Thanks to their dedicated documentation, you can now explore the entire catalogue of Empathy Platform’s Analytics and Insights features. These powerful features enable analysts to track performance, understand shopper behavior, and make data-driven decisions to enhance the search and discovery journey.
The Overall analytics tool provides a broad view of search evolution, allowing tracking of essential metrics such as clicks, click-through rate (CTR), add-to-cart actions, and checkouts. This feature gives a high-level understanding of your search performance over time. With the Queries analytics tool, you can dive deep into query-specific metrics. It offers insights into all queries, queries with results, and queries that yield no results. This granular view helps identify areas for improvement in your search functionality.
The Now insights feature offers real-time exploration of people’s queries and their performance regarding results and clicks. This tool is invaluable for staying on top of current trends and quickly responding to emerging search patterns. Categories insights focus on the performance of each item category. This tool interactively displays and lists category data per query, allowing you to understand which categories are performing well and which might need intervention.
The Origins insights tool helps you understand the source of people’s searches. It distinguishes between organic searches, predictive searches, and refinement features, giving you a clear picture of how individuals are interacting with your search functionality. With Terms insights, you can detect popular terms used in search queries. This feature is crucial for anticipating people’s needs and providing relevant suggestions, ultimately improving the search experience. The Semantics insights tool analyzes how semantic search capabilities reduce the occurrence of no or low results for queries and increase people’s interactions. This feature helps you understand the impact of advanced search technologies on your platform.
In addition to search-specific tools, Empathy Platform also offers Navigation Metrics analytics. This feature allows you to explore people’s navigation journeys and scan key performance indicators (KPIs) such as views, clicks, findability, and add-to-cart actions for your business navigation performance.
September 20, 2024
Interact with Empathy Platform map: GenAI layer added
The Interact with Empathy Platform map is one of the most visited sections of the EPDocs portal since it unveils in a simplified, visual, and accessible way the whole structure of the Empathy Platform product. From now on, this interactive map has a new member on board: the GenAI layer.
The GenAI layer page explains how the Empathy Platform's AI-powered search and discovery experiences work. Several subpages dive deep into the different elements within. To start, there’s a dedicated page for the open-weight large language models (LLMs) on which these AI technologies are based, explaining what they are.
These LLMs pass through multiple fine-tuning and feedback processes to become custom-weight LLMs, which better understand the shoppers’ queries and elaborate AI-generated responses with higher relevance and accuracy. Check the dedicated page for them to find more. Lastly, the page dedicated to API embeddings is crucial to closing the circle and understanding the concepts and architecture of the Empathy Platform GenAI tech. Are you going to miss it?
August 5, 2024
Playboard’s Discovery tab moved to the main menu
The Discovery and Search tabs on the left-side menu panel of the Empathy Platform Playboard have been unified in a joint panel. The two elements belonging to the Discovery tab have been renamed and moved, following the principle of usability and accessibility for the merchandisers.
The Insights - Overall feature continues to be within the Insights section but has been renamed Navigation Metrics. The functionality hasn’t been modified, so it works exactly as it was, just placed in a different section. Navigation metrics is used to scan shoppers' navigation with metrics such as views, click position, CRT, and add2cart, among others.
The Play - Configuration tool is now accessible directly from the side panel under the new name Browse - Configuration. Again, the functionality hasn’t been modified, so it works exactly as it was, just placed in a different section. You can use Browse - Configuration to modify facet names and boost and bury products and product attributes on the product listing page (PLP) to fine-tune the navigation experience.
My Highlights and Activity Stream were common features for search and discovery tabs, so they’ve been kept the same. This allows you to have a dashboard with a customized and actionable experience to make the most of your commerce search and discovery and to check the actions performed in the Playboard by users in your organization.
July 5, 2024
Try the Empathy Platform Self-managed Components
Self-managed Components (SmC) are an essential set of capabilities, functionalities, and tools that developers can deploy, test, and customize to try the Empathy Platform's privacy-minded search and discovery experiences on their own infrastructure. Check the new Discover Self-managed Components overview to get a bird's-eye view of what is SmC and the essential elements within.
The Try the Empathy Platform Self-managed Components new technical section has been created to help you get the most of the developer's SmC package. This section encompasses the first steps to start enjoying the Empathy search and discovery experiences, how the experiences can be personalized, and a detailed explanation of their architecture.
