In this use case, you'll use the Product Content Collector to collect product information and create a dialogue to display the product recommendations to your visitors.
Focus area | Ideal For | Difficulty | Key Success Metrics |
Product Recommendations | Marketing teams, personalization managers, and growth strategists aiming to drive product exposure and conversion via dynamic on-site recommendations using BlueConic. | Intermediate |
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Skills Required
Creating and configuring Product Collectors
Setting up BlueConic Dialogues (with Product Recommendations)
Defining and filtering segments
Navigating to Insights and configuring analytics dashboards
Using the Simulator for validation and testing
Before you begin: complete the 8-box
Define your objectives: To deliver product recommendations to visitors that are popular on your site in the last five hours.
Identify your target audience: Define the criteria for who should see the top product recommendations. Commonly, the target audience is “All Visitors”
Review existing customer data: How is your product data stored? Look at:
Metadata on your website
Product information management systems
Identify customer data gaps and how BlueConic listeners can fill them: This use case uses the Product Collector Connection to gather data.
Define your segment definitions: All Visitors is the recommended segment for this use case, but you will also want to create segments to test that the product recommendations engine is working properly.
Identify stakeholders and key hands-on resources and outline your marketing program scope: Identify which teams you will engage to execute this use case. Ecommerce managers and merchandising teams are often engaged to assist with the product data and information.
Consider activation options: Top product recommendations uses dialogues for activation.
Establish your measurement approach: Conversions, Click and clicks to views ratios
Gather product information
Create the Product Collector Connection
Navigate to Connections > Add Connection.
Search for the Product Collector connection and click to create the connection.
Name the connection.
Select "Collect data from your channels.
Select the channel(s) to collect content data from. (Optional: define URL rules to specify which areas of the sites to collect content data from.)
Manage which data is collected by pasting a product page URL into the Test URL field, and click 'Test' to review the metadata that would be collected for your content. For more information on the metadata BlueConic collects, refer to this article on Configuring the Product Collector to collect items for recommendations.
Set the algorithm time frame. For top recommendations, set for 5 hours.
Add Connection to any required Objectives.
Turn the top Toggle to ON and click Save.
If you have a limited number of products in your catalog, you may prefer to upload product information using a flat file rather than a Product Collector connection. To do this, follow the instructions to set up a Product Connection (SFTP).
Define channel positions
Identify where the top recommended products will show on your channel.
Navigate to BlueConic Settings > Channels & BlueConic hostnames.
Click the domain containing the channel.
Click Add position
Name the channel position e.g., “Top Recommendations”
Define the position using the following options:
Enter a valid jQuery Selector to define the position on the page in the selector text box.
Or, click the Visual Picker to visually select the position on the page.
Click Save to store the position definition.
Create the Dialogue
Navigate to Dialogues> Add dialogue> Content dialogue.
Name your dialogue Top Recommendations and click Save.
Who tab: All Visitors
When tab: Leave default settings
Where tab: The channel houses your product catalog.
What tab:
Hover over the position where the product recommendations will go on the page and click Pick and edit.
Click the Insert object dropdown and select Product Recommendations.
In the pop-up, adjust the following settings:
Collector: Set this as the Product Collector connection you set up earlier.
Layout: Click the dropdown menu to choose a template to display your recommendations. For example, in a list of links, or a list with images, etc. You can also choose to edit your own template for recommendations.
Frequency cap: You can choose to exclude items after the user has seen them a set number of times and not clicked on them.
Recommendation sets: Choose the number of products you'd like to include in the recommendations that are displayed. Add new sets of recommendations with different algorithms and filters that select the recommended content.
Enable fallback: You can set a fallback algorithm so if the recommendation set(s) you've defined don't deliver enough results to fill a set, you can fill the empty space with other items. If you choose to enable fallback recommendations, products that don't already appear in the recommendation set and also match the configured algorithms and filtering options are used to fill any empty spots in the recommendations area.
Optimization settings: For this use case, set the control group to 0% to target all visitors.
Why tab: You can leave this setting as the default option, or you can choose to configure a unique conversion moment for your dialogue.
Add Dialogue to any required Objectives
Switch the toggle at the top of the page to On and Save.
Create Segments for testing
For most product recommendation dialogues, you will want to use the “All visitors” segment for the highest impact. For reporting and testing purposes, create two new segments that track how many visitors view and click on your new dialogue.
Create a segment for those who have viewed the Top recommendations dialogue.
Select Segments > Add segment
Name it “Views of Top Recommendations” and Save.
Select Drill down Condition > Profile Property.
Search for and select Variants Viewed, and choose “Variant A” of your Product Recommendations dialogue.
Add segment to any required Objectives.
Click Save.
Create a segment for those who have clicked a recommended item.
Select Segments > Add segment
Name it “Clicks of Top Recommendations” and Save.
Select Drill down Condition > Profile Property.
Search for and select Variants Clicked and choose “Variant A” of your Product Recommendations dialogue.
Add segment to any required Objectives.
Click Save.
Testing and Validation
Thoroughly test all configurations to ensure accuracy and expected behavior.
Test your segments and dialogue in the Simulator:
Select Simulator.
Click Show all segments and pin the segments you created (e.g. Views of top recommendations and Clicks of top recommendations).
To test the dialogue, delete your profile using the "Clean up" button in the Simulator.
Confirm that product recommendations show in the correct position.
Confirm that the profile was added to the “Views of Top Recommendations” segment.
Click on a product recommendation and confirm that the profile has been added to the “Clicks of Top Recommendations” segment.
Measure Your Success
Report on the use case success with Dashboard Insights of your campaign by tracking key performance indicators.
Create your Dashboard
Navigate to More > Insights > Add Dashboard
Name the dashboard
Click Save.
Add a Dialogues Table Insight.
The Dialogues Table Insight will show views, clicks, and conversions for your dialogue.
Click Add insight and choose the Dialogues Table Insight.
Click the gear icon and use the text filter to display the Top Product Recommendations dialogue.
Click Table columns. Check off the options for Conversions, Views, Clicks, and Clicks/views ratio.
Click OK.
Add a Profile Property Has Value Insight
The Profile Property Has Value Insight displays a scrollable list.
Views of Top Recommendations
Click Add insight and choose Profile Property Has Value Insight.
Click the gear icon, and choose Page Views (All Visits)
Search for the “Views of Top Recommendations” Segment.
Click OK.
Clicks of Top Recommendations
Click Add insight and choose Profile Property Has Value Insight.
Click the gear icon, and choose Page Views (All Visits)
Search for the “Clicks of Top Recommendations” Segment.
Click OK.
Add a Recommendations: Top Items Insight
The Recommendations: Top Items Insight shows a scrollable list of the top 50 personalized product recommendations for your Product Collector connection, with the number of views or clicks recorded.
Click Add Insight and choose Top Recommendations.
Click the gear icon, and select your Product Collector.
Choose whether it will display views or clicks.
Click OK.
Level up: Track ROI with external tools, expand recommendations to email, and use other recommendation algorithms.
Use the Google Analytics 4 Connection within your BlueConic tenant to attribute clicks from BlueConic dialogues (in general), but also from product recommendations down to the dialogue that generated the click.
Set up Open-Time Email Recommendations to deliver recommendations via email.
Play around with different BlueConic recommendations algorithms.