.
If you are looking for more control over your product sequences - e.g. you might want to keep certain products 'sticky', or avoid certain brand appearing next to each other, we recommend using merchandising templates.
For full manual control, you can also use our Manual merchandising feature.
Create a new merchandising blend
Go to: Website personalisation > Merchandising > Merchandising blends
Click Create new merchandising blend.
Complete the top fields:
| Field | Description |
| Name | Enter a memorable name for your blend. |
| Description | Enter a clear description. |
| Tags |
This is an optional field. Use tags to to group and filter in the Merchandising blends screen. |
| Primary merchandising blend? | Turn the slider on to make this blend available to use in your merchandising strategies. |
| Use merchandising blend for search? | Turn the slider on to apply this blend to your site search features. |
| Split between text relevancy and merchandising blend |
Enter a percentage to use search terms as metrics, i.e. the site visitor's search terms are weighted higher than other results. We recommend setting this to at least 70%. Select the Visualize checkbox to show relevancy in the product sequence metrics pie chart. |
Save your changes to create your merchandising blend.
Next, choose your product sequence metrics:
Product sequence metrics
These are the metrics that define the order in which products are displayed to your visitors.
Choose your metrics and set their importance as a percentage.
As you add more metrics, the percentage split updates:
Click Rebalance at any time to equalise all of your percentages:
You can also choose:
- High to low (descending), or;
- Low to high (ascending)
This means that products displayed on your site are shown in that order based on the metric, e.g. highest price to lowest price, highest margin to lowest margin, etc.
You can also:
- add custom ranges to your numerical metrics (e.g. price, no. of views, adds, etc.), or;
- create merchandising concepts that define the weight (importance) of different attributes, (e.g. colour, brand, material, etc.)
Select the key icon to 'lock' the percentage for that metric in place. When you add new metrics, the percentage won't change.
| Metric | Description |
| Personalisation |
Based on the visitor's interests. If the visitor has viewed many products with a shared attribute (e.g. colour, season, etc), the blend promotes more of the same content. |
| Trending views | Products that were viewed the most in the past seven days. |
| Average views | Products that were viewed the most in the past 30 days. |
| Total views | The products with the most views over all time (i.e. since you implemented Ometria website personalisation). |
| Trending adds to basket | Products that were added to the basket most often in the past 7 days. |
| Average adds to basket | Products that were added to the basket the most in the past 30 days. |
| Total adds to basket | Products that have been added to baskets the most over all time (i.e. since you implemented Ometria website personalisation). |
| Trending purchases | Products that have been purchased the most in the past 7 days. |
| Average purchases | Products that have been purchased the most in the past 30 days. |
| Total purchases | Products with the most orders placed over all time (i.e. since you implemented Ometria website personalisation). |
| Trending returns | Products that have been returned the most in the last seven days (provided you send Ometria this data). |
| Average returns | Products that have been returned the most in the last 30 days. |
| Total returns | Products that have been returned the most in general. |
| Trending cancels | Products that have been cancelled the most in the past seven days. |
| Average cancels |
Products that have been cancelled the most in the past 30 days. Cancelled orders are cases where payment failed, or the order was cancelled before shipping. |
| Total cancels | Products that have been cancelled the most over all time (i.e. since you implemented Ometria website personalisation). |
| New in | Weights based on how recently a product has been added to your website. |
| Price | Product price. |
| Margin | The product price margin, i.e. the difference between the cost of a product and the price at which it's sold. |
| Stock | Stock quantity. |
| Stock fragmentation score |
Stock availability, e.g. whether all sizes/variants are available. See also: Stock fragmentation |
| Average view conversion rate | The average view conversion rate, i.e. the average number of views for each purchased product. |
| Rating percent | The ratings percentage of the products. |
| Random by user | Adds random products based on products the site visitor has viewed before. |
| Random by session | Adds random products based on products the visitor has viewed in their current session. |
| Random | Adds random products to make your merchandising less predictable. |
| Discount amount | The currency amount for discounted products. |
| Discount percent |
The percentage amount for discounted products.
Note: You don't need to include the percentage symbol (%) for the Min and Max fields.
|
Scale
The scale controls how product values are converted into scores for your merchandising blend.
Different scales help you handle metrics where values are either evenly spread, or where a few products have much higher values than the rest.
| Option | Description |
| Default scale |
Use this option when your metric values are spread evenly between the lowest and highest values. If a small number of products have very large values, they can dominate the scoring and reduce the influence of other products in the blend. Example: If most products sell between 10–50 units, default scaling keeps differences clear and meaningful. |
| Logarithmic scale |
Use this option when your metric includes extreme values, e.g. very high price items, high stock etc. Logarithmic scaling reduces the influence of very large values and keeps differences between typical products meaningful by preventing a few high-value products from overpowering the blend This is useful when your data has big gaps, such as stock levels, sales volume, or “new in” products. Example: If one product sells 10,000 units and most others sell under 100, logarithmic scaling prevents that single product from dominating the blend. |
Min and Max
Min (minimum) and Max (maximum) define the range used to score products for your merchandising blend.
Example:
If product stock ranges from 1 to 1000:
- Min = 1 (lowest stock)
- Max = 1,000 (highest stock)
All products are scored based on where they sit between these two values
If the product with one unit left sells out, the minimum changes.
This can cause other products to jump in ranking, even though nothing changed for them.
To avoid this happening, set the minimum to 0 (out of stock).
This keeps rankings stable, even when individual items sell out.
Next steps
Once you're happy with your selections, Save your merchandising blend.
You can now add it to a merchandising strategy - your blend won't be live until it's been applied to a live strategy.
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