As a starting point, you have the Download, deploy, and enjoy Self-managed Components new page, devoted to explaining how to deploy and run the SmC in any machine. But the SmC possibilities don't end here. You can personalize several elements of this package's search and discovery experiences, such as the catalogue and some of the search configurations. Explore how to do so in the Customize the Self-managed Components' experience new page. On the Unveil the Self-managed Components ecosystem new page, you can explore the architecture of the SmC package to discover its ins and outs in a more detailed way.
June 29, 2024
Semantics capabilities harnessed in the Playboard
Semantics offers a huge range of possibilities when it comes to Empathy Platform enhancements. The Semantics’ power has been applied to the main capabilities, features, and tools of the Empathy Platform Playboard, which now uses the meaning and context relationships between terms to create better search and discovery experiences.
Semantics is used as a fallback mechanism for queries with zero or low results because it generates relevant product suggestions based on semantic affinities with the original query. Once Semantics is applied to zero- or low-result queries, the query performance improves with a consequent increase in interactions gained in the commerce store (such as clicks, add-to-carts, and checkouts). The Visualize query performance with Semantics new page details how merchandisers can analyze the query performance enhancement thanks to the new Semantics dataviz feature added to the Insights section of the Playboard.
To bring merchandisers closer to real experiences in their commerce store, Explain now displays the Semantics recommendations their shoppers get when a query does not return results. Keep on reading the Visualizing Semantics results new section added to the Understand search results using Explain page to know more.
In addition, merchandisers can now configure the Semantics microservice's settings and capabilities, such as Semantics recommendations carousels and catalogue enrichment. Check out the Configure the Semantics microservice new page to learn how to do so via the Semantics section of the Playboard’s Instance Management Console.
April 30, 2024
Semantics API & Vector search capabilities
The Empathy Platform API documentation keeps on growing with its revolutionary latest addition: Semantics API. This API exposes all the possibilities of the vector and semantic understanding to apply them to the Empathy Platform capabilities.
The purposes of using the Semantics API are unlimited, and some of them are directly related to offering more valuable and relevant experiences to your shoppers considering their semantic intent. Read the Understand vectors & Semantics section to know more about how Semantics API can identify semantically similar terms to the query entered and use them in a hybrid search (vector & keyword) to include more relevant products in your shopper’s results list.
Find more details about how the power of Semantics API can be directly applied to your commerce search configurations by leveraging Synonyms suggestions and Semantics Recommendations, reducing shoppers’ frustration when facing no results, or increasing product findability when returning low results. But it doesn’t end here, Semantics API also does an exceptional work behind the scenes with the product catalogue enrichment, adding new attributes and values that enhance your shopping experience. These and more examples are encompassed in the Experience AI-powered vector search page.
When shoppers launch a query in your commerce store, they expect to have relevant and accurate results that quickly meet their needs making them feel understood. Relevance is your secret weapon to provide your shoppers with a seamless and efficient search experience and achieve your business goals.
Visit the new Approach relevance in commerce search landing page created to understand how engineers, merchandisers, and retailers can benefit from the optimization of relevance in search and product results. Navigate then through its two brand new sub-pages to learn more about how to Enhance search relevance with Contextualize and Enhance search relevance with Artificial Intelligence. With the first, discover how the annonymized shoppers' interactions with your commerce store determine the organically generated product relevance ranking. With the second, explore how Learning-to-rank mechanisms and Generative AI participate in the product ranking enhancement, together with explicit feedback judgments.
Content archiecture renewal in Empathy Platform Docs
Empathy Platform is a continuously evolving search and discovery engine and so is its related functional and technical documentation. Since new features and tools added to Empathy Platform require new documentation aiming to explain what they are and how to use them, Empathy Platform Docs was crying out for a content architecture renewal.
With this renewal, the content is now divided into four main sections instead of two. Find out what this platform is, the search and discovery's basic and main features, and interact with its different elements in Understand Empathy Platform. Acknowledge the very first steps you follow when you Onboard Empathy Platform. Discover the Playboard and how to get the most out of your commerce store in Play with Empathy Platform. Last but not least, don’t forget about the Develop Empathy Platform section to discover technical documentation on how to build your search, capture interactions, and the UI and API references, among other docs.
September 8, 2023
Onboard Empathy Platform, the ultimate step-by-step guide
When you first hear about Empathy Platform, you may feel a bit lost. This search and discovery experience can seem overwhelming at an early stage. However, nothing could be more untrue. That’s the reason why the Onboard Empathy Platform new section has been created, where you will find a step-by-step guide with the basic information you need to know to elevate your commerce search business.
