Introduction

The Merchandising Rules feature allows you to decide when to apply a range of merchandising options to the product listing/category pages. This system permits you to create a set of conditions under which a Product Listing page should have some kind of modification applied to it (e.g. Headers, SEO, etc.).

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You cannot directly manage Blends, Filter Headers or Facets from the Merchandising Rules section, you only control when each should be applied.

This being so, to create and manage Blends, Filter Headers and Facets, see the support articles dedicated to each of these features.

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Use of the Merchandising Rules system is considered a standard behaviour provided by the most recent version of Aurora. If you do not see this section on your Store, or would like more information regarding it, please contact your Digital Agency for assistance.

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Note

These do not apply to the Quick Search.

Advanced Search on Merchandising Rules Listing Page

On the current version of Aurora, the only available option to filter merchandising rules by, is the state in which they are set up.

Search Rules located above Advanced Search works in combination with the condition set in the Advanced Search section, so it is possible to filter merchandising rules by state and name at the same time.

Conditions and Actions

Using the Conditions section under a Merchandising Rule, you can tell Aurora when to apply any number of actions to a product listing/category page. Conditions include:

• Using the Front-end or Aurora API:
  • Order By
  • Aurora Environment (e.g. Front-end, Ajax or API)
  • Device Type (e.g. Desktop or Mobile)
  • Product Category
  • Filter Combinations (e.g. Colour - Red and Size - 3)
  • Number of Navigational Steps
  • Number of Results
  • Search Terms
  • Date Range
  • Time Range (in 15 minute blocks)
  • Using the Aurora API only:
    • Channel Type
    • Open Field

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For detailed information regarding what any one of the above does, please see it's heading in the Merchandising Conditions section below.

Once the specified conditions are met, a product listing page can be modified using any combination of the below actions:

• Facets (Sidebars)
• Filter Headers
• Manual Merchandising
• First Order By
• Blends

Merchandising Rules and Context

Merchandising Rules are applied to the Aurora Front-end based on something referred to as the 'Context'. The 'Context' is the set of values applicable to a visitor's (or the Aurora API user's) current request.

The values found in a Context include all of the values that can be checked under the Conditions and Actions section. For example the URL /books/au:stephen-king/page2.html might result in the following context to be used when trying to match your rules to the visitor's request:

• Aurora Environment:
  • Web.
• Device Type:
  • Desktop.
• Categories:
  • Books.
• Filter Combinations:
  • Author is Stephen King.
• Number of Navigational Steps:
  • 3
• Number of Results:
  • 13

Creating Merchandising Rules

Merchandising Rules consist of the following elements:

• Name and Description - These are both fundamentally used for your (admin) reference and provide no real control over the rule or how it behaves.

• Priority - This controls the order in which rules should be applied in the event that more than one rule is found for the Context being used (see the Understanding Rule Priority and Multiple Rule Application section for more detail regarding the purpose of Merchandising Rule priorities).

• State - This controls whether or not Aurora should attempt to apply the rule to the Front-end or not. See the Publication States section below for more detail on this setting and how to use it.

• Conditions - These are the conditions used to decide when your rule should be applied.

• Actions - These are what gets applied to your Product Category/Listing page.

Understanding Rule Priority and Multiple Rule Application

When Aurora checks for any matching Merchandising Rules, it is possible (even likely) that it will find more than one. When this occurs, the actions from each of the rules that were found are applied in the order described by the Priority set for each of the rules (from lowest to highest). This means that the actions from the 'first' rule (the rule with the first/lowest Priority value) will be applied first and any others ignored.

If when doing this, a Rule has nothing at all set for an action, e.g. a rule has no Filter Header set, then this value will be taken from any other rules that come after it (rules with a higher Priority value), allowing you to combine Rules, set-up defaults for categories that can be overridden later and much more.

For example, if the visitor is in the category "Books" and applies the filter "Author = Stephen King", then Aurora might find more than one rule:

• Rule A:
  • Where the Category is "Books".
  • Priority of 10.
  • Filter Header set to "Books Header".
• Rule B:
  • Where the Filter "Author is Stephen King".
  • Priority of 1.
  • Filter Header set to "Stephen King Promotional Header".

Both Rule A and Rule B have a Filter Header set, but the "Books Header" Filter Template will be applied to ALL listing pages within the Books category by default. If the customer then filters by "Author is Stephen King", because Rule B has a lower Priority order value it will be processed first and so the Filter Header "Stephen King Promotional Header" would be applied instead.

Publication states

To allow Merchandising rules to be previewed, a "staging" state has been added to allow previewing of multiple rules on the Front-end, but only for Admin users. 

When in the ‘staging’ status,  items will be applied to the Front-end for Admin users only, i.e. ‘staging’ rules will not be applied to the public store for customers to see and will be treated as ‘unpublished’ for all other purposes. 

This state will be applied to Merchandising Rules only, as all other items are only applied to the Front-end based on this system’s say-so, i.e. there is no need to add a ‘staging’ state to the Filter Headers or Facets. 

An advanced filter has been added to the MR listing page to allow filtering rules based on their state.