How to pin products for your browsing experience
Pinning products in the browsing experience lets you fix specific items into exact positions on category or collection pages, regardless of how they would organically rank.
When shoppers navigate to a category such as Sneakers, Dresses, or Winter Coats, pinned products will always appear in the chosen slots of the product category page (PCP), for example, the first row, while the rest of the items are ordered according to the usual browse logic. By configuring pin rules at category level, you can ensure key campaign pieces, hero products, or priority brands remain visible in top positions throughout browsing journeys without changing your underlying catalog data.
In Empathy Platform, pinning products on the browsing experience 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.
Pinning products for your browsing experience
Imagine your clothing store is promoting a new capsule collection of silk shirts on the Shirts category page. When shoppers browse this category, you want three hero silk shirts from the campaign to always appear in the first row, ahead of the rest of the assortment. You can pin these products to the top positions in the Shirts category so they consistently show first, while all other shirts continue to appear below, ordered by the default sort or relevance rules. This ensures your campaign items get maximum visibility in browsing journeys, while still keeping the full category offer available.
To pin these products in your browsing 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, "Silk shirts 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 bury configuration should apply to. For example, "category" and "shirt" 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 the products to be pinned.
- Click the + (plus) icon. The Pin product 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 always active.
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Review the steps in Scheduling a configuration to learn how to schedule product ranking configurations.
- Enter the product ID and indicate the position you want the product pinned. For this example, pin the product IDs "1666", "3673", and "10648" in positions 1, 2, and 5, respectively. Remember that you must do it one by one.
- Click the Pin button to add your configuration to the list.
- Alternatively, you can pin a product directly in the Preview section by hovering over a product's thumbnail in the results list and clicking the Pin button. The Pin product window opens so you can set the configuration. Then, the product is added to the list in the Pinned Products settings section and moved to the configured position.
In the Preview section, review the product ranking as it will appear to your 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.
Considerations when pinning products on the product category page (PCP)
You cannot boost, bury, or hide products that have already been pinned in a certain position or place two products in the same position. However, you can modify, schedule, or preview your pinned products as you do when boosting, burying, or hiding them.