Automated Merchandising Rules: What Actually Works
Rules that automatically order products on category pages, such as promoting best sellers or pushing out-of-stock items down.
Marcus Adeyemi
The key figures
- Sort rules
- can combine sales, margin, stock and recency
- Stock awareness
- out-of-stock products should not lead pages
- New products
- need exposure before they have sales data
- Overrides
- manual pins handle campaigns and launches
Why this is worth getting right
Manual merchandising does not scale, and automated rules keep collection pages commercially sensible.
Do this, not that
Do
- Define rules per collection type
- Demote out-of-stock products automatically
- Give new products a visibility window
- Allow manual pins for campaigns
- Review rule outcomes regularly
Don’t
- Static manual ordering across a big catalog
- Sold-out products at the top
- Rules that bury new products
- Automation nobody audits
When to bring in help
Our advice Bring in help when category pages underperform.
Where this comes from
- Shopify Help Center — Collections
- Baymard Institute — E-commerce search usability research
The figures and practices above come from the sources listed.
Working on something like this?
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Where to go next
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