Constructor now supports Directed Acyclic Graphs (DAGs) for category hierarchies—making it easier to model real-world structures where a single category belongs to multiple sections.

Instead of duplicating categories like “Wireless Headphones” to appear in both "Electronics" and "Gifts," you can now assign multiple parent paths and control which one is shown based on where the shopper is navigating from.

Benefits include:

• Cleaner catalog setup with no duplication of categories
• Flexible hierarchy modeling that reflects real-world relationships
• Better navigation control using query-time path selection

This enhancement also introduces a new groups_path parameter that lets you specify which path to render during browse requests. This results in more precise breadcrumbs and a better contextual experience for shoppers.

🔧 Example Use Case
 A single category, like Wireless Headphones, can appear under:

• Electronics > Audio > Headphones > Wireless Headphones
• Gifts > Tech Gifts > Audio > Wireless Headphones

If no groups_path is passed during a browse request, Constructor automatically uses the first parent path ingested for that category - so you’re always covered by default.

How to Structure Parent Categories

To incorporate multiple parent categories, you’ll need to update your catalog format:

✅ Do this:

• Replace parent_id: "xyz" → with parent_ids: ["xyz"]
• For multiple parents: parent_ids: ["xyz", "abc"]

⚠️ Important:

• Only include parent_ids - do not include both parent_id and parent_ids
• Even a single parent must be wrapped in an array
• Ensure all parent categories are defined before ingestion

• You can send catalogs with multiple parents in either:

  • CSV format via item_groups.csv
  • JSON format via the /v2/item_groups endpoint

You decide which path to show based on the user’s journey - with full validation and fallback behavior built in.

DAG-based category hierarchies are already available in production to all our customers. 

Related docs: Retrieve item groups, Create or replace item groups, Update item groups, Retrieve item group, JSON / JSONL feed format - item groups (categories), CSV feed format - item groups (categories) 

We're beyond excited to unveil a powerful new capability in the Constructor dashboard: Customizable User Roles with View/Edit permissions, now available in beta!

With this release, companies can tailor access like never before. Empower your teams with precisely the tools they need, whether it's managing indexes, merchandising, or launching A/B tests. It's flexible, secure, and built to scale with your company.

Why this matters

Companies tend to have multiple teams working within the Constructor dashboard. From Merchant Teams responsible for all things merchandising, Marketing Teams that use Collections for email campaigns, and Dev Teams in charge of integrations, every group uses the dashboard differently. With Customizable User Roles, you can assign access and permissions that align with each team's responsibilities without compromising control or security.

What you can do

With this release, you can now create custom roles that:

• Control access to company-level settings, such as API tokens and user management
• Allow access to specific indexes (perfect for teams that manage different regions or websites!)
• Grant edit access to individual features, such as Searchandising, Global Facet Configuration, Recommendations, and more.

You can even create a view-only role to invite more stakeholders from different departments who might benefit from the information in the Constructor dashboard, such as reporting and analytics. 

How to get started

All roles start with view-only access permission across all indexes. From there, you can assign edit access to any index and specific features within those indexes. This can be done via the Constructor dashboard. 

For more information, please visit the documentation guide.

With custom user roles, your teams will benefit from tools and information available in the Constructor dashboard without the risk of accidental actions.

We are currently rolling out Customizable User Roles with View/Edit permissions in beta. Please, connect with your Customer Success Manager or contact us through support@constructor.io to get early access.

What’s new:

We’ve upgraded Variation Slicing to give merchandisers more precision than ever.

With the new Variation Slicing Conditions, you can choose exactly which product variations to surface — without slicing all possible variants for every item.

You can now:

• Highlight only the variations you want — e.g., new styles, sale items, or seasonal colors.
• Filter variations with powerful conditions such as Item ID, color, size, or other attributes.
• Mix and match conditions to target exactly the right subset of product variations.
• Visually merchandise your PLPs by promoting only the variations that matter for your campaign.
• Use a drag-and-drop preview to instantly tailor the shopper experience.

Why it matters:

Before, merchandisers had to make a tough choice:

• Slice all variations for an attribute (risking cluttered or irrelevant product listings), or
• Avoid variation slicing altogether — missing opportunities to spotlight specific variations.

Now, you can surgically control variation visibility to align perfectly with your strategy.

