Product research

With our Q2 ending July 31st, we're hard at work on some major initiatives closing out the quarter as well as research to inform priorities for Q3! In order to ensure we deliver the greatest value to our customers, we're conducting some focused product research in a few areas of current and potential investment.

If you're interested in participating in this product research, please use let us know with this brief 3 question survey.

New in collections

Items added manually to a collection can now be deleted or replaced in bulk!

Documentation updates

• Updated catalog documentation to reflect that Json metadata can be submitted with a CSV catalog upload.
• Added documentation for our item-based recommendation merchandizing capabilities released in late May.

Client updates

• Added bindings to our Javascript client library to retrieve groups (categories) without retrieving items. This allows customers to easily build category hierarchies in their site without retrieving a full result set for a particular category page.

Result and API fixes and improvements

• Fixed an issue that could lead to different results depending on type of apostrophes found in query and/or catalog: ' or ’.
• Fixed an issue that could lead to partial recall of matches in edge cases where stemming, synonyms and keywords not found in the catalog could lead to partial result recall.
• When filtering the catalog ingestion status dashboard by a particular index, the summary counts for tasks in progress and queued is now accurate.

New in Analytics 

• Purchase & conversion report We have added the ability to export purchase and conversion analytics data! To export a conversion report, head over to your conversion analytics page and select the export icon - the report will be sent to you via email! 

API updates

• JSON serialized query strings We observed some customers using extensive query-time parameters, which could result in duplication in request parameters. To improve usability, we now allow serializing search parameters, documented below. See full documentation for the qs parameter here (bottom of page)
  
• Metadata return default Items added via API and catalog will no longer be automatically returned in search, browse and recommendation responses. We've made this change as we observed that customers could add large amounts of data about products via API or feed, which would result in unexpected performance degradation. We also want to avoid a scenario when sensitive data like margin is inadvertently exposed before fields are hidden. Allowing field displayability can be accomplished via, API or by reaching out to support. It will be possible in a forthcoming dashboard update as well.

Result improvements

• Store- or region-specific search suggestions We can now tailor search suggestions more specifically for customers with buy online / pick up in store (BOPIS) or regional availability represented in one index. Search suggestions will represent searches with results in the context of a user's store. Reach out to support to learn more about implementing this functionaity.
• Avoid rules reducing recall Avoid a rare scenario where several rules could reduce an items rank below zero, suppressing it's display.

Recommendations

• Filtered items preview Filtered items strategy can now be previewed in the dashboard, see your recommendations section for more. 
• Bestseller preview We now allow previewing bestseller recommendations without selecting a user profile to view unpersonalized bestseller recommendations

Documentation

• Searchandizing docs Updated search searchandizing docs to document all current capabilities.
• Documentation reorganization Reorganized API documentation around key goals: Returning Results, Managing Catalogs, Defining Rules and Logging User Events.

Dashboard improvements & fixes

• All machine learning rules applied to a query are correctly displayed in the dashboard regardless of query capitalization.  
• Fixed an issue that could cause the current dashboard tab highlighting to go missing.
• Clarified wording in interact modals.
• Updated styles of login and password reset to match application UX.
• Removed unnecessary notification upon login, confirming login.
• You can now navigate directly form a collection definition to the collection searchandizing page.

Recommendations merchandizing!

• We now support recommendation merchandizing in the dashboard for alternative or complementary strategies!
  
• Our initial release here focuses on hiding specific items when requesting recommendations for another item, but these capabilities will expand in the future.
• Fundamentally, we are committed to algorithmic optimization of KPIs across search, browse, recommendations and the entire product suite. That said, we recognize that customers want to intervene if they see an opportunity to improve and want to and that some customers may not have as much behavioral data as others (though we are working here as well - see below!). 

Recommendations UX improvements

• Additional recommendation strategy preview support We expanded preview capabilities in the dashboard to include query and bestseller recommendation strategies. This leaves just filtered items strategy without dashboard preview support (look for this soon).
  
