Merchandising templates – Ometria Help Centre

Your merchandising template defines the layout of your merchandising blends on your store website.

You can lock columns, rows or positions to show specific blends or products based on your filters.

Once you've completed your merchandising template you can apply it to a page in Merchandising strategies.

Note: Merchandising templates are optional - you don't need one for your blends and strategies to work. Templates are useful if you want stricter guidelines around the way products display in your page elements.

Go to: Website personalisation > Merchandising templates

Merchandising template types

Standard merchandising templates - AKA "Absolute". Set specific and alternating positions for your merchandising blends and filters.
Sequential merchandising templates - Lock a sequence of positions to apply merchandising blends or filters to your template.

Creating a standard merchandising template

Go to: Website personalisation > Merchandising templates > Create a new merchandising template

Select Standard template:

Complete the fields in the Create a new merchandising template screen.

Field	Description
Type	This field autocompletes based on the merchandising template type you selected: Absolute - for standard templates Sequential - for sequential templates
Name	Give your merchandising template a memorable name.
Description	Enter a description.
Tags	This is an optional field you can use to group your templates together.
Columns	Enter the number of columns you usually have on your store website.
Page size	Enter the number of products to display per page.
Page count	Enter the number of pages you'll need.

As you update each field, the design set will update to give you an idea of your template layout:

Save your changes and scroll down to Design sets.

Creating a sequential template

Go to: Website personalisation > Merchandising templates > Create a new merchandising template

Select Sequential template:

Complete the fields in the Create a new merchandising template screen.

Field	Description
Type	This field autocompletes based on the merchandising template type you selected: Absolute - for standard templates Sequential - for sequential templates
Name	Give your merchandising template a memorable name.
Description	Enter a description.
Tags	This is an optional field you can use to group your templates together.
Columns	Enter the number of columns you usually have on your store website.
Page size	Enter the number of products to display per page.
Page count	Enter the number of pages you'll need.
Offset	Choose from which position you want your template to start. If you leave this field blank it starts from position 1.
Repeat from	Repeat your template sets once you create them. Select the template you want your set to repeat from.
Repeater count	Choose how many times you want your templates to repeat. If you want your template to keep repeating as far as it can go, leave this field blank.

Save your changes and scroll down to Design sets.

Design sets

Design sets define:

The layout of your merchandising template, and;
the types of products you want to display.

Click on any of the tiles in the layout on the right, or select + Create new set.

Complete the fields:

Field	Description
Set name	Give your design set a memorable name.
Starts	Enter the cell number this set should start at.
Size	Enter a number to define the size of this set, e.g. 4 for a set of four products.
Colour	Use this field to help you visualise this design set on the screen. Note: This field doesn't affect the colour of the products displayed on your site, or any other design elements.
Filters and more	Define the types of products you want to display in this design set. See: Define filters
Merchandising blend	Select a merchandising blends to apply.
Z index	This field determines stacking priority and allows you to make sets that overlap. Warning: Changes to the Z index may affect your template and cause it to break. We recommend leaving it untouched.
Repeater	(Standard merchandising templates only) Select No if you don't want this design set to repeat. Select Yes to choose how often this design set should repeat.

Define filters

Select Define filters to specify the types of products that should display in this design set.

All of these choices are optional:

Filters

The following features require specialist knowledge from a developer. We recommend leaving them untouched:

Titles
Abstracts
Images/Media
Properties

Once you've defined your filters and anything else here, you'll need to click Apply in the left hand panel.

Filters

Filter conditions use AND/OR logic, so you can choose for all filters to apply (AND), or any of the filters (OR).

You also have further options for AND logic:

Logic	Description
AND - match all	All of the filters you add will apply.
AND - fallback filtering	Set a threshold number of products, e.g. four. If Ometria can't find four products that match, it will ignore the last applied filter and try to find more. This process continues until four matching products are found.
AND - progressive filtering	Ometria tries to find all products that match all the criteria you chose, and then falls back to OR filtering after that. E.g. If you choose Red AND dresses, Ometria shows red dresses first, then dresses, then other red products, giving your customers more to choose from.
OR - match any	Ometria looks for products that match any the criteria you chose.

Select +Add and choose an attribute from the Field dropdown.

Next choose a condition (Equals or Does not equal) and then go to the Browse tab to choose a product category:

This filter shows dresses or party dresses.

Add further filters to customise your design set, e.g. you could choose to show only red dresses, or only summer dresses, etc.