CMH Product listings manager

This is for:

Merchandiser

The Coveo Merchandising Hub (CMH) Product listings manager is a tool designed to empower merchandisers to strategically influence and control products displayed on product listing pages (PLPs) on a Coveo-powered commerce storefront.

With this tool, merchandisers can optimize the browsing experience by manipulating product listings for specific categories. It lets them create merchandising rules that directly affect product placement and prominence. This ensures that merchandisers can tailor PLPs to meet specific business objectives and customer needs.

In addition, the Product listings manager offers performance metrics to enable continuous improvement and tailored strategies sought out by merchandisers, providing insights into user behavior and PLP performance.

Product listings manager main page

The Product listings manager main page provides merchandisers with an overview of all categories and PLPs associated with a specific storefront. It also provides merchandisers with access to merchandising rules and performance metrics for each PLP.

Anatomy of the Product listings manager main page | Coveo

1

The Tracking ID and Locale selectors enable merchandisers to choose the tracking ID and locale combination to scope the listing pages displayed in the Product listings manager.
See Tracking ID and locale selectors for more information about tracking IDs and locales.

2

The search bar allows merchandisers to search for specific PLPs or rules within the Product listings manager.

3

The navigation tabs allow merchandisers to switch between different sections of the Product listings manager.

4

By default, the Listing page row displays the PLPs with the highest revenue for the selected combination of tracking ID and locale. It’s also possible to sort the PLPs using the arrow icons next to each column header.

5

For each PLP listed in the Product listings manager, key performance metrics are displayed to provide insights into the performance of the page.
See Key performance metrics for more information about the metrics displayed in the Product listings manager.

6

By clicking View for a PLP, merchandisers can access the listing details page, which provides detailed merchandising information, such as the rules applied, performance metrics, and ranking information for this specific PLP.

The navigation tabs enable merchandisers to switch between different sections of the Product listings manager. More specifically, the tabs provide access to the following sections:

  • Listing pages: Displays all PLPs for the selected combination of tracking ID and locale.

  • Filter rules: Displays the filter rules created for the selected combination of tracking ID and locale.

  • Ranking rules: Displays the ranking rules created for the selected combination of tracking ID and locale.

Product listings manager rules

Product listing manager rules allow merchandisers to refine PLPs by setting specific guidelines that affect how products are displayed. These merchandising rules are designed to optimize search relevancy and user experience, ensuring that each PLP yields the most appropriate and strategically beneficial results. These rules can be implemented globally across all PLPs or applied to specific ones. They can also be scheduled to apply at specific times, allowing merchandisers to plan and execute strategies effectively.

Below are the types of rules that can be implemented:

  • Filter rules: Filter rules allow merchandisers to define conditions that filter products based on specific product attributes. More specifically, merchandisers can create include and exclude rules to control which products are displayed on PLPs.

    • Include rules: Force specific products to be returned.

    • Exclude rules: Prevent specific products from appearing. You can see Exclude rules as a blacklist of products that shouldn’t appear on PLPs.

  • Ranking rules: Ranking rules enable merchandisers to adjust the ranking of products on PLPs based on predefined criteria. More specifically, merchandisers can create boost, bury, and pin rules to promote and demote products on PLPs.

    • Boost: Raise the ranking of specific products.

    • Bury: Decrease the ranking of specific products.

    • Pin: Force specific products to appear at predefined positions on PLPs.

