Facets are the categories your catalog items are grouped by depending on their characteristics, attributes, or attribute values (such as price, brand, topic, creation date, etc.). Dive deeper into how the facets’ configuration can make your business excel with the new dedicated Manage catalog product categorization with Facets page.
You can now learn how to configure the facets that your business displays depending on the experience you want to provide to people: configure a query and its related facets for the search experience or configure a category and its value for the browse experience. With the Facets Management tool of the Playboard, you can edit the existing facets details as well, setting up Value sorting or Metadata configurations, among others. Check this new guide to learn more about how to do so and elevate your business search and discovery experiences!
November 4, 2024
Analytics and Insights tools’ entire catalog
Thanks to their dedicated documentation, you can now explore the entire catalog 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.ai map: GenAI layer added
The Interact with Empathy.ai map is one of the most visited
sections since it unveils in a simplified, visual, and accessible way the whole Empathy.ai's
structure. From now on, this interactive map has a new member on board: the
GenAI layer.
The GenAI layer page explains how the AI-powered search 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 individuals’ 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 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 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 individuals' 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 search and discovery
and to check the actions performed in the Playboard by users in your organization.
July 5, 2024
Try the 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.ai'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 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 catalog 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.ai enhancements. The
Semantics’ power has been applied to the main capabilities, features, and tools of the
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 business (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 business, Explain now displays the
Semantics recommendations people 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 catalog 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.ai 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.ai
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 people 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
individual’s results list.
Find more details about how the power of Semantics API can be directly applied to your search
configurations by leveraging
Synonyms suggestions
and
Semantics Recommendations,
reducing people’s 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 catalog 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 individuals launch a query in your business, they expect to have relevant and accurate results
that quickly meet their needs making them feel understood. Relevance is your secret weapon to
provide people with a seamless and efficient search experience and achieve your business goals.
Visit the new
Approach relevance in 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 individuals' interactions with your business
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.
Onboard Empathy.ai, the ultimate step-by-step guide
When you first hear about Empathy.ai, 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.ai 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 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.ai is; what you exactly need to get started; how your
catalog is indexed; how to enable your search experience; how the 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 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 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 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 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 catalog indexing
The indexing of your product catalog is one of the first and most important steps to provide a
satisfactory search and discovery experience for people when interacting with your business. From
now on, you can monitor and manage the index jobs related to your catalog feeds thanks to the
new Index section created in the Instance Management Console (IMC) of the Playboard.
Check the brand new
Manage your product catalog indexing
page created that describes the Index section of the IMC. You will find a list with the latest index
jobs executed over your catalog 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 catalog feeds but don’t know how to do so.
June 9, 2023
Speak people's language with Synonyms
People 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
Synonyms feature help you avoid
individual frustration in an easy and effective way by using queries with a similar meaning to a
term that appears in your product catalog. 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 individuals’ anonymized behavioral information and
your product catalog 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 business 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 individual'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 catalog in Empathy.ai
For the product catalog to be available in the business, 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.ai features to consume your product data. Explore the new
Index your product catalog section to
discover how Empathy.ai indexes your product catalog and how indexing is the first step to
designing your business content and navigation!
The Index your product catalog section gets you started with the steps, architecture, and
tools of the
catalog 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 business. 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 individuals’ 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 people 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 Playboard help you customize the individuals’ search
experience and adapt it to individuals. You can
anticipate the next move
of your individuals or
fine-tune their search
by modifying the suggestions organically generated based on previous anonymous individuals'
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 individuals throughout
their search journey in your business. Still don't see the usability of curated Related Tags or Next
Queries?
Check this use case.
October 6, 2022
Configure Empathy.ai 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.ai using Instance
Management.
Display individuals' search history with My History
When dealing with huge product catalogs, individuals may find it difficult to reach a determined
product they liked in the past but can’t remember the search query they launched. Providing
individuals with a way to access the complete list of searches made on your business was the initial
milestone in the development of My History. But, in the quest to preserve individuals' privacy, you
can even help your individuals 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 individuals can do. Then, you can move on to the frontend side to check all the
UI options for designing
the best individual 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 individuals 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 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 business
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 individuals with ideas on what to look for next based on
collective intent. It offers a personalized and almost conversational experience for individuals
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 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 business can be very challenging.
Insights, the Playboard feature, includes
a set of sophisticated, useful data visualizations to provide a better understanding of individuals’
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 individual’s expectations.
Terms allows you to trace
trends in search queries by showing the most popular and fastest-growing terms used by individuals.
Its striking stream graph, paired with the flexibility to search for trends in different time
ranges, lets you anticipate individuals’ needs and make a meaningful impact on their shopping
experience.
Additionally, learn more about the
Playboard and the many different tools
that it presents.
December 16, 2021
Understanding your search results with Explain
Success in 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 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 catalog 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.ai. Empathy.ai's Tagging
microservice is responsible for collecting and aggregating individual interaction in your business
to transform it into actionable data.
To integrate Tagging in your business, you need to send events to the Tagging API every time a
individual interacts with your business 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 individual 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 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.ai
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
interactive map and learn more about the science behind Empathy.ai's
microservices. Refresh your knowledge about search basics in the search & discovery
overview, explore the multiple
features that you can combine as you like, find out how
capture individual 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 individual interaction
Providing relevant results and suggestions is key for an effective search experience. But Empathy.ai
lets you track individual interactions to offer better suggestions based on the wisdom of the crowd.
Gather information when individuals 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 search experience.
Whether the interaction comes from search or navigation, you can track them in Empathy.ai. Check out
the
Capture individual Interaction
section.
April 8, 2021
Interface X & X Components are here!
If search is the front door to your product catalog, 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.ai!
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 the new Empathy.ai
portal.
Here you’ll find key information about Empathy.ai’s features with 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.
