Creating a product finder in Aiden is quite simple: upload your product catalog, create a conversation and match your products. Done! But there's more... because within Aiden we've made quite a few smart settings available that help make your product finder even more effective.
We recommend (strategically) implementing the following 5 Aiden must-have settings:
Secondary sorting
On the advice page, the highest scoring product is shown first, followed by the rest in descending order. But did you know that you can determine the order of products that score equally well? You can configure this using secondary sorting, under Matching in Settings:
At 'When products have the same score, sort them by…' you choose a numeric field from your catalog. Then you determine whether you want to sort from low to high or high to low. You can set this sorting strategically, depending on your goal. For example:
Price. When products score equally, the customer might prefer to see the cheapest product first. So it makes sense to display the cheapest product at the top. Or not, of course. 😉 Showing the highest price at the top can encourage customers to click there immediately. Hello increased AOV!
Margin. You can prioritize products with the highest margin by including this as a numeric field in the feed. Interesting if increasing revenue is a priority for you.
Popularity. You can sort by review score of the products. You can also display these scores for each recommended product. Useful if you prioritize selling bestsellers, because you know that those sell well.
Stock. Maybe you have a large group of products that you’d like to get rid of.
Additional fields on the advice page
On the advice page, you'll always see the product title, image, and button to the product page. The product price and redirectability (in the form of custom answer labels) are also shown.
Want to show more information on the advice page? That’s possible with additional fields. Essentially you import an attribute from your product catalog; its value is shown next to the product. This is especially useful when product titles or images look similar, or when it's difficult to refine the advice through additional questions. And the clearer the difference between the products in the advice, the more you help the customer in making a decision.
You add additional fields to the advice by clicking Advice under Conversation, and then selecting the Product content tab. Here you can choose up to 3 product attributes that you want to show in the advice.
Here we show color and size via additional fields.
What other product information you can add besides color or size? That depends, of course, on the type of product and what information you have available. What about delivery time, weight, or style? Or you can show a (short) description highlighting the product's USPs. The sky’s the limit! 🤩
Set questions as filters
The products in the advice are determined by the matching: each answer contributes to how the products are scored. Products with a bad match (X) get a lower score, but remain visible in the results. Pretty important, because customers should still see these products if they match well with other preferences. This allows the customer to make an informed choice.
However, sometimes it's better to completely exclude bad matches from the advice. Because showing these bad matches in the advice doesn't help the customer at all.
Take for example a product finder for hiking shoes where you ask the customer’s shoe size. You only want to show shoes that fit perfectly. If a customer has size 40, they won't benefit from seeing a size 36 shoe in the advice – even if that shoe scores perfectly well on other aspects.
You exclude bad matches from the advice by setting the question as a filter. This is also useful for bigger product finders with separate flows for different products. For example, if your first question is "Are you looking for a washing machine or dryer?", it's smart to set this question as a filter, because the customer isn't helped if they see dryers in the advice when they've chosen washing machines.
Do you have questions that you know are hard requirements for the customer, like shoe size or product type? Set these as filters via Matching > Settings > Filter questions.
But be careful when setting up filter questions. With each filter question, you increase the chance of an empty advice. And that doesn't help anyone.
Tips:
Be strict when setting filter questions. Think carefully about whether the question is a hard requirement from the customer, or just a preference. Only set the real hard requirements as filters.
Test different answer combinations in Test & Tweak after setting a question as a filter. This quickly shows which combinations lead to an empty advice.
Don't forget to fill in the content for an empty advice, where you might want to refer to customer service. You do this at Conversation > Advice > Content.
Set up product variants
If you have products in your catalog that are available in different sizes or colors, it's smart to set them as variants of each other. After all, you're not giving good advice if you recommend the same product 3 times ("These products match your needs: the yellow, red and green variant!" Uhm, yeah. Thanks, mister Obvious).
Additionally, setting up product variants makes the data in Aiden more reliable: when a variant of a recommended product is purchased, it's registered as a 'variant' instead of 'not advised' in the Impact dashboard.
By adding variants, you create a product group. And only 1 product from that group is shown in the advice; namely the best matching variant.
For example, if you set 3 bikes as variants of each other (e.g. a yellow, red, and green one) and the customer indicates they prefer a red bike, only the red variant will be shown in the advice.
💡Good to know: if products within a variant group score equally well, the secondary sorting determines which variant is shown.
Even if you have products that are variants of each other in multiple aspects, we recommend setting all these products as variants of each other, by creating one (big) group. For example, if you sell shoes in different sizes but also in different colors. This way, you narrow down the advice as much as possible to the product that best suits the customer.
There are 2 steps for setting up variants:
Make sure that products that you want to group together get the same value for the attribute item_group_id in your product feed.
Set the toggle 'Group variants of products' to green in the Aiden Settings:
You can check if Aiden recognizes the product variants by clicking 'view' in the catalog for a product from a variant group, and then clicking 'variants'. Are the variants listed? Then it worked! Now Aiden will show only one product from the variant group in the advice.
Tip: want to show color variants in thumbnails under the products? You can do that too!
Turn on the toggle 'Show available colors on advised products' and select the attribute that indicates the color.
Show review scores
Since December 2024, it's possible to include review scores in the advice. These are shown as colored stars with a score up to 5. Cool, right?! ⭐
People are very much influenced by the experiences of others. When products in the advice score exactly the same, a higher review score can be just the deciding factor that makes customers click through to a product page. So we definitely recommend making use of this.
To add review scores to your advised products, follow these 2 steps:
Add the attributes review_score and review_count to your product feed. Review_score contains the review score (between 0 and 5, decimals allowed) and review_count shows the total number of reviews given (a whole number).
Set the toggle 'Review score' in Aiden to green via Conversation > Advice > Product content.
💡Good to know: do you sell electronic products? Then you can also show the energy label in the advice.