 For example:

• Launch a PLP for Valentine’s Day featuring only red dresses.
• Promote only the 12-pack size of a soft drink that’s on sale.
• Push new color drops for a top-selling shoe to the top of the page.

This means more relevant merchandising, more engaging shopping experiences, and more revenue potential — without sacrificing the integrity of your PLP layout.

Learn more in the documentation.

At Constructor, we recognise the importance of data to inform merchandising decisions and track business performance, and we continue to enhance analytics capabilities, so that find the right would become more intuitive without leaving the dashboard. That's why we are excited to introduce grouping analytics by index. 

What’s new

You can now select more than one index in the dashboard’s analytics view to see combined performance metrics. This could be especially helpful in cases like:

• Analysing a specific region, where each index could represent a specific country (e.g., exploring performance of all indexes from EMEA)
• Getting insights on specific languages for the same regional market (e.g., Germany–German and Germany–English)
• Any custom grouping based on your operational structure, warehouses or team ownership

Multi-index support is available in various sections within Analytics, namely:

• Homepage
• Search
• Browse
• Recommendations
• Opportunities
• Item Analytics

Note: exporting for multi-index analytics will be supported separately in upcoming releases.

Why it matters

Previously, you could either:

• View analytics for all indexes combined, or
• Drill into a single index at a time

With this update, we’ve made it easier for merchandisers to analyse performance across multiple indexes at once — no more exporting and stitching reports together manually. That means less extra work for teams needing to analyse subsets of indexes. Now, you can group just the indexes you care about and instantly see combined insights, making reporting faster and decision‑making more precise.

Questions or feedback? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager or contact us at support@constructor.io.

What’s new:

We’ve upgraded Searchandizing Campaigns to work across multiple indexes — so you can manage cross-country and cross-environment merchandising in one place.

Now you can:

• Create once, publish everywhere — apply a single set of searchandizing rules to multiple countries, languages, or environments at the same time.
• Save hours by skipping manual copy-paste between indexes.
• Keep campaigns consistent across global markets or between dev/prod environments.
• Easily scale your strategy for regional launches, seasonal campaigns, or cross-country promotions.
• Validate faster — see the end-to-end shopper experience across all markets in just a few clicks.

Why it matters:

Before, cross-country merchandising was a time-consuming, error-prone process:

• Merchandisers had to duplicate configurations for each index manually.
• Testing and validation meant jumping between indexes one by one.
• Rule conflicts often appeared during copying — slowing launches.
• Keeping strategies aligned globally was tricky and sometimes led to outdated or inconsistent shopper experiences.

Now, Cross-index Searchandizing Campaigns make it possible to:

• Launch a new product or marketing push across all markets instantly.
• Keep branding and merchandising strategies consistent worldwide.
• Respond to market changes or promotions at global speed.

Whether you’re boosting new arrivals in all EMEA markets, aligning a seasonal campaign across APAC and North America, or syncing dev and production environments, you can now do it all from one campaign.

Learn more in the documentation.

What’s new:

Collections have finally made their way into the Workspace → Searchandizing dashboard.

You can now searchandize Collections with the same powerful tools and smooth UX you already know from Search Queries and Browse Categories.

Here’s what you can do:

• Easily find the right Collection with filters for last updated user email, rule types (Boost, Slot, Content, etc.), and attached user segments.
• Track who last updated rules — see exactly who and when changes were made.
• Create rules where you expect to — add new searchandizing rules for Collections directly from Workspace → Searchandizing.
• Copy rules with ease — move searchandizing rules between the same Collection ID across multiple indexes.
• Enjoy all the UX enhancements you’ve already experienced for Search and Browse.

Why it matters:

Before this update, merchandisers had to jump through hoops to manage Collections:

• It was tricky to find the right Collection to work on.
• Past updates weren’t always easy to trace.
• Adding rules meant leaving your expected workspace.

Now, Collections searchandizing is faster, more transparent, and exactly where you need it. You’ll spend less time hunting for configurations and more time creating the perfect shopping experience for your customers.

Available now for all customers subscribed to the Collections product.

Introducing Related Categories for Search—a feature designed to help your users find their way to the right product sections when search results aren’t enough.

When users search for broad or unclear terms like “storage” or “gaming,” our system now suggests high-value categories like “Closet Organisers,” “Hard Drives,” or “Gaming Accessories,” helping users shortcut into curated experiences.