Priority of rule operations

When working with rules in the Product listings manager, it’s important to understand the priority of rule operations. Here is the order in which rules are applied:

  1. Pins: Pins have the highest priority and are applied first.

  2. Exclude: Exclusion rules are applied next, taking precedence over inclusion rules.

  3. Include: Inclusion rules are applied after the exclusion rules.

  4. Boost/Bury: Boost and bury rules are applied last, after the inclusion and exclusion rules.

When working with rules in the Product listings manager, it’s important to understand the priority of rule operations. Here is the order in which rules are applied:

  1. Pins: Pins have the highest priority and are applied first.

  2. Exclude: Exclusion rules are applied next, taking precedence over inclusion rules.

  3. Only show: Only show rules are applied after the exclusion rules.

  4. Boost/Bury: Boost and bury rules are applied last, after the inclusion and exclusion rules.

Product listing pages

PLPs can be created and configured within the CMH to display your products available for purchase. These pages enable customers to browse, filter, and sort products, enhancing their shopping experience and simplifying the selection process.

Note

To streamline the onboarding process and avoid manually creating multiple listing pages in the CMH, you can use the Listings Configurations endpoints to create multiple listing page configurations simultaneously.

For more details, see Creating listing configurations.

Create a new product listing page

To create a single product listing page:

  1. In the CMH, access the Product listings manager.

  2. At the top right, select the Tracking ID and Locale from the respective drop-down lists for which you want to create a product listing page.

  3. At the bottom left of the Product listings manager page, click Create a listing page.

  4. In the Page name field, enter a name for your listing page.

    • The name you enter will appear in the Product listings manager, making it easy to identify and manage your page later.

  5. In the Page URLs field, enter https:// followed by the website where your product listing page will appear.

    • The configuration of listing pages supports multiple URLs.

Important

A product listing page must contain at least one filter rule defining the product category in which to display the products.

Once completed, your listing page will become active and appear in the Product listings manager. You can now begin to create and manage the pages filter and ranking rules.

Note

If you have a multi-source setup that supports multiple locales, you can create a single listing page configuration for multiple listing pages. To do this, specify multiple URLs when creating your configuration via the listings configurations endpoint.

For more details, see Configure listing pages for multiple locales.

Product listing page configuration

In this section of the CMH, merchandisers can modify settings for their PLPs, including page names, locales, and URLs. Additionally, merchandisers can create or modify the filter rule for the page category.

To access the configuration page:

  1. In the CMH, access the Product listings manager.

  2. Select View at the end of any PLP listed.

  3. From the navigation tabs, select Configuration.

From here you can modify or delete the page settings or filter rules.

Key performance metrics

For each PLP listed in the Product listings manager, key performance metrics are displayed to provide quick insights into the performance of the PLP:

Metric Definition

Products

The number of products shown on the PLP.

Clickthrough rate

The percentage of times a product was clicked when the PLP was viewed.

Revenue

The revenue of products attributed to the PLP, including taxes, shipping costs, and discounts.

Conversion rate

The percentage of visits which converted for the PLP.

By clicking View at the end of the row, merchandisers can access additional metrics and detailed information about the query. See Performance metrics for more information.

Discrepancies between reports

Figures shown for metrics in Coveo Merchandising Hub (CMH) reports may differ from those for the same metrics in the Reports (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page of the Coveo Administration Console and the Commerce Advanced Reports.

These discrepancies typically occur because different reports use distinct filters and processing rules when calculating figures for the same metric.

Here are the most common reasons for differences between reports:

  • Inclusion of searchBoxAsYouType events:

    By default, reports from the Reports (platform-ca | platform-eu | platform-au) page include search events where the event cause is searchBoxAsYouType. This can result in higher query figures compared to the Commerce Advanced Reports or CMH reports, which exclude these events by default.

  • Time zone differences:

    CMH reports use Coordinated Universal Time (UTC), while the reports of the Reports page and Commerce Advanced Reports use the user’s browser time zone. This difference can lead to a few hours of offset in event timestamps, which may affect metric calculations.

  • Case sensitivity in query metrics:

    For query-related metrics, CMH reports are case-sensitive, while the reports of the Reports page and Commerce Advanced Reports are case-insensitive. This means that identical queries with different casing are treated as separate queries in CMH reports but are counted as the same query in the other reports. For example, the queries coveo and Coveo are counted as separate queries in CMH reports but as the same query in the other reports.