Improving search through facet management

In this task, you modify existing attributes, creating facets for your storefront category and search pages.

Facets are product attributes, made available for searching and filtering. The proper implementation of facets allows customers to find what they are looking for based on the criteria relevant to them.

For example, imagine you are a shopper that is looking for a dress for yourself. Instead of looking through dresses of every size, the existing size attribute can be used as a facet to filter results to just those dresses that will fit.

Procedure

  1. Open a catalog entry that you want to create a facet for:
    1. Open the Catalogs tool.
    2. Open the Aurora store.
    3. In the explorer view, expand Aurora, Apparel, and Women, then click Dresses.
      The Dresses - Catalog Entries List page is displayed.
    4. Choose any dress and open its properties by right clicking it, and selecting Open. Alternatively you can double click.
      The General Product Information is displayed.
  2. Identify the attribute that you want to turn into a facet:
    1. Click the Defining Attributes tab.
      A list of defining attributes is displayed. For dresses, there are two default facets: swatchcolor, representing the color of the dress, and swatchSize, representing the available sizes.
    2. Open the attribute properties for swatchSize by right clicking it, and selecting Open.
      The General Attribute Information is displayed.
  3. Set the attribute to be facetable, and set the order in which the facet values are presented to the customer:
    1. Check the Use in faceted navigation box.
      The facetable properties are displayed.
    2. Set the Facet value ordering to be Use attribute value sequence.
      Since the facet values are sizes they should not be sorted by count or by alphabetical order, but by sequence, from smallest to largest size.
  4. Click Save; then click Close.
  5. Optional: Verify that the facet is added to your dresses category. In the explorer view, right click the category dresses and select Show Facets.
    The applied facets are displayed.
    Note: If your newly created facet is not displayed, click reload.

Results

You can view your new facet through Store Preview Store Preview, or by opening your site directly. Use Quick Search to submit a search query on dresses, or navigate to the dress category directly. From here, you can observe the facets available to filter by on the left. Before the facet was created, you could only filter by price and brand. With the new facet created, you can also filter by dress size.