Effective Use of Product Filters

Effective Use of Product Filters

Magnet Commerce Product Filters:

It is a well known fact that e-commerce store visitors are discouraged from buying online when they have to browse in many different categories and sub-categories of an e-store in order to find what they are looking for. To overcome this problem Magnet Commerce comes with a powerful filtering technology, similar to Amazon's, eBay's, Yahoo's, Froogle's and MSN's, to help your visitors quickly find exactly what they want. Your customers will be able to reach the products that meet their demands by placing a specific query based on the filters you will have defined for your product search.

Product filters can vary depending on the sort of products you provide on your e-store. For example, if you are selling TVs, your filter specifications could be any of the following: "Manufacturer", "TV price", "Diagonal screen size" and more. This way a customer that is looking for a Sony TV set in the price range of $2000-$5000 can get all the possible choices immediately.

Front end - Use of filters on your storefront:

In order to show the use of filters on the storefront, we will assume that you have added a "TV & Video" category on your e-store and you are using the following filters for your products: "Manufacturer", "TV price", "Diagonal screen size". This will result in the following list of filters appearing on the "TV & Video" category page of your front end:

When a customer chooses to see all the products under $2000, the "TV price" filter disappears from the previous list and only the products costing less than $2000 remain available.

Back end - Setting up the filters for your e-store:

Defining your filter specifications is a straightforward procedure and you can have a successful product filter running in a matter of minutes.

The easiest way to start setting up a filter group is by clicking "Catalog > Product Filters".

Firstly you need to click the "Add New" button and type in a name for this new filter group. Put in something that is very clear about what you're trying to offer and easy for you to remember its definition. Simple names are easy to remember later on when adding them to your pages, so for selling TVs "Manufacturer" and "TV price" are good examples. In this case we will type "TV price" and click the "Add Group" button to create the group. As a note you are not creating this filter group for one page, you can use it in any of the Catalog pages you need to apply it in. It's a multipurpose selection.

Now that we have the group name we need to add the available TV price ranges to this group. To do this, simply click the "Edit" link. You would normally start with the smallest price, so you could type something like: under $2000/$2000 to $5000/over $5000. There is plenty of space for typing so keep it as clearly defined as possible. You simply enter one filter value at a time and click the "Add" button to make it active within the list. When you have added all your options, check to see that you have clicked the "Add" for the final option before you click the "Save and Close" Button to finalise your details.

Now that completes one part of the needed information, and your option appears in the list. You can carry on adding more options if you need to, or come back at any time to create more product filter options as the need arises. The possibilities are endless, and it comes down to what products you sell, and how you want to market them.

Having the Product Filters created is now done and these need to become visible in the Catalog. This is done during the product creation process. In the "Add Product" page you will find the form to use for defining the filter values for your product:

You will notice that you can set a filter for your product from one or more Filter Groups. In this example we will be adding a sony TV set to the catalog with a 50 in. Diagonal screen size costing $2499, so the previous form will look as follows:

Having assigned these filter values on the product, the respective product page on the storefront will look like this:

Deciding on your filter groups:

Extra attention should be given to deciding the Filter Groups you will be defining for your products. Decide on the categories you are going to create by keeping in mind that:

Filter Groups are general categories giving crucial information about a product (e.g. Manufacturer, Price etc.). Customers are more likely to start looking for the desired product using these as the initial criteria for their search.

Also remember that you are not creating a Filter Group for one page, but you can use it in any of the Catalog pages it applies to. Your selection of Filter Group is a multipurpose one.

The following is an example of Product Filters used for a range of TV products. As seen in the figure different Filters of the "Manufacturer" Filter Group are assigned to different products. If you are also selling Sony cameras, this Filter Group can be used for these products as well.

Summary:

Click the "Add new" button to create a Filter group.

List each Filter in turn and click "Add" after each item, when all your items are complete, click the "Save and Close" button.

When adding a new product define the appropriate Filters for it in the "Add Product" page.

Use the appropriate names for your Filter Groups to make sure customer search is fast and effective!