• Prevent recommendation pod deletion We have restricted the deletion of recommendation pods with usage to admin users.
• Improved warning on recommendation pod deletion We now check for requests in the last 7 days for recommendation pods and present a warning before deletion.
  
  

Performance

• Collections dashboard performance imporvements We improved performance of collections edit page for customers with larger catalogs by over 50%. This is the first of a few dashboard performance improvements for customers with larger catalogs.

API

• The REST batch items update endpoint now accepts items without the item_name parameter if id is provided.
• Hide range buckets We now permit hiding a particular range bucket from numeric range facet fields in the facet configuration API. This allows customers to just show facet selection options for 3+, 4+ and 5 star reviews, hiding 1+ and 2+ star filters.
• Field presence summary & searchability API We launched a searchability API, which allows requesting all fields associated with items in the catalog, configuring which of these should be searchable and how these should be searched (exact or fuzzy). A forthcoming release will provide 

Result Fixes

• Facet count consistency In very rare cases, selecting a facet to narrow the results could lead to an increased number of results as spell correction was applied more aggressively for the narrower result set. This is now avoided in all cases.
• Trailing spaces in facets Fixed an issue that could cause facet with trailing spaces uploaded in certain situations to be parsed incorrectly.

Display Fixes

• Fixed a UX display bug in date selector.
• Fixed facet range display in the facet configuration dashboard overflowing if there were too many options.
• Filter selections are now maintained while paginating in interact.
• Align icons in interface when item is not found in catalog.

Merchandizing

• Item-level blacklisting We now allow removing specific items in browse, search and collections merchandizing! If there's a particular item you want to exclude from a browse or collections page, but you don't want to update your catalog or can't target it with a category-based rule, you can now remove just the one item.
  
  
  

Quality of life

• Navigating away from the homepage and returning will preserve state of last-selected tabs.
• Interact left and right scrollbars are now independent, simplifying facet interaction and result previewing!
• Clicking on product names anywhere in the app will now display our new sidebar UX (with in-depth data and API data) everywhere items are shown to users.
  
  
  

User accounts

• Send an email to users when they are deleted, noting the company from which they were deleted and the user who deleted them.
• Improved discoverability of user deletion (accessible only to admins).

API changes

• Allow sending both item name and item id in v2 behavioral endpoints to simplify troubleshooting.

Fixes

• Fixed a display glitch in collections confirmation modal warning of unsaved changes.
• Allow editing of facet options when there are more than 1,000 options for a given facet.

Product age collections

The age of a product (or variation) can be an important attribute to enable customers to discover the new arrivals or appealing seasonally-relevant colorways. We now automatically tag products and variants when they're first uploaded to a customer's catalog and allow generating collections with this data! 

To see this for yourself, create or edit a collection and select the __cnstrc_age facet, then define the age of products to include in hours. We'll automatically return the products with age in that range. Forthcoming updates will improve communication on the field name and parameters - days and weeks in addition to hours.

Product age searchandizing

We also leveraged the addition of product age as an automatic attribute to allow searchandizing on the basis of product age, increasing the rank of products based on age, available in both query-level and global searchandizing.

Updated API documentation experience

We launched a new documentation experience with simplified navigation and simpler grouping of common sections. This new framework will allow us to launch reorganized and streamlined help and getting started resources in the future!

Slotted items speedup

In certain cases where a dozen or more items were slotted and these items each had dozens of variations, performance wasn't up to our standards. We rearchitected the underlying data structures to deliver equivalent performance for slotted queries as for non-slotted queries, representing a 50-200% performance improvement for certain customers.

More flexible conversion API

We've long believed that flexibility is important in measuring success on eCommerce sites (specific KPIs differ) which is why our conversion tracking endpoint was agnostic to the specific conversion type tracked as primary metric. 

