Across most eCommerce verticals, we often see users who engage with facet refinements convert at a higher rate than users who do not. 

For this reason, we've long supported the ability to rank facets not just alphabetically, or by the number of matches, but also by automatically increasing the rank of facets and options corresponding to product ranking, itself optimized for business KPIs. To this feature we added global facet ranking overrides in 2020.

We'll be rolling out new features for facet ranking in the coming weeks, but want to share a first release for facets: Browse facet analytics! Check browse analytics here!

Category browse facet analytics

We now report facet engagement for each category page both in the percentage of requests that include facet refinements, as well as for engagement with individual facets. 

In this case, we see that Gender and Age are particularly important to users. Because Constructor will associate users' ultimate clicks, add to carts and purchase events with the original category intent (a generic 'Jackets' landing page in this case), all the products users arrived at after faceting will be appropriately ranked for the principal category page. The analytics here tell us about the product attributes users typically consider when they land at a broad page like 'Jackets' - Brand, Gender, Age and Size in this case. This information can help inform overrides - currently these are supported at the global level through gobal facet configuration, but we'll soon allow these at the query- or category-level.

Category browse analytics

Incidentally, the release of category facet analytics also marks our first release of category detail analytics as a whole. Previously we provided an overview of all category pages and their clickthrough rates, but we'll now surface detailed analytics for any category page!

Finally, we've improved our interface in the category analytics overview, allowing users to hover on a category to jump to interact, analytics or searchandizing.

One of our motivating goals at Constructor is to give customers superpowers. Ranking out of the box should optimize for customer business metrics like RPV and conversion, and when customer product or merchant teams want to adjust ranking for business goals, the experience should be delightful. 

We've recently released two new features to improve the searchandizing experience: Search-in-searchandizing and improved numeric range selection.

Search-in-searchandizing

Customers may want to boost the ranking of owned (store) brands, or prioritize healthier food to align with brand objectives. 

Previously this could be frustrating when the number of categories or facet options climbed into the hundreds (or thousands). Now, our search will allow merchant and product teams to search for the right option, whether in search, browse, collections or global searchandizing contexts!

Numeric range selection

Searchandizing range values can be extremely powerful, especially when paired with the ability to define hidden or protected facets shown to admin users, but not to other users. This allows prioritizing clearance of high inventory items, optimizing for margin or newer products. 

With our new range selection UX, it is now possible to make fine grained and specific extents for searchandizing, as well as allowing explicit selection of all values above or below a given point, as well as setting thresholds even if products on the page don't currently have a given value (such as when the product with greatest inventory is 100, but the goal is to boost products only once they have 1,000 items in inventory). The new selection UX is available in Search, Browse, Collections and Global Searchandizing!

Patch delta catalog format 

Customers integrating with our catalog feed methods (HTTP or FTP) have the ability to provide product data for products and variations through full feeds (sync) as well as partial or update files (deltas). This makes it easy for anyone - integration engineers, merchants or product managers - to download and validate the catalog from the dashboard (available here with admin access) in order to answer questions about what's been sent to Constructor.

While deltas allowed customers to update just those items with changes, there is an assumption that all of the data about the items (products or variations) being updated is sent whenever any of the item data changed. For customers implementing complicated BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store) store availability data with feeds, this was a challenge. 

As a result, we released a new catalog capability - patchdelta. This catalog format allows updating some of the data for some of the products and is covered in more depth here.

New features

Single Sign on (SSO) Early Access We support Single Sign-On for our admin dashboard! This is in early access with a limited set of customers, but will become available more broadly in the future depending on plan subscription. Initial support is targeted towards Okta as the identity provider, but will expand based on demand. Reach out to your account or CS manager if you'd like to be added to the waitlist!

Top search, zero result and browse report export! Reports can now be generated for the top search terms, top zero result terms and top categories to facilitate outside analysis and stakeholder reporting! These reports include key metrics like views, clicks and click-through rates, joining our existing reports for top purchases.

Advanced Japanese language support Similar to our release of Chinese language support in March, we have added advanced Japanese language search support. Since Japanese has no (or very few) spaces between words, splitting product names and user queries into searchable components (tokens) is non-trivial. We have added special dedicated models to our search algorithms to handle this process (known as 'tokenization')

We are expanding aggressively around the world and our cutting-edge language modeling for languages that present unique challenges, such as Chinese and Japanese (tokenization) and Dutch and German (compounding / decompounding) is an important component of this strategy. If you're interested in expanding language support, reach out to your customer success manager!

Self-service for API values

• Displayable field configuration We now allow dashboard users to configure which fields will be returned by the API. Navigate to the index configuration and choose "Manage Searchability & Displayability"

• Remove searchandizing options that no longer exist in results Searchandizing rules may be set in a category or search result page, then products with these attributes go out of stock or otherwise leave the catalog. We want to preserve these rules so if products matching the rules return to the catalog, we continue to map them as expected, but we now make it more clear when there are rules which no longer correspond to products in the search or browse page -- and make it easy to remove these rules.
  
• Populate names and images in recommendations merchandizing We now show product names and images in the recommendations merchandizing interface to simplify the process of editing manual recommendations merchandizing rules.
• Pointer consistency Use pointer for clickable items consistently in dashboard.
• Filter padding in collections edit interface Filters no longer overflow in the collections edit interface when editing rules at the bottom of the page.

Dashboard performance

• Optimized performance for collections page In certain cases large numbers of facets could slow down the collections page. We now lazy-load facets and options to accelerate the collection creation experience.

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.