About Session-Based Product Recommendations (SBPR)

This is for:

Developer
In this article

Coveo Machine Learning (Coveo ML) Session-Based Product Recommendation (SBPR) models take advantage of the user profile and Commerce UA API reference to suggest relevant products based on current user interactions with a Coveo-powered commerce implementation.

Unlike traditional product recommendation models, which usually suggest products to end users based on cooccurrences machine learning methods, SBPR models rely on product embeddings and session vectors to determine which products to recommend.

Since SBPR models leverage the History of actions user profile dimension, the recommendations provided are updated in real time, meaning the algorithm continuously processes the actions taken by the user to recommend products that are relevant to their current shopping session. This is also useful in scenarios where users aren’t authenticated as the algorithm can infer the user’s intentions as soon as they start interacting with the interface.

Example

During a shopping session on a Coveo-powered sporting goods commerce interface, an unauthenticated user performs the following actions:

  1. Enters Golf iron sets in the search box.

  2. Navigates through the iron sets that are being displayed on the results page, and then clicks on mid-range golf iron sets.

  3. Enters Golf driver in the search box, navigates through the available drivers, and then returns to the home page.

By analyzing the user’s session, the model understands that they’re currently looking for mid-range golf equipment. Therefore, since the recommendations interface on the home page leverages a SBPR model, the products that are being displayed to the current user are complementary products, such as mid-range golf gloves and balls.

Important

SBPR models require the History of actions user profile dimension to be enabled on the Coveo organization, Contact us to activate this feature.

Prerequisites

To use SBPR, you must comply with the following prerequisites:

  • Your Coveo organization must contain at least one Catalog source.

    Note

    Ensure that the items contained in the Catalog source map each item’s permanentid with the product’s productid (SKU). See Manage source mappings for instructions on how to define mappings on a source.

  • Your commerce interface must track, at a minimum, the following commerce actions:

    • click

    • detail

    • Cart events (add and remove)

    • Purchase events (purchase and refund)

  • Your commerce interface must record and send page view events.

  • Your Coveo organization must have the History of actions user profile dimension enabled.

    Note

    Contact us to enable this dimension in your Coveo organization.