However, customers needed a more flexible approach to measure many different types of conversions, particularly with tracking indicators of success such as likes or wishlist adds higher up in the funnel. We've now released an API for this purpose with some specific defined conversion types, as well as facility to define custom conversion types. You can read the documentation here.

Fixes

• Fixed an issue that could cause the default variant to be overridden in slotting preview, leading to an inconsistent experience.

Dashboard Improvements

• Dashboard homepage update We've updated our dashboard homepage to reflect usage and interaction data for the 5 products we currently offer: Search, Autosuggest, Browse, Recommendations and Collections. We have a lot more planned for analytics, but for now wanted to ensure we provide a good overview of customers' usage of our various product experiences.
  
  
  
• Allow configuration of items per row Searchandizing and interact now allow configuration of the number of items displayed in a row on the dashboard, improving usability for customers with 4- or 5-up product listings. This lets customers match their web or app display in the dashboard and makes live easier by viewing a larger set of products at once.
  
  
  
• Product data sidebar We updated the product data modal in interact with a more complete overview of the information available for a product to simplify troubleshooting. The sidebar view also includes the full JSON return for product and variation data as well as an easy copy functionality, meaning you no longer need to root around in the network tab to see what data we returned in our search or browse API response about a product. Currently in interact, look for this sidebar to make its way throughout the app.
  

Recommendations Improvements

• Recommendations Analytics We recently recommendations analytics! We're now communicating the sessions that viewed recommendations, the total recommendations impressions as well as recommendation clicks. We also dive into in-depth recommendation pod analytics (the a pod is a placement where recommendations are served) and show the top items exposed by recommendations. You can see your analytics here.
  
  
  
• Recommendations Configuration Recommendations have typically been configured in concert with the Constructor customer success team, but we now allow basic configuration of adding new pods and updating strategies. Look for merchandizing capabilities in the future. See your configuration page here.
  
  
  
• Recommendations preview URLs Previewing a particular recommendation pod now updates the URL, allowing you to share a particular recommendation by copying the URL.

Fixes

• Added additional messages to cover catalog ingestion error cases.
• Added a clearer message when catalog ingestions trigger a failsafe.
• Catch several additional classes of catalog upload errors to provide more helpful error messages.
• Fixed an issue that caused collection update requests to return an error in certain cases.
• URLs in interact now include toggle state and other interface elements so sharing URLs takes you to the exact place you were at.

Improvements

• Updated conversion dashboard. Constructor is focused on the goal of realizing KPI wins together with our customers. One key part of that is allowing flexible definitions of success and full view of top-of-funnel events. The conversion dashboard now allows filtering to display either purchase events or top-of-funnel success events including add to carts, likes, test drives, marketplace messages or purchase events. Previously this was a backend configuration during onboarding and in the future we'll report on each of these top-of-funnel events separately across the dashboard as well.
  
  
• Searchandizing scrolling behavior. Left and right panes in searchandizing scroll independently now, making it simpler to create rules and review their effect.

Catalog Integrity

• Reduced variance in catalog ingestion time. Depending on resource availability and usage patterns, some customers will see 20-50% better consistency in catalog ingestion times.
• Download catalog files directly from the dashboard. We added a quick link to download a catalog from the catalog ingestion dashboard allowing customers to quickly validate feed data if there are questions or exceptions.
  
• Catalog integrity validation endpoints. We released an API endpoint to validate catalog feed product counts for all facets. This endpoint allows customers to programmatically request the count of items for each brand or other facets in order to check the catalog integrity and alert on any differences.
• Catalog upload failsafe. Sometimes the worst thing happens, and customers upload an empty feed to the FTP and HTTP sync endpoints. We've recently released a failsafe to reject feed updates that would delete more than a certain threshold of products (currently set to 50%). This behavior is documented here and here.

Fixes

• Fixed interact impersonation. Fixed a bug where interact impersonation worked unreliably and would sometimes require a page load to display personalization effects.
• Fixed broken link from one-way synonym page to interact page.
• Fixed bug which could led to synonyms of the format AxB (2x2, 4x4) to fail to resolve in certain edge cases.

