When displaying product recommendations on a Product Detail Page (PDP), you often want to combine different types of suggestions. The art is to show the right mix of products to inspire the visitor. To achieve this, you use Group-keys (also known as Grouping Codes).
A Group-key is a unique code that you assign to multiple Up- & Cross-selling rules. By doing this, you indicate that you want to fetch these different rules together and display them in a single recommendation block on your website.
How does it work?
Imagine you want to display a "Complete the Look" block on the product page of a pair of trousers. You want this block to show a balanced mix of different product groups rather than just sweaters.
You create several different rules and give them the same code in the settings (for example: women or complete-the-look).
Determining priority and order
Within a grouping, you determine the order of the rules using the Priority setting. This works as follows:
The order: Rules are called based on their priority.
Number of products: If you set a limit of 1 product per rule, you will get a block with diverse products (for example, a mix of a sweater, blazer, and blouse).
Multiple products per rule: Suppose a rule with high priority returns 3 products. Those 3 products will be displayed first before the system moves on to the products from the next rule in the group.
Multiple keys per rule
You can add multiple group-keys to a single recommendation rule. This is useful if you want to use the same logic for different purposes, such as for both a general 'Cross-sell' and a specific 'Complete the Look' block. This saves time because you have fewer rules to manage.
In the module overview, you can immediately see which codes are linked to which rule. This allows you to maintain full control over which rules are working together.
Why use group-keys?
Manageability: You can set up different rules per category (e.g., for 'Shoes' or 'Clothing') but call them in the front-end using the same code. This means your developer only needs to set up the integration once.
Conversion: You enforce variation in your recommendations, which increases the chance of a visitor finding a relevant item they might have otherwise overlooked.
Flexibility: You can easily add rules to a group or change priorities without needing to adjust the technical integration on the website.
Best Practice: Agree on a standard format for your group-keys (for example, all lowercase: cross-sell-pdp). This keeps things organized as your webshop and the number of rules grow.