Fine-tuning Aura Recommendations

Qubit Aura uses the power of machine learning (ML) to learn patterns in the product catalog and visitor buying and viewing behavior and then create recommendations tailored to the visitor and the moment in the journey.

To improve these recommendations, Qubit Aura includes a set of controls for merchandisers and curators, who are often best placed, with the deepest product knowledge, to fine-tune the product carousel with recommendations that are more closely alignment with key strategies and business goals.

To fine-tune the product carousel, you can promote specific products and add promotion and blacklist rules based on product attributes such as a price or stock range.

You can promote specific products as featured products. Featured products are promoted in the product feed and are clearly labeled in the product carousel.

Select Aura from the side menu and then the Merchandising tab. Now select Edit in the Featured products panel

Select Add new product. In the field provided, start entering the name of the product you wish to promote.

As you enter the name, the list of products in your catalog is filtered:

From the list of matching products, select the product you wish to promote. To help you, the product Id is also shown.

When you select a product, it is added to your list of featured products:

Continue adding products by following steps 2 and 3. When you are done, select Save

In the Merchandising tab you can promote and blacklist products by creating rules. To ensure consistency and efficiency when creating these rules, your rules apply globally to your recommendation carousel for all of your Recommendations experiences and Qubit Aura.

Each rule consists of product attributes, which you can add singularly or in combination. For example, you can promote products based solely on the attribute product Id or combine this with another attribute, such as stock level.

In the following example, we see that the user has created a promotion rule to promote products in the Modern Fashion brand that have less than 50 items left in stock. You might use this rule type to increase promotions of high stock items:

TIP: Qubit Aura is driven by our Recommendations engine, which uses machine learning techniques to learn patterns in the product catalog and visitor behavior. Applying lots of rules, with complex attribute combinations, will restrict the effectiveness of the engine in creating recommendations that are tailored to the visitor and their journey. We therefore suggest that you carefully plan your rules strategy and then work iteratively by adding rules and determining the effects on those rules on the carousel, before continuing to add further rules.

In the Merchandising tab, select Edit in the Recommendations rules panel

Select New rule, enter a name for the rule, and then select a rule type. This can be Promote or Blacklist. Refer to A focus on rule types for more information

WARNING: Once you create the rule, you can change its name and the attributes, but you cannot change the rule type. See Editing rules.

TIP: We recommend using a name that approximately describes the rule intention, so that you can more easily identify your rules in a list.

Select an attribute from the list and enter an appropriate value for the attribute. For example, select Stock is between and enter 5 and 10 in the fields provided

To add further attributes, select Add field:

This creates a join between the product attributes using an AND statement. You can only add an attribute once in a rule.

To delete an attribute, select

Once you are happy with the configuration of your rule, select Create and then a second time. Whilst the rule is immediately applied to your recommendations carousels, for Qubit Aura it can take up to 2 hours for the rule to be applied

In this current release, you can create rules to promote and blacklist products. Rules are delivered server-side to ensure effective integration with the recommendations carousel and with the page on which the products are displayed.

Promoted products permeate through recommendations, increasing their visibility and sales. The promotional feature is smart and exploits existing links between products to show promoted products on the site.

Promotions allow you to push high stock items and products that are part of seasonal campaigns, such as Back To School or Easter.

Blacklisted products will never be shown in recommendations. This is useful for out of stock or discontinued items, pre-orders, and out of season product lines.

To help you find a rule that you have created, each one is grouped according to type.

To edit a rule, first open the correct list by selecting the Promotions or Blacklists tab. Open the rule from the list and select Edit

Make the necessary changes, and select Save to commit those changes

Your changes are immediately applied to your recommendations carousels. For Qubit Aura it can take up to 2 hours for the rule to be applied.

WARNING: Once a rule is created, you cannot change the rule type.

Open your rule from the Promotions or Blacklist list. Select Delete and then a second time to confirm