A merchandising strategy saves a reusable setup for collections. The app calls it Collection strategies when Ultimate Collection Manager and Collection Sort & Manage are both installed, and Sorting strategies when only Collection Sort & Manage is installed. Use one when several collections should follow the same approach to merchandising.
What a strategy controls
A strategy can contain a sort order for products not claimed by a segment, advanced inventory options, segment rows and product groups. With Ultimate Collection Manager, it can also control which products belong to a collection. For example, you could put featured products first, sort the remaining products by newest published date and keep matching products together in groups.
A sort type supplies an ordering rule. A strategy combines that rule with the other settings used by a collection.
Ready-made strategies
The app starts with these four strategies. You can open one to review its settings before assigning it to a collection.
| Strategy | What it does |
|---|---|
| New arrivals first | Boosts new arrivals for 7 days, then sorts by newest published date. |
| Fresh discovery | Boosts new arrivals for 7 days, then uses a random order for the remaining products. |
| Vendor sorting | Sorts vendor values in descending order and places sold-out products last. |
| Highest stock first | Sorts by inventory from highest to lowest, which also places sold-out products last. |
For a different approach, you could build a strategy that puts new arrivals ahead of bestsellers, or one that leads with the biggest percentage discounts. These are examples to configure, not additional ready-made strategies.
Use Product performance analytics to identify products with strong sales or engagement before deciding which ones to feature.
Find and use strategies
Open Merchandising → Collection strategies or Merchandising → Sorting strategies, depending on which apps are installed. The list shows each strategy's sort order, number of segments and product groups, and how many collections use it. See Create a strategy to build one from your own settings, or Manage strategies to edit, duplicate or delete one.
You can assign a strategy to one or several collections from Merchandising → View collections. You can also mark one strategy Default for unconfigured collections. A collection using a strategy can be changed to Custom when it needs its own settings.
Changes to a strategy affect its linked collections on their next sorting run. Check the Used in count and the linked collections in the strategy's Summary before updating it.