Product name: Item Advisor

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Product reference number

305

Marketing Classification

Items information

System Main Classification

Publications

System Sub Classification

Website

General introduction

It is very important for the website visitor to find things on a website fast and easy. However, sometimes a simple search by an item name or its basic features will not be enough for your client's needs. They may wish to find items that fit a very specific set of criteria, and a simple search will be too broad for this purpose, forcing them to sift through many irrelevant results. The ContentForces Item Advisor component is a useful search instrument that helps your website visitor find appropriate items in a fast and easy way. The aim of this tool is to provide visitors with information tailored to their individual needs. While the majority of search tools only look for one feature per question, ContentForces Item Advisor allows your website visitors to request comprehensive and informative feedback by means of a limited number of general questions. The Item Advisor can help your website visitors locate an item even when they are not aware of all detailed specifications for that item. By using customized questions Item Advisor matches the items as closely to the visitor's preferences as possible.

Key benefits

Helps your website visitors locate appropriate items according to their needs.
Avoiding browsing the whole catalogue which saves your visitors' time.
Improves search effectiveness and increases sales by shortening the route between searching for items and purchasing them.
The website visitor does not need to know the items but has to clarify his needs.

Website visitor perspective

The website visitor is looking for a specific item but does not know which one will satisfy his needs best, therefore he decides to use the Item Advisor – he chooses one of the Item Groups (in case there is only one Item Group, no selection is necessary) and clicks on the Item Advisor link.
The visitor selects predefined answers to the Item Advisor's questions and a counter indicating the number of found items changes accordingly.
The website visitor sends the answer(s) by clicking the “Advise me” button.
He is redirected to an overview page with the Item Advisor's search results, matching the visitor's answers.

Website manager perspective

The results of the Item Advisor are displayed in a form of Item Overview (results sorted automatically). If there is only one item found, then the Visitor may be redirected either to the Item Overview with one item only or directly to the Item Detail page.
The difference between Item Advisor and Item Selector is that the former provides search results based on complex search criteria which are combinations of item properties. The latter is a simpler search tool which allows only for one-to-one correspondence between a search criterion and item property. Consequently, in Item Advisor, one predefined answer e.g. “for rainy weather” contains answers to multiple questions which are all covered by one, more general question (e.g. the general question “What type of jacket are you looking for?” covers such questions as “Does it need a hood?”, “What kind of material does it need?”, “Should it be waterproof?”).
In the implementation process a selection of the type of “Advise me” button has to be made: whether it can be pressed with all questions answered or if it can be pressed with a few questions answered.
At the beginning of the implementation process there is a choice of question display types for the Item Advisor that offers the following features:

Features

Item Advisor may advise:
- Items
- Item variants
- Items and Item variants
The answers for Item Advisor's questions narrow the options for further questions (optional).
The answers for questions may be sorted manually - other than the default alphabetical one – if e.g. you want to have a certain answer first on the list (optional).