Recommending products

In this task, you display recommended products to customers based on their search queries by creating a web activity.

Web activities schedule and control custom information that display in e-Marketing Spots on your store pages, without needing to involve site developers. Web activities can be used to display the following types of marketing information:

Content, such advertisements for promotions
Category recommendations
Catalog entry recommendations, including merchandising associations

For this example, imagine you want to recommend computer accessories to customers that are searching for notebook or desktop computers.

Procedure

Identify the e-Marketing Spot you want to use:
1. Open your store with Store Preview .
2. Type any query into Quick Search and hit enter.
  For example, search for laptop.
  
  The results page is displayed.
3. In the upper left corner of the page, selectShow Page Information. E-Marketing Spots and other customizable content types are displayed, highlighted in blue. By clicking Show Information, select the e-Marketing Spot below the search results, and note the name SearchResults_CatEntries.
Create a web activity to fill the identified e-Marketing Spot on the search results page:
1. Open the Marketing tool.
2. In the explorer view, right click Activities and select New Web Activity.
  The New Activity From Template window is displayed.
3. Select Catalog Entry Recommendation and click OK.
4. Enter a name under the General Properties tab to identify your new web activity.
  For example, name your new web activity recommend accessories.
Assign the web activity to the identified e-Marketing Spot:
1. Click the e-Marketing Spot icon.
  The General Properties tab is displayed.
2. Find and add the e-Marketing Spot you want to use by typing SearchResults_CatEntries into the Find and Add text box.
3. Click Find and Add.
  The e-Marketing Spot is added.
Create a target to indicate you want to display your category suggestion to those customers that are searching for desktop or laptop computers:
1. Click and drag the Current Page target onto the line to the right of the e-Marketing Spot .
2. Select the Current Page icon.
  The Current Page target settings are displayed.
3. Set the Customer behavior to be Customer is viewing search results.
4. Set the Search term matching rule to be Search term contains one of the following values.
5. Click New twice, to create two search terms.
6. Enter desktop as the first search term, and laptop as the second.
Describe what types of recommended products to display if the search target is satisfied:
1. Select the Recommend Catalog Entry icon.
  The Recommend Category action settings are displayed.
2. Set the recommendation method to Create one or more search conditions that recommends catalog entries.
  Additional settings are displayed.
3. Under search conditions, clear the Category the customer is currently viewing check box.
4. Under the using filters section, click the arrow to the right of Create New Property , and select Category.
  A Find and Add window is displayed.
5. Find and add the category that you want by typing Computers Accessories into the Find and Add text box.
6. Click Find and Add.
  The computers accessories category is added.
Click Save; then click Close.
Activate the web activity:
1. In the explorer view, click Activities.
  A list of activities is displayed.
2. Right click your activity and select Activate.
  The activity is now active, as indicated by the green circle in the status column.

Results

Test your activity by using Store Preview .

Enter a search query that includes the word laptop or desktop into the Quick Search and observe the results. With the example activity active, products from the Computer Accessories category are displayed below the search results. With the activity disabled these recommendations are not displayed.