Benefits include:

• Better orientation and navigation from search pages
  
  
• Increased exposure for priority categories
  
  
• Higher engagement on discovery-based queries

By guiding users toward relevant categories, this feature reduces friction and significantly improves product discovery. Industry research shows 12–25% improvement in product exploration when users are guided via category-based cues.

To activate Related Categories, please connect with your Customer Success Manager or contact us through support@constructor.io.

At Constructor, we know that merchandisers need visibility into which products are resonating most with shoppers—not just across the site, but on specific pages and over specific timeframes. To make this easier and more actionable, we’re introducing a new Item Analytics table within Page Analytics for search query pages, categories, facet pages, and collections.

Here’s what’s new:

• A new table in Page Analytics that shows top clicked, added-to-cart, and purchased items from that particular page.
• Support for custom date ranges so merchandisers can analyze trends over any relevant time window.
• CSV export to share and collaborate on performance data.
• By clicking on an item, merchandisers can proceed to its dedicated analytics page and see performance across the entire site.

This enhancement addresses a key challenge many merchandisers face: understanding which specific products are performing well within particular discovery contexts. Until now, performance visibility was limited to the last 30 days in the Interact section of the dashboard. With this update, merchandisers can analyze top performers across any time period, having greater flexibility to evaluate seasonal trends, campaign effectiveness, and long-term product performance. With a focused view of what’s working at the page level, merchandisers can double down on high-performing products, fine-tune product placements, and make smarter merchandising decisions faster.

Where to find it: go to Analytics → Search or Browse → Select any page from the tables below the charts → Scroll to the Item Analytics table under the charts.

If you have any questions or feedback on analytics in the dashboard, please connect with your Customer Success Manager or contact us through support@constructor.io.

Constructor is always looking for new ways to enhance the shopping experience for our customers’ shoppers. Our latest facet group sorting algorithm update introduces machine learning to predict the most relevant order for facet groups based on multiple dynamic features.

What is it?

A new machine learning-based approach to facet group sorting that incorporates more data-driven factors, such as coverage and facet type. Instead of using a hard-coded formula, the algorithm uses a trained machine learning model to predict the optimal order of facets for each search or browse query in real-time.

How does it work?

The machine learning model considers the following features:

• Popularity: How often each facet is used by shoppers over a recent period.
• Relevance Attractiveness: The appeal of top items within each facet.
• Diversity: The distribution of items within each facet.
• Coverage: The percentage of products that have the facet.
• Facet Type: The type of facet being displayed.
  
  

These features are processed in real-time by a model trained on historical data. Using this data, the model predicts a final score for each facet, which is then used to dynamically rank the facets during search and browse queries

What problem does it solve?

The new model-based approach enhances the responsiveness and accuracy of facet sorting. It allows for real-time adjustments based on current usage and shopper preferences, ensuring that shoppers always see the most relevant and attractive facets first, leading to a better shopping experience.

Availability:

The feature is rolling out to all customers, replacing the old method of facet relevance sorting with this machine learning-powered approach.

For more information, please contact your Customer Success Manager or reach out to us at support@constructor.io 

What’s new?

With Searchandising Campaigns, merchandisers can now define a single strategy and deploy it across multiple search, category, and facet contexts without creating individual rules for each one. This new feature makes it simple to:

• Group together related queries, category pages, and facet pages into one cohesive campaign.
• Create boost, bury, and slotting rules that apply to all selected contexts at once.
• Save time with bulk actions like Select all and Show subcategories to include every relevant touchpoint with just a few clicks.

Why it matters:

Managing promotional strategies across fragmented contexts used to be time-consuming and error-prone. Searchandising Campaigns fix that by:

• Allowing merchandisers to align their strategy across the entire site so a summer polo shirt promotion appears everywhere from “men’s shirts” to “brand=Ralph Lauren.”
• Reducing repetitive work with intuitive controls like context editing and dynamic subcategory visibility.
• Ensuring better control and consistency with centralised rule management and in-context previews of how changes impact shopper experiences.

Now, whether you’re spotlighting a new product launch or fine-tuning category-specific performance, you can do it all in one place, with precision, scale, and speed.

Learn more in the documentation.

Questions or feedback? Reach out to your Customer Success Manager or contact us at support@constructor.io.