Today I'm happy to announce that we have release FindTuner version 2.2.0. The release, which was shaped by a lot of great feedback from our clients, provides some powerful new features which I'll describe below, as well as improvements for usability and deployment of the system. We also squashed some bugs too.
Enhanced Rule Triggering Logic
Prior to version 2.2 a merchandiser could define a rule with one or many triggers however when mutiple triggers were defined they were always treated as "or" conditions. For example, let's say I had a keyword trigger and a facet trigger defined for a rule. If the keyword is present OR the facet was clicked, the actions of the rule are executed; in other words, the ruled fired if any of the conditions are true.
In 2.2 we continue to support the "any" condition however we now have the ability to specify the "and" condition as well. Additionally, rules can have one or many trigger groups each of which can be defined by matching any or all of the triggers. This feature gives merchandisers the ability to create highly targeted trigger definitions with combinations of any or all keyword, navigation and contextual signals (such as user profile data).
The simple example below highlights this feature. In this rule I'll show a top banner if the user performs a keyword search for 'sony laptop' OR if the keyword search is 'laptop' and the user is in the Sony facet, OR if a context pair is present for the Sony campaign (which may have come from a pay-per-click campaign). You may also note that "is" is highlighted in blue. Note that the comparator can be clicked to switch to an "is not" condition as well.
Improved rule management
FindTuner rules are organized by tags and rules can be organized by one or more tags which helps to efficiently manage a large number of rules. Rules have always been searchable by tag, name and other basic attributes. In this new release, FindTuner’s rule searching technology (Solr powered of course) now supports searching within the values of triggers and actions, including product details, making it easier for the merchandiser to locate existing rules.
Usability improvements throughout
Usability has been improved throughout the application particularly related to curated results definition and its interaction with boosting strategies. The figure below shows a curated results definition where I'm going to display five results when the rule is triggered. If the Ignore Boosting check box is selected, the results will be displayed in the order in which I specify. Let's say however that we have a site-wide boosting strategy that promotes products based on conversion. If Ignore Boosting is not selected then the boosting strategy will be applied to my curated results.
Streamlined upgrade and deployment
For on-premise clients, the application deployment process has been streamlined allowing system administrators to quickly install or upgrade the application. The system's properties have been effectively separated from the application deployment such that a new version can be installed by simply deploying the war file to the container. Additionally, our reference application has been extensively reworked to highlight API interactions making it easier for client’s to integrate FindTuner with the storefront.
If you are looking to take your Solr-powered ecommerce website to the next level by utilizing merchandising techniques, please reach out to us for a demonstration or checkout our FindTuner page.
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