How a Sorting Rule Works
A sorting rule is a formula over ranking signals. For every product in a collection it calculates a score, and the collection is ordered from the highest score to the lowest. Pinned products keep their positions; everything else follows the score.
A rule can be as simple as one signal, such as newest first, or it can weigh several signals against each other.
Example
Weekly demand, available sizes first
- Weekly sales
- Weekly add-to-carts
- Weekly views
- Size availability
Signals a Rule Can Use
The demand signals are available for three periods: the last day, the last week and the last month.
- Views
- How often the product was viewed. Daily, weekly or monthly.
- Add to cart
- How often the product was added to a cart. Daily, weekly or monthly.
- Sales
- How many units were purchased. Daily, weekly or monthly.
- Revenue
- The revenue the product generated. Daily, weekly or monthly.
- Conversion rate
- The conversion rate of the product. Daily, weekly or monthly.
- Availability
- Whether the product is in stock, and its size availability: the share of its sizes that are in stock.
- Stock
- How many units are in stock.
- Price and discount
- The sale price and the discount rate.
- Days on market
- How long the product has been listed, which is what new-arrival rules are built on.
- Product attributes
- Brand, category, sub-category and season, for example to favor the current season.
Stock and Size Availability
A product can be in stock and still be a poor choice for the first row, because the sizes most customers want are gone. Merchandiser tracks this as size availability: the share of a product's sizes that are in stock.
Rules can use it together with stock units and in-stock status, so sold-out and thinly stocked products move down the page. The panel also flags a product as Size Broken when 30% or fewer of its sizes are in stock.
Predefined and Custom Rules
Merchandiser comes with predefined rules for common strategies: ranking by sales, revenue, traffic, conversion rate or new arrivals.
When your strategy needs its own weighting, a custom rule is set up for your store by our team. You describe the strategy, we build the rule from the signals above, and it appears in your panel as a sort option. The plans show which of them include custom rules.
Other Ways to Sort a Collection
- Merchandiser AI. A model trained on your store's data ranks the collection by predicted sales potential. See how Merchandiser AI works.
- Similar-product grouping. Products of the same family are kept side by side and in size order, and the family is placed by its strongest performer.
- Manual order. You arrange the products yourself. A manually sorted collection is never re-sorted automatically.
A Schedule for Every Collection
Each collection has its own sort frequency, from every hour to once a month. A fast-moving category can be re-sorted often while a stable one is left alone for longer.
The shortest interval depends on your plan:
- Standard: daily sorting.
- Professional: sorting every 3 hours.
- Premium: hourly sorting.
New collections start with the default rule and frequency of your account, and both can be changed for many collections in one step.
Preview Before You Apply
On a collection's sort page you can switch to another rule and see the resulting order. A preview changes nothing on your store; the new order is applied only when you save.
Which Pages Can Be Sorted
Sorting works on category pages, brand pages, product lists, pages and widgets. The ranking is calculated on Merchandiser's servers and then sent to your store platform.