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Sep 28, 2022 | 7 minute read

Simplifying Merchandising with Latest Product Innovations

written by Abisola Adeyemo


At Elastic Path, we aim to empower merchandisers to merchandise without limits and deliver differentiated commerce experiences across channels & touchpoints with ease. We want merchandisers to have the control to create and manage unlimited catalogs, variations, promotions, pricing strategies and more with speed and without reliance on custom workarounds and development work. That is why our product and engineering teams have been working hard to deliver innovative features and merchandising capabilities within Elastic Path Commerce Cloud that support merchandisers’ needs.

Recent updates include:

  • Dynamic Bundles
  • Hierarchy-Based Promotions 
  • Catalog Release Management
  • Filtering

With the release of these new features, Elastic Path is simplifying the lives of merchandisers so they meet their complex eCommerce merchandising requirements across every route-to-market, geography, and business model.


Dynamic Bundles 


According to the Global Consumer Report: Current and Future Shopping Trends, 55% of consumers shop online at least once a week. As commerce continues to grow and evolve, consumers expect a seamless shopping experience and online store features that empower them with the freedom and flexibility to shop as they please. With EP Product Experience Manager  (PXM) dynamic bundles, shoppers have the freedom to choose their own options in a bundle. Traditional bundles restrict customers to a prepacked grouping of products. With dynamic bundles for instance, shoppers are able to select 1 or more product options from a list of 10. 

This is done by configuring a minimum and/or maximum values for the number of products in a component that your shoppers can select. For example, a beauty brand could have a bundle where they sell 4 makeup products for a single price and your customers could select which 4 items from a list of 10 they would like. If you are looking to create a bundle promotion, add a SKU with the specific sale price for the bundle. The price will be auto calculated in Commerce Manager if no price is populated for the SKU. If a SKU is not on the bundle, the bundle price will be calculated by adding each product together. This level of freedom and flexibility will increase customer satisfaction and retention in this highly competitive commerce market.


Hierarchy-Based Promotions 


As a merchandiser, we understand that having the proper product and catalog management is critical to your promotion strategy, so you can spend less time on manual processes and start launching differentiated commerce experiences with speed. Whether you’re merchandising products for big events like “Back to School” or “Black Friday” it can be tedious to manually include and exclude products to create the specific promotion that you desire. That’s why we have developed hierarchy-based promotions to target a specific group of products to promote without the manual work of including and excluding. By definition, a hierarchy is a tree structure with a root node and descendant nodes. They determine which products are included within a catalog. With hierarchy-based promotions, you can promote existing hierarchies, or create your own specific hierarchy to promote products. You also have the ability to add products to those existing hierarchies you’d like to promote.  With the ability to easily select any group of products for promotions, you’ll be able to save time and launch these sales strategies with speed.

 

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Catalog Release Management


In your day-to-day as a merchandiser, we know you’re balancing a heavy workload with a myriad of changes being made to your product catalog management system. Whether you’re merchandising independently or working asynchronously with a team, it’s important to gain real-time insight into the updates to your catalogs. Elastic Path Commerce Cloud catalog release manager helps you understand the changes that are being made to your products. A catalog release is the storefront or shopper experience that exists when you publish a catalog. With the catalog release management functionality, you are able to look at the top 3 most recent catalog releases. As a merchandiser, you’re able to gain a granular view of the changes that have been made to the website and delete any or all of the releases. 


Filtering


As a merchandiser, navigating the exact information you need in your catalog management system can be challenging. With hundreds of products to sift through, do you ever wish there was a simpler way to find what you need quickly? We aim to alleviate these concerns and make your lives easier. You now have the ability to filter for every core attribute for products in Elastic Path Commerce Cloud. This means you can now filter products by SKU, description and slug with product attribute filtering coming in the near future. We want merchandisers to spend less time searching and more time creating innovative commerce experiences.

We will always continue to create innovative products that support merchandisers, so they can focus on driving revenue and results instead of worrying about the limitations of a rigid commerce solution. Our product and engineering teams are working to launch new products and functionalities to simplify your lives and re-imagine product merchandising. Follow our change log, to stay up-to-date on all of our latest product innovations.