In today’s fast-moving eCommerce world, merchandising is no longer just about ordering products on a category page—it’s about delivering a finely tuned experience that adapts to user behaviour, product variation, and seasonal trends. At ExpertRec, we believe your merchandising strategy should be both smart and scalable, enabling your team to work faster and smarter.

We’re excited to bring you two powerful capabilities — group merchandising and cloning configurations — which redefine how you manage assortments and configurations across your storefront.

Why Next-Level Merchandising Matters

Your customers expect relevant, timely, and curated experiences. Whether they land on a product listing via search or category page, the arrangement and presentation of products matter. When merchandising is manual, siloed, or static, you miss opportunities: slower updates, inconsistent experiences across channels, and lost conversions.

Modern eCommerce stores need features that let them:

• Group similar-product variants intelligently (for example, colour, size, brand)
• Apply merchandising logic at both the group and product level
• Scale operations across multiple sites or environments without effort

That’s where the two capabilities come in.

Group Merchandising: Assortments & Refined Recall

What is Group Merchandising?

Instead of treating every product variant (say, size or colour) as a standalone item, group merchandising allows you to aggregate similar products into meaningful groups, and then apply merchandising controls at the group level. For example, you might group by brand, by product type, or by colour family.

Within each group, you can still manage the ranking of individual products—but the grouping ensures better clarity, less duplication, and a stronger browsing experience.

Why it matters

• Simpler user experience: Shoppers don’t get overwhelmed by every variant—they get clear groups, choose their preferred variant, and convert more easily.
• Better relevance: You can boost a top-performing group (e.g., a luxury brand within “women’s dresses”) and, within that group, surface the best-selling items. The example from Bloomreach: “women’s > dresses” category grouped by brand, then the top eight items are locked.
• Merchandiser control: Now you’re not just ordering individual SKUs—you’re ordering group logic “Brand A first, then Brand B, then others”. This gives control at a higher level.

How ExpertRec does it

By integrating group-level merchandising capabilities:

• Define grouping attribute(s) — e.g., brand, product type, colour family
• Create rules for groups (for example: group “Brand X” appear first)
• Then, within each group, apply individual product ranking rules (boost/slot/)
• Visualise and preview how grouped results display to users

The result: streamlined workflows, better product visibility, and higher conversions.

Cloning Configurations: Work Smarter & Scale Securely

What are Cloning Configurations?

When you manage multiple storefronts (for different regions, brands, or test environments), you often need to replicate merchandising rules, filters, sorting logic, synonyms, and more. Manually recreating these across each site is error-prone and time-consuming.

Cloning configurations enables you to copy rules and setups from one environment (or site) to another, preserving your strategy and ensuring consistency.

Why it matters

• Operational efficiency: Create your merchandising logic once (e.g., in a staging or master site) and clone it to production, rather than duplicate work.
• Consistency across brands/regions: When you run multiple sites (e.g., EU vs US vs APAC), cloning ensures rules are synchronised, reducing coordination overhead.
• Safe experiments & rollout: Build your rules in a sandbox, preview them, then clone to live—reducing mistakes.

How ExpertRec handles it

With ExpertRec, you can:

• Build configuration sets (ranking rules, filters, synonyms, group-rules) in one environment
• Review and compare them across environments
• Clone selected configurations to target site(s) with auditing and rollback options
• Roll out updates confidently, knowing you’re maintaining rule-consistency

Putting It All Together: How Merchandising Drives Growth

By leveraging group merchandising and configuration cloning, you get a merchandising platform that:

• Lets you curate nuanced experiences (e.g., highlight top brands first, then variants)
• Enables your team to operate at scale (multi-site, multi-campaign)
• Maintains speed and agility — you can push new rules, test, and roll out quickly
• Keeps visibility high and maintenance low — fewer manual operations, fewer mistakes

Example workflow

1. Define group attribute: “product_brand” for your category “electronics > laptops”.
2. Create group rule: Boost brand “X” to top position, next “Y”, then others.
3. Within each group, pin/slot best-selling SKUs & hide slow-moving ones.
4. Preview the n staging site.
5. Clone the entire merchandising setup to your international site with one click.
6. Monitor performance — search analytics report, which groups/brands are performing.
7. Iterate: adjusting group ordering, product slots, and rolling out updated rules via cloning.

This streamlined process reduces workload and increases impact.

Why ExpertRec Is Your Merchandising Partner

At Expertrec, we deliver a modern merchandising solution built for the demands of today’s online retailers:

• Group-aware merchandising — group your SKUs and apply rules at group and product levels.
• Multi-site & multi-environment cloning — deploy changes broadly with confidence.
• Self-serve interface — your merchandising team has visibility, control, and preview tools.
• Analytics integration — know which groups/products perform, which need adjustment.
• Fast implementation — plug into your e-commerce stack and start optimising quickly.

With ExpertRec, your merchandising is strategic, scalable, and efficient.

Final Thoughts

Merchandising is moving from static product ordering to dynamic, intelligent orchestration of groups, variants, rules, and environments. The brands that win are those that can deliver relevance at scale, adapt quickly, and maintain consistency across multiple storefronts or campaigns.

With group merchandising, you’re curating at the attribute-group level; with cloning configurations, you’re linking that curation efficiently. Together they form a powerful duo.

If you’re ready to elevate your merchandising strategy—reducing manual effort, maximising relevance, and improving conversion—ExpertRec is here to help.