You are walked through six steps in which you learn the basics of the journey you’re about to embark on: first, understand what Empathy Platform is; what you exactly need to get started; how your product catalogue is indexed; how to enable your search experience; how the Empathy Platform Playboard is implemented and how to use it; and, finally, how to deploy your UI Experience. Along the onboarding page, you can see the actors involved in every step of the way and have access to related pages that will help you expand your knowledge on each topic.
August 11, 2023
My Highlights, the new Playboard homepage dashboard
The Empathy Platform Playboard has different search and discovery configuration features, together with other tools, such as Insights, Analytics or Explain, that help you make the most of your commerce search and discovery experience. Now you can obtain a complete view of what the playboard has to offer you at a glance with My Highlights, the new homepage for the EP Playboard.
Go to the My Highlights overview in Empathy Platform Docs to get a clear picture of this new homepage dashboard, which provides a customized and actionable experience always adapted to the access granted by your role and permissions. You have at your disposal a view filter offering you a more personalized experience and several customizable widgets that help you check what’s happening in your commerce search and take action accordingly. Don't forget to check the Getting started with Playboard overview to see all the features and tools offered.
July 28, 2023
Monitor and manage your product catalogue indexing
The indexing of your product catalogue is one of the first and most important steps to provide a satisfactory search and discovery experience for shoppers when interacting with your commerce store. From now on, you can monitor and manage the index jobs related to your catalogue feeds thanks to the new Index section created in the Instance Management Console (IMC) of the Empathy Platform Playboard.
Check the brand new Manage your product catalogue indexing page created that describes the Index section of the IMC. You will find a list with the latest index jobs executed over your catalogue feeds and details as the documents read and written, the job status, the date when the indexing took place and how long it took. The list can be filtered by Feed ID and Status and is updated every minute. You can go directly to the Submitting a job section if you want to update one of your catalogue feeds but don’t know how to do so.
June 9, 2023
Speak your shoppers' language with Synonyms
Shoppers don’t use the same words to describe the same thing in one part of the world or another, even if they speak the same language. Sometimes, the query they use to look for something returns unmeaningful results or no results at all. This is when the Empathy Platform Synonyms feature help you avoid shopper frustration in an easy and effective way by using queries with a similar meaning to a term that appears in your product catalogue. The new Synonyms suggestions with Semantics API section added to the Synonyms overview introduces you into the vector semantics model this API uses to create suggestions for your queries based on shoppers’ anonymized behavioral information and your product catalogue data.
With the Define synonyms with Synonymize new page, you can start managing exact synonyms and one-way synonyms that can be used in your commerce store to provide relevant product results for a query.
June 2, 2023
Boost and bury products and attributes with Query Ranking
That is a fact, the more accurate and effective products are ranked in the results list, the better the shopper's experience. Check the new page devoted to the Query Ranking management tool, which offers you the ability to fine-tune your search capabilities and send items to the beginning or end of the results list. Boost or bury products or product attribute values to modify their position once the search query is entered. The Product Ranking and Attribute Ranking pages provide precise and updated details about how you can override organic product scoring for individual or group products in a single click.
As soon as you understand not only the difference between product and attribute ranking, but also between them and Equalize management tool, you can start playing with Query Ranking configurations. And don’t forget to try to boost or bury several products at a time with the Quick Boosting functionality.
June 2, 2023
Get updated on product scoring criteria
Why is a product in a certain position or why is it positioned higher than other similar products on the SERP? Check the updated Product Scoring page to understand perfectly which organic and configurable elements affect product scoring calculation. Check the updated sections for equalize, query ranking, and customization, as they are the new scoring criteria that participate in determining the overall product scoring.
Whenever you’re ready, jump into the reviewed Explain overview page and explore how, together with the previous ones, these new scoring criteria affect the product overall scoring and its position on the results list.
Don’t forget to go to the updated Understand search results using Explain page to discover the visual representation and explanation of how organic and configurable scoring criteria affect each product scoring and ranking.
April 7, 2023
Index your product catalogue in Empathy Platform
For the product catalogue to be available in the commerce store, it's necessary to index the products in the search engine. By feeding product information to the search engine, you're also setting the groundwork for Empathy Platform features to consume your product data. Explore the new Index your product catalogue section in Empathy Platform Docs to discover how Empathy Platform indexes your product catalogue and how indexing is the first step to designing your commerce store content and navigation!
