How to boost product attributes for your browsing experience
Boosting product attributes in the browsing experience lets you highlight entire groups of items on category or collection pages based on shared characteristics such as brand, color, or material.
When shoppers browse a category like Dresses or Trainers, products that match boosted attributes can be configured to appear higher in the listing, while still respecting the natural relevance of the results. By applying boost rules to key attributes instead of individual products, you can consistently promote strategic ranges—such as a featured brand, trending colors, or campaign materials—across all relevant browse journeys in your storefront.
In Empathy Platform, product attributes boosting is managed from the Playboard using the Results Ranking management tool, so you can adjust product positions and immediately see the impact on the search results page.
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Willing to know more about all that you can do by using Results Ranking? Check the Results Ranking management tool page to discover it.
Boosting product attributes for your browsing experience
Imagine your clothing store is featuring a red color campaign across the Dresses category page to highlight your Valentine's Day collection. When shoppers browse the Dresses section without entering a search query, configuring attribute boosting for the "red" color value will make that all red dresses appear at the top of the product listing. This elevates your campaign items across the entire category efficiently, driving visibility for the promoted color without needing to boost each dress individually.
To boost this product attribute in your search experience, perform the following steps:
Open your Playboard and go to Play > Results Ranking.
Click the + New button in the top left corner to create a new Results Ranking configuration. The Configuration panel displays.
In the Details section, make sure the toggle button is switched on so that the configuration is active once it's saved.
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If you turn off the configuration, you can turn it on later using the action tools in the results ranking list screen.
Enter a name for your configuration. For example, "Valentine's Day campaign".
Select the endpoint your configuration relates to. In this case, select the Browse endpoint.
In the Endpoint section, indicate the attribute and the attribute value that the boost configuration should apply to. For example, "category" and "dress" respectively.
Select the desired options for the filters to customize the scenario for your configuration. Remember that the available filters depend on your implementation. For this example, select "English" for the Language filter.
In the Settings section, go to Product Ranking to configure a soft ranking. Soft ranking modifies product positioning by slightly increasing the score of products whose attributes are being boosted, causing them to appear higher in the results listing.
- Click the + (plus) icon. The Product ranking pop-up window appears.
- Choose whether the configuration should be always active or scheduled for a determined period. For this example, set the configuration to be active from January 15 until the end of February.
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Review the steps in Scheduling a configuration to learn how to schedule product ranking configurations.
- Select a product attribute and a value for it. You can search for the attributes and values to find the desired ones. If an attribute doesn't have any value available, you cannot create a configuration for it. In the example, the category is "color" and the value is "red".
- Click the Boost button to add the configuration to the list.
In the Preview section, review the product ranking as it will appear to shoppers. Optionally, enter a keyword in the search box to narrow down the results. You can also select a date to preview the results for a specific time and check product positions in real time based on your configuration. Results update automatically as you make changes to the configuration.
Once finished, click Save to apply the configuration. The saved configuration is displayed in the configuration list on the main Results Ranking screen.