Setting Up the Default Rules in Visual Category Merchandising

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Introduction of Default Rules

Default Rules are a set of category-specific promotion rules that remain active all the time. The only exception to this is the duration when there is a campaign with a set of rules for the same category. In this case, the campaign rules are applied.

Here, a promotion rule is an instruction to boost a set of products matching specific attribute key-value pairs (e.g. brand, color, size etc.) and/or a set of pinned products to appear at the top of a category page.

Adding Default Boosting Rules

• Under Visual Category Merchandising → Default Rules, click on the Manage Categories button to start a new window for creating boosting rules.
• You will see a Category selection popup. This has been introduced to lock the categories that you wish to merchandise. Select the categories that you want to merchandise and click on Proceed. (Read more about Category Locking feature here)
• Choose a Category from the category drop down to start creating rules for it. Once you have selected a category, you should see the products of that category on the right.
• Click on the Add New button to add a new boosting rule.
• Here, you can specify one or more product attribute conditions to choose a set of products to promote or demote. The interface also allows you to create individual groups (the Add Group button) of such conditions and then specify AND or OR condition between these individual groups.
• Once these conditions on product attributes are specified, use the slider to assign a boosting score or enter a score manually.
• To Boost, use score (an integer value) between 1 and 999 where 999 is the highest boosting score (i.e. maximum promotion).
• To Deboost, use score (an integer value) between -1 and -999, where -999 is the maximum deboosting score (i.e. maximum demotion).
• When a product satisfies all the conditions, the score specified here, along with a self-learning score is used for promoting/demoting a product on the category page.

Copying Rule to Other Categories

• Once a boosting rule is created, you can copy the rule to other categories by clicking on the Copy Rule icon
• You can copy the same rule to All Categories or to Specific Categories that you had locked while selecting categories to merchandise (Learn more about locking categories).

Pinning Hero Products

• If you like to show a few selected products at the top of a category page (i.e. first products in the product listing), the VM tool allows you to "pin them to the top". Simply hover your mouse on a respective product and click on the "pin" icon. This will move the “pinned” products at the top of the page.
• Once you have pinned the relevant products to the top, you can begin to adjust their ordering within the top products section as needed. Open the Top Products section, move and drag the respective products at their desired new positions within the top products section.
• It is important to note that the pinned products take the first few spots on the respective category page. The other products (i.e. not pinned) are then organized as per the other applicable boosting scores and/or their self-learning score as computed by the Klevu search engine.
• You can also bulk pin products by selecting them using the product selector and using the PIN SELECTED option under ACTIONS.  
• To unpin a product, simply hover over a product in the “top products” section and click on the pin icon to unpin the product.

Managing Top Products

• You can click on TOP PRODUCTS from the top right to manage your products. On click, you will see a separate section open where only the top products will be displayed.  
• Within the Top Products screen, you can
  • Drag & Drop products to arrange them in the desired order.
  • Reorder products using the number re-ordering input.
  • You can unpin products (one by one or in Bulk)
  • Find the Out of Stock or Disabled Products (at the end of the grid)
  • Perform bulk actions by selecting products (such as move products to Top or Bottom)

Excluding Products

• To exclude a product from the category page, hover a product and click on the "exclude" icon. The product will disappear from the current product listing.
• You can also bulk exclude products using the product selector and choosing EXCLUDE SELECTED from the ACTIONS menu.
• To include such a product back into the product listing, visit the “Excluded Products” section and include it back

Publishing Boosting Rules

• Once you have created boosting rules and pinned the needed products, you can click on the Save & Publish button to see the changes in effect on the category pages on your store

• It will take up to 20 mins to reflect the changes on your store

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→ Also see, Setting Up the Scheduled Campaigns in Visual Category Merchandising