The Index your product catalogue section gets you started with the steps, architecture, and tools of the catalogue indexing process and provides guidelines for translating external product data into a feed file, which is the file used by the Index microservice to transform external data into data usable by the search engine. Check also the Explore your data model page to raise awareness about how fields of the feed file are consumed by the Search engine to directly feed data to its features (e.g. Query Search, Equalize, Product Ranking).
April 7, 2023
Manage product attributes' ranking criteria with Equalize
Give the color attribute more importance than other specific product features or place products with no stock last in the search results page of your commerce store. The new Tailor product attributes weighting with Equalize page guides you on how to determine which product attributes the search engine considers more relevant when ranking them in the results page.
Check the Equalize in two different ways new section of the Equalize overview page to see the differences between the basic Equalize and the Multiequalize functionalities. The three scoring criteria configurable with Multiequalize, textual match, global business rules, and function score, are also there explained. In the Setting up Playboard features section, you find more information about how to choose between Equalize or Multiequalize for your instance. Start playing with Equalize by creating a new Multiequalize configuration.
March 14, 2023
Customize shoppers’ journey with Curation Tools
The search experience delivered to a customer is key for all brands, since it shows their values and understanding of individuals. Offer your shoppers a joyful and customized journey that may provoke emotions and experiences matching both their expectations and your business strategy.
The Curation Management Tools within the Empathy Platform Playboard help you customize the shoppers’ search experience and adapt it to individuals. You can anticipate the next move of your shoppers or fine-tune their search by modifying the suggestions organically generated based on previous anonymous shoppers' searches. You can create or delete curated Next Queries or Related Tags and show or hide the organically created ones. By doing so, you can orientate shoppers throughout their search journey in your commerce store. Still don't see the usability of curated Related Tags or Next Queries? Check this use case.
October 6, 2022
Configure Empathy Platform using Instance Management
Building memorable search and discovery experiences involves streamlining the deployment process. Partners now have all the information they need to implement Empathy Platform using Instance Management.
When dealing with huge product catalogues, shoppers may find it difficult to reach a determined product they liked in the past but can’t remember the search query they launched. Providing shoppers with a way to access the complete list of searches made on your commerce store was the initial milestone in the development of My History. But, in the quest to preserve shoppers' privacy, you can even help your shoppers take control of their own search history.
Now that My History has been released for web and Android, all the related information you may need is now available! Start with an overview of the feature and learn all the things your shoppers can do. Then, you can move on to the frontend side to check all the UI options for designing the best shopper experience. Lastly, share with your development team the very technical in and outs they can find in the Interface X Components UI Reference.
July 14, 2022
Feature promotions on the SERP with the Playboard
When dealing with long lists of search results, you may want to highlight and promote certain search results on the SERP to redirect shoppers to specific products, product categories, or even promotional landing pages meeting your business needs. Promotions is then the perfect feature for you!
Taking advantage of the new release of the Promotion management tool in the Empathy Platform Playboard, now you have available the new Feature promotions on the SERP page. It describes all the steps and tips for successfully configuring a promotion in your commerce store search.
Regardless of the promotion type, you learn how to create or edit a promotion, schedule it for a determined period, turn it off temporarily, and even locate it in the best position for your promotion to stand out.
February 10, 2022
Craft the next queries experience
You already know that Next Queries provide shoppers with ideas on what to look for next based on collective intent. It offers a personalized and almost conversational experience for shoppers that fully respects privacy, since no personal data is used in generating the suggestions. But also you want to meet your business objectives.
Now you can learn how to do it with the instructions provided on Configure Next Queries. You learn how to use the Next Queries management tool in the Empathy Platform Playboard to craft the next queries experience to your business requirements, choosing which organic next queries to show for a query and creating new curated next queries based on merchandising criteria.
Remember that you can learn more about organic next queries and curated next queries in the Next Queries overview.
January 13, 2022
Be inspired by data visualizations with Insights
Viewing all the search and navigation data generated in your commerce store can be very challenging. Insights, the Empathy Platform Playboard feature, includes a set of sophisticated, useful data visualizations to provide a better understanding of shoppers’ behavior. Now, Origins, and Terms are three dataviz solutions that represent data in a way that helps you to make informed decisions to best meet shopper’s expectations.
