How To Use Bloomreach To Group and Split Products for Apparel

One of the most common needs we see from customers in the apparel space is to expand and contract their product catalog in different scenarios. Fortunately, Bloomreach Discovery makes it easy to split or group products as needed. Read on to learn of three different experiences we often provide our customers.

Splitting by Color

When a customer is shown a limited display of products, it can be helpful and appealing to see an array of thumbnails of the different colors for each product, rather than having each distinct product in one tile with swatches, which can make the page seem bare.

For example, here’s a search results page for “cyberjammies geo” on Next.co.uk, which shows a beautiful assortment of each of the colors laid out separately. Each tile comes with a swatch which also has these colors, so that the user has more than one path to reach any given product and color, and has more opportunities to convert. 

The above capability is relevant when a more limited view of the product catalog has been selected by the visitor, either because of limited search criteria or a catalog page with fewer products. This is a great opportunity for the business to make their catalog appear more varied and greatly increase conversions.

An important note is that when Bloomreach is splitting the products, our AI will learn not only which product is performing the best and dynamically rank results, but it will also learn which color performs the best and update based on that as well. So, if the red shirt is much more effective than the blue one, the blue might appear last on the page and the red could appear first. Essentially, splitting products is an important opportunity to increase conversions because it allows for more ways to personalize based on the customer’s preferences.

Above: a search for “Maxi Front Split Denim Skirt” on Simply Be (an N Brown brand). Powering an experience like this is part of the reason Bloomreach has increased revenue per search for this brand by 20.16%. 

Grouping by Product Style

In cases where there are many products offered in a catalog or shown in search results, each with a large assortment of colors, it’s simplest for the user experience to show each product as a group with its own swatch in a more traditional display.

Here’s an example of a search for “men’s shirts,” which yields a large sampling of results, each with many color options. It’s best for the user to see each of these results grouped by the product, without seeing extra product listings based on each color offering.

Grouping by Color, Brand, or Category

There’s another benefit of grouping products like this. Let’s say a visitor chooses to see blue shirts by selecting that color option. With Bloomreach SKU Select, any product which has a blue variation will be shown in the thumbnail to provide a more personalized experience, like so:

This can also be surfaced when a customer searches for that attribute — so for the example above, searching for “blue men’s shirts” would yield similar results. 

In addition to grouping by color, Bloomreach also gives businesses the option to group by brand and category for more ways to customize the customer experience. 

Ultimately, it’s important for the apparel businesses we power to:

• Have the ability to easily pick and choose — In various cases, the same site should be able to provide each of the above experiences. This is possible via dynamic grouping in Bloomreach.
• Rely on the AI working well in all cases — Colors that are more effective should be ranked higher when the product is split by color. Similarly, products that drive more conversions should be ranked higher when the product is grouped.
• Get true personalization — It’s more important that a visitor who prefers red sees red products higher on the page when the experience is split by color. Similarly, it’s more important that a visitor who prefers a certain product style sees products of that style first when the page is grouped.  
• Access intelligent merchandising — The merchandiser should have the ability to curate the experience in all of the above cases. Any aspect of the experience, whether it’s the product, style group, color group, or individual SKUs, should be easily controllable via product-level merchandising or group merchandising.

Here’s an example of the group merchandising experience in Bloomreach:

Not only is it possible to merchandise each product separately, as in a typical solution, but it’s also possible to merchandise product groups. In the above example, the merchandiser has the ability to explore both the group and the individual products in the black color group.

Get More Out of Merchandising With Bloomreach Discovery

Bloomreach Discovery features industry-leading AI to help you get the most out of your merchandising. Automatically curate personalized experiences for your customers, and step in with your expertise when needed to fine-tune the results. 

Learn how you can get even more out of Bloomreach Discovery by automatically personalizing your search.