With intelligent product categories you provide orientation in the online store and reduce the bounce rate

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The intelligent product categories show your customers quickly and easily the way to the desired product

Intelligent product categories provide orientation for product searches in your online store and help your customers find the desired product easily. Category results are calculated in milliseconds and displayed in a personalized manner. In addition, an intelligent algorithm recognizes which categories are currently relevant for the respective online shopper and prioritizes them. Intelligent product categories in the online store can also be easily adapted to company-specific processes, e.g. as part of campaigns, and enable efficient entry into the shopping process as well as faster purchase completion. This is exactly what epoq Categorise offers.

Connect

Connect with your customers and build customer trust. Your customers visit your online store regularly, so let’s hear from you as well. Send personalized emails on different occasions, such as birthday, lifecycle, transactions, etc.
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Stream

Provide entertainment and in turn ensure constant customer loyalty. Customers like to browse through their own product and brand world to discover new things. Start here with a personalized shopping area and keep your customers coming back to your online store every day.
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Inspire

Inspire your customers as soon as they show a willingness to buy. They are now open to further buying impulses that complement or supplement their selected product. Relevant recommendations are particularly suitable for this.
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Advice

Provide guidance to your customers on product selection. Your customers are looking for something, but they need help choosing the right item from the product range. An intuitive product advisor can help.
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Search | Categorise

Offer your customers orientation during product research. This way, they can quickly and easily get to the desired product detail page and find out more about a product. If you want to start at this stage, there are two options, the intelligent search and the intelligent product categories.

 

Personalisation plays an important role for smart product categories

Intelligent product categories are part of our personalisation platform, which is powered by an AI engine. They use artificial intelligence techniques to calculate relevant category results for each individual customer. As a result, they can quickly and easily point your store customers to the desired product and enable them to enter the shopping process without any detours. The reason is that the category results list displays exactly those products that match your store customer’s personal preferences at that moment. For example, after a customer clicks on the category “Pants” via the smart categories, he will see pants of the brand “Tom Tailor” in size 40 displayed first. Why? Because the smart categories detect that your store customer has already searched for the brand “Tom Tailor” using the search function, for example.

The personalisation of the categories can be done in steps

Before you start personalization, you must first make sure that your categories return the right results. Only then you can start personalization. In the first stage, i.e. within the categories, you can already control the results. You want to push certain brands? No problem. In the second stage, you have the option of displaying the search results appropriately for certain customer segments, and in the third stage, you can implement complete 1:1 personalization. You can define a personalization strategy for your entire online store or carry out customer targeting as part of campaigns. Our AI technology makes it possible.

The most popular use cases of the intelligent product categories

Offer individual category result list to each customer

Include preferences of the customer in the categories

Refining the category result list

Allow limiting the category result list

Apply advertising measures on the category page

Point out discounts and highlight brands

Enable product sorting

Enables faster location of the appropriate product
Offer individual category result list to each customer

By taking into account click and purchase behavior, you can display the category results list individually for each customer, i.e. the preferences in the respective category are taken into account, e.g. color, brand, size, etc.
Refining the category result list

The results on the category page can be limited click by click via a facet navigation, e.g. via color, brand, size, etc.. This means that the online shopper is only shown products that meet these characteristics. The facet navigation can also be personalised, i.e. features that are most important to the respective online shopper are displayed first.
Apply advertising measures on the category page

Above the category page, promotions can be highlighted in the form of banners. You can highlight certain brands or point out discounts.
Enable product sorting

After the category results list has been displayed and the facet navigation has been used, the online shopper can sort the category results list according to his or her wishes, e.g. by relevance, by ascending or descending price, or by sale products. This makes it possible to find the right product more quickly.

The AI engine of our personalisation platform makes it possible

Before the intelligent product categories are used, we first generate a knowledge base for your online store with our AI engine. To do this, our AI engine uses your product catalog, the click and purchase behavior of your store customers, and our and your expert knowledge. It links the data to knowledge and thereby calculates and displays the relevant product categories and results for your store customers. Since the module for the intelligent product categories is located on our personalisation platform, which is designed for the personalisation of the entire customer journey of your store customers. You have the option to unlock additional modules for the touchpoints in your online store and to use the already generated knowledge of the intelligent categories for this and to further enrich the knowledge base for your online store. Want to learn more about the AI engine? Then go to e-commerce technology.

These elements should be included in a intelligent product category

Facet Navigation

Filter options let customers limit the products and make the search easier.

Results Management

In the results list, individual products can be pushed or hidden.

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Customization is a must-have of the intelligent product categories

Product data

Your product catalog is cleaned up with regard to the desired category functionality, prepared and aggregated, e.g. the color designation is included in a separate column or missing attributes are added.

Search algorithm

Adjustment of the category algorithm is done e.g. with regard to error tolerance, field weighting and ranking, e.g. selection of fields to be searched, determination of field weighting and setting the sensitivity level for error tolerance.

Configuration

There is a functional as well as visual configuration. Functional e.g. the selection of filters, sorting and autosuggest preview. Visual e.g. the graphical preparation in the design of your online shop.

This is how the integration of the intelligent product categories works

01

Generation of a knowledge base

To generate a knowledge base, we need your product catalog in XML or CSV format and the click and purchase behavior of your shop customers. The latter is recorded via a tracking code in your online shop in compliance with data protection regulations. The shop system does not play a role here.

 02

Setup in the test system

We discuss your visual ideas together and send you the div element as a placeholder for the frontend of the intelligent search. You integrate this into your test system. Now the fine tuning of the search algorithm and the required configuration takes place.

 03

Activation in the live system

After the setup in the test system and the successful functional test, the intelligent search is activated in your live system and is available to your shop customers as a guide to the desired product. If necessary, we will perform a fine-tuning in live operation.

 04

Introduction to our backend

We will introduce you to our backend, the Control Desk, and train you on the various analysis and configuration options as well as feature usage. This will enable you to monitor and control the intelligent product categories.

 05

Display of relevant category results

Your shop customers receive relevant category results and get to their desired product. You provide orientation for the product search and reduce the bounce rate, which has a positive effect on your conversion rate and your sales.

epoq Control Desk

Monitoring and controlling of the intelligent product categories

The epoq Control Desk gives you a wide range of options to monitor and control the intelligent product categories.

  • Analysis

    Checking the relevance of search results for specific search terms from the customer’s point of view. Relevance here stands for the match between the content of the visited page and the product or information the user is actually looking for.

  • Key figures

    Review of various intelligent product category metrics, such as click and revenue performance.

  • Configuration

    Here you can set the current configuration and other settings of the search algorithm, e.g. error tolerance, emphasis of individual search fields as well as facet filters and sorting.

  • Features

    Possibility of using and configuring various features of the intelligent product categories, such as thesaurus, link finder and banner management.

More info about the Control Desk

When the implementation of an intelligent product category is beneficial for you

Basic functionality

You already run an online shop or similar and have checked off all basic functionalities and now want to optimize your standard category.

Category clicks

You have more than 5,000 searches per month in your online shop.

Product range width

Your range includes more than 500 products.

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