Improvements:

• Item boost rules in collections. Item boosts allow merchant teams to increase the rank of items dynamically without having to rigidly fix position with slotting. This feature has been available globally, as well as for specific browse and search contexts. With this release, the capability is available in Collections searchandizing as well!
  
  
• Disable fallback for recently viewed recommendation strategy. The recently viewed recommendation strategy provides an easy way to promote products a user viewed most recently, but several customers didn't want this to fallback to some other strategy, such as bestsellers. This is now possible - reach out to support@constructor.io or your customer success rep if you want to make this change.
• Catalog upload speed improvements. With more and more large customer catalogs in the millions of items, update speed is more important. A couple of related changes improved the speed of full (sync) catalog ingestion for customers using the FTP and HTTP catalog endpoints by 20-200%.
• Improved support for Chinese. Constructor has supported CJK (Chinese, Japanese & Korean) languages and Right-to-left languages (Hebrew & Arabic) since our founding, but we recently released dramatic improvements for Chinese search to serve our growing Chinese-language customer base. Since Chinese lacks spaces between characters, it's critical to deduce which characters should be grouped together as logical 'words' when evaluating product matches. We now handle this inference when users query and also when analyzing historical user behavior to determine likely intent.

API Releases:

• Product data endpoint. Ever want to request product data from a lightning fast service with fraction of a second latency? This endpoint allows exactly that! Customers are using this endpoint to serve PDP traffic, product pods in various contexts across the site and more. Even better, filtering expressions are supported as well, allowing this endpoint to serve the correct price and availability information when the same index serves availability for several regions, or for Buy Online Pick Up In Store (BOPIS) use cases. Read more here.

Fixes:

• Fixed a bug that prevented removing a fixed position for a facet option in the facet configuration page.
• Fixed a date mismatch where some analytics charts on a page would appear to be off by 1 day from the selected time range.
• Fixed link from dashboard homepage to merchant tools.

Faster analytics pagination

Paginating through search and opportunities analytics pages no longer requires a full page reload, making the experience almost a second faster for most users. Look for a faster conversion analytics page soon!

Pagination memory

Users conducting in-depth analysis often move between a listing of many terms or pages and detailed analytics about each. Previously, the page a user was on before clicking through on a particular search term wasn't remembered, forcing users to open multiple tabs or page through results repeatedly. Not fun!

We now remember the pagination state for all of our pages, making quicker work of analysis and optimization work. Check it out.

Pagination reset with new search term or category page in interact

In interact, clicking to the second page of results and then searching for a different term (or category) would maintain the selection of the second page, resulting in confusion about what would be shown on the first page of the search or browse results. We now reset the current page selection when searching for a new term to preview.

We have heard from many teams that have the goal to increase exposure for certain product(s). This typically occurs for several potential reasons:

• A major product is launching with a huge marketing push. 
• A new brand is launching with enormous fanfare.
• Some items have particularly high inventory and need to be 'overexposed' across the site or app.

While automated ML increases ranking for new items, price changes and more, we see an opportunity to provide more hints and input to this based on outside events, promotions or goals outside business as usual. Not all product or brand launches are created equally.

We've long allowed merchants to supplement our AI with rules at the category, query and global levels on the basis of product attributes, metrics or a combination thereof. Our recommendation is apply these overrides sparingly and strategically, "managing by exception" to supplement the AI. 

Now we add the ability to pick a set of products to which a boost should be applied globally across all search or browse pages. While these pages will still serve results optimized for business KPIs, items with a global boost associated will have their rank elevated significantly! In specific terms, a strong boost amounts to roughly one standard deviation - essentially items in the middle of the pack will now show up towards the top.

Finally, we also allow users to preview the effect of these global rules on any search or browse page with the same searchandizing interface your team is used to using!

Want to see a quick video? Take a look here: