Create a recommentation strategy

A Recommendation strategy generates a dynamic product list from user behavior, context, or product relationships, and displays it at a specific location on the customer journey (homepage, category page, product page, and so on).

What changed: Recommendations come from the former Recommendations & Merchandising product and keep the same model. The builder has been refreshed, ranking blocks are now grouped into Basics / Dynamic / Customizable, and the former drag-and-drop "RANKING BLOCKS" / "CUSTOM RULES" panels are replaced by New rule and Global customization. Under the hood each strategy still carries a RECO_ID for API deployment.

Creating a recommendation

Create with AI

Create with AI lets you describe the strategy in natural language and have Commerce generate it.

Click Create with AI

Click Create with AI to start the guided flow.

Enter a description

Enter a description and click Generate (the button stays disabled until you type a prompt. The generated strategy opens in the builder, where you can review and refine it.

Guided creation

Create recommendation

Click Create recommendation + to start the guided flow.

Choose the location

The location matters because it determines which context variables (such as categoryId or productId) are available to your rules, and which presets are offered next.

Pick a starting point

The next modal, Pick a strategy to start from…, offers:

Basics → Empty strategy: start from scratch.
Recommended for <location>: placement-aware presets, for example:
- Best sellers: push the products with the best number of sales over the last 7 / 14 / 30 days.
- Most consulted products: the most viewed products over the last 7 / 14 / 30 days.

Picking a preset opens the builder pre-filled with a matching rule; Empty strategy opens an empty builder.

Add Rules, Pins, and customizations

The left configuration panel of the stragey builder is where you assemble the strategy. An empty strategy prompts you to "Kick off your strategy by adding a first rule…" with New rule +. The panel is organized into:

(Rules): one or more ranking blocks, each named Rule #N.
Pins → Pin product(s).
Global customization → New global customization (filter, exclude, sort…).
Display rules: Results maximum and Display threshold.

The right panel, Your strategy results, renders a live preview of what the configuration returns

Save and deploy

You can now save and deploy the strategy

Performance reporting

To measure performance, open the Recommendations Reporting dashboard.

Reporting (Recommendations → Reporting) tracks exposure and revenue impact, KPIs include "Part of the catalog displayed", "Visitor exposition rate", and "Exposed visitors click rate", with Compare, Filters, and sections for Top products, Pinned products, Top categories, Top strategies, and Top brands.

The strategy builder

Ranking blocks (New rule)

Click New rule + to add a ranking block, the main source of products for the rule. Blocks are grouped:

Basics

Block

What it returns

Best sellers

Products that did the best sales over the last days.

Most consulted products

Products most viewed over the last days.

Repurchase recommendations

Products the user is likely to buy again.

Dynamic

Block

What it returns

Products associated to…

Products often bought together with another product.

Products viewed together with…

Products often viewed together with another product.

Products semantically similar to…

Products alike in meaning (an on-demand block, when not yet activated it shows Enable, which opens the external enablement step).

semantic

A custom semantic rule.

Customizable

Block

What it returns

Products sorted by…

Products sorted by the catalog field you choose.

Products from variable

Products supplied by a dynamic contextual variable.

The Dynamic blocks are powered by machine-learning algorithms. For how Products associated to…, Products viewed together with…, and Products semantically similar to… are computed (co-occurrence, TF-IDF, semantic similarity), see Algorithms. For the runtime inputs used by Products from variable, see Dynamic contextual variables.

Pins

In the Pins section, Pin product(s) forces specific products into fixed positions at the top of this strategy.

A Pin boosts products to the top of a single strategy. To promote or demote products globally across every strategy, use the dedicated Boost & Bury rules instead.

Global customization

The Global customization section adds rules that apply across the strategy. Use New global customization (filter, exclude, sort…) to add one of:

Option

What it does

Filter

Filter products based on dynamic, personalized rules.

Exclude

Exclude specific products from the rule.

Diversification

Reorganize products to optimize diversity.

Shuffle

Randomize the order of product results.

Sort by…

Reorganize results by sorting on a field.

Filter if…

Only include some products if a condition is met.

Display rules

Setting

Default

What it does

Results maximum

12

Maximum number of products the strategy returns.

Display threshold

0

Minimum number of products required before the block is shown.

PreviousRecommendations NextAnalyse your recommendation strategy performance

Last updated 18 days ago

Was this helpful?