Terms allows you to trace trends in search queries by showing the most popular and fastest-growing terms used by shoppers. Its striking stream graph, paired with the flexibility to search for trends in different time ranges, lets you anticipate shoppers’ needs and make a meaningful impact on their shopping experience.
Additionally, learn more about the Empathy Platform Playboard and the many different tools that it presents.
December 16, 2021
Understanding your search results with Explain
Success in commerce Search & Discovery calls for powerful tooling to configure and customize your search experience, particularly your search results. With the Explain tool, commerce merchandisers and marketers working with your Playboard in Empathy Platform can get the full picture of what is happening in your search experience. Find out why a product appears in a certain position, how products are scored and which factors, like business rules or wisdom of the crowd, contribute to moving a product up or down in the ranking. View how complex configurations impact catalogue performance. Explore the information shown in the Explain tool to easily understand how product scoring breaks down and take action on what you see with the Optimize options.
Understanding the what, why, and how of your search results is easy with Explain.
November 18, 2021
Integrate tagging events using the Tagging API
Capturing relevant interaction data for generating relevant search suggestions and analytics without storing profiling or location information is one of the pillars of Empathy Platform. Empathy Platform’s tagging microservice is responsible for collecting and aggregating shopper interaction in your commerce store to transform it into actionable data.
To integrate Empathy Platform tagging in your commerce store, you need to send events to the tagging API every time a shopper interacts with your store by clicking on a search result or adding a product to the cart. Check out what you need to know before integrating tagging in Prepare to capture shopper interaction.
Once you know what information you need, discover the ways you can integrate with the Tagging API and access the Tagging API reference documentation for a more detailed description of the endpoints and query parameters.
October 21, 2021
Extend the Search experience with Interface X for Apps!
Building an incredible search UI is not limited to web applications, but should extend to native apps. Interface X for Apps is the perfect solution to create your Empathy Platform search UI in native apps. Interface X for Apps is currently available for Android and will be available for iOS shortly. Interface X for Apps includes multiple X Components for Android, with more being added over time. Some of the components that are currently available include Search Box, Query Suggestions, Related Tags, Next Queries, and History Queries. Check out more about the features offered by Interface X in Experience search & discovery and Build your Search UI for native apps to find out more about integrating Interface X for Apps in your native apps.
July 30, 2021
Discover Empathy Platform
Unsure what’s the difference between popular searches and recommendations? Don’t quite know how to prevent zero results? Explore the different parts of the search experience from the Empathy Platform interactive map and learn more about the science behind Empathy Platform’s microservices. Refresh your knowledge about search basics in the search & discovery overview, explore the multiple features offered by Empathy Platform that you can combine as you like, find out how capture shopper interaction in your shop, and see how to translate the features into an outstanding, well-structured and optimised search UI.
But the learning doesn’t stop there… Check back regularly for new articles, tips and tricks, and ideas on how to get the most from your search & discovery solution.
May 19, 2021
Get better suggestions by capturing shopper interaction
Providing relevant results and suggestions is key for an effective commerce search experience. But Empathy Platform lets you track shopper interactions to offer better suggestions based on the wisdom of the crowd. Gather information when shoppers interact with the search box, click on a product from the results page, or add a product to cart to enrich the suggestions and recommendations in your store. Whether the interaction comes from search or navigation, you can track them in Empathy Platform. Check out the Capture Shopper Interaction section.
April 8, 2021
Interface X & X Components are here!
If search is the front door to your product catalogue, then Interface X can make your door stand out from the rest! Discover Interface X, our open-source search interface layer for desktop and mobile. Find out more about the various X Components available and the architecture, and learn how to incorporate them in your development. You can even take a peak at our UI Reference documentation for X Components, including the Query Suggestions and Search Box modules, among others. We’re still working on offering you comprehensive information on all components, so more to follow soon! Check out the open-source project on GitHub(opens new window).
March 30, 2021
Welcome to the Empathy Platform Docs portal!
Digital empathy is part of our identity. We strongly believe in giving control to our customers, revealing with clarity how and why a feature does what it does. So it’s a no-brainer that we want to be transparent about our solution too. That’s why we’re delighted to present our new self-service documentation portal Empathy Platform Docs.
Here you’ll find key information about the platform’s features: interactive diagrams and in-depth explanations so you understand what goes on in the background, recommendations on how to combine features, access to our APIs so your developers can leverage the platform’s features while remaining in control of the development, and clean code examples to get you started on the right track.
