Vexture Merchandising: Smart Product Suggestions with Zero Hassle
Imagine a shopper browsing a store for Jeep accessories who clicks on a bumper. Instantly, the store can suggest additional products that fit the same make, model, and year, without manually configuring product relationships.
Vexture Merchandising automatically generates these product suggestions based on vehicle compatibility, helping shoppers quickly find related items that fit their vehicle.
Requirements
To use Vexture Merchandising:
Your store must be running a supported version of Miva
Your store must have an active Vexture subscription
What is Vexture Merchandising
Vexture Merchandising turns product discovery into a guided, intelligent experience. It uses contextual prompts, simple instructions you create (prompts), to suggest products that are relevant to what your shopper is looking for in real time.
Whether they’re viewing a product, exploring a category, or have items in their basket, Vexture Merchandising helps upsell and cross-sell with suggestions that make sense.
Why Use It?
Let’s face it, traditional “Related Products” features can be time-consuming to manage. You must define every rule, handpick each product, and update them constantly.
Vexture Merchandising changes the game. It delivers smart suggestions like similar products, bundled accessories, or suggested impulse buys, with minimal setup and virtually no ongoing maintenance. You get effective merchandising that increase sales without the manual effort.
How to set up Vexture Merchandising in your store:
Lets start with an overview of the setup process at a high level.
We start by creating a prompt. Think of this like writing a simple instruction like:
“A shopper has {basket_contents} in their cart. Suggest low-priced items they might also like that go with what they already have in their cart.”
Tokens like {basket_contents}, {product}, and {category} pull in live context from your store, so the results are personalized to each shopper's behavior and interests.
Once the prompt is created, Vexture automatically generates relevant search terms and displays matching products using Flex Components.
Here are some example of how prompts, tokens, Flex Components work together to make Vexture Merchandising:
Use the {product} token on a product display page, it would make sense to use the Product List or Product Carousel Flex Components.
On a category page you might create a prompt using the {category} token and the Product Carousel Flex Component.
On your cart page you might include the also bought flex component, or product display to incentivize shoppers to add an additional product to their order.
Let's breakdown everything we see on the Vexture Merchandising page.
1. AI Prompt window where you can view and even edit the AI prompt
2. Add sample data (e.g., select products or categories)
3. Click Preview Results
4. The search term generated by the AI Agent
5. Name of Prompt
6. Preview of products from Vexture Search Index
Save the prompt
Step 1: Creating Your Prompts
Path: Merchandising > Add Prompt
Click Add Prompt button
Name: Choose a name that describes your prompt's purpose.
Code: This is generated from your name.
Start Form: Choose between:
1. New Prompt
2. Default Prompt Templates
3. Your own saved templates
Description: type in a short description about what the prompt does.
Click “Continue to Prompt”
Step 2: Write your prompt
After clicking continue, the page opens up to the “Create a Prompt” page. Here you create your AI prompt.
Use the + Insert Token button to add the predefined AI tokens, {product}, {category}, or {basket content} to your prompt. These give the AI the context it needs to return relevant results.
Some examples setups for each token:
▪ a shopper is viewing this Product
▪ a shopper has these items in their Basket Content
▪ the customer is viewing this Category
NOTE: When Creating Prompts for Basket Content, follow these additional steps:
When using Vexture Merchandising to suggest products based on the contents of a shopper's basket the merchant or developer will take the following additional steps:
Open another browser tab and go to your store.
Add product to your basket.
Those live items will now be used by the prompt to generate search results.
This allows the AI to respond based on real, active basket data.
Prompt Tip for Basket Content: You can suggest products under a certain amount, for example, in your prompt you could say "Look at the {basket contents} and suggest similar products that are under $10"
Tips for writing effective AI Prompts:
To create an effective AI prompt, start by defining a clear goal (A shopper is viewing), providing specific context (Token), using natural and detailed language, and assigning a role to the AI (This is a store that sells professional and colligate apparel). Remember to add essential details but keep your prompts concise and straightforward.
In the following example you will see the first instance of "product" appears as {product}, this has been added by inserting the product token. Click + Insert Token to add the predefined AI Tokens.
Step 3. Preview and Test
Once your prompt is saved, you are taken to the Preview Page where you can test it using real data. Select a sample product or category, preview the search term generated, and see which products are returned.
If you created a prompt for {basket content}, you followed the additional steps when creating your prompt, so the results to your search are listed on this page.
Step 4: Add Sample Data for Context
Here, under the Add Sample Data for Context section you will click Lookup to add some sample data to test the effectiveness of your prompt. This step is if you are creating prompts for {product} or {category}.
Note: Products Matching
Notice under the Products Matching section, your prompt has been sent, along with any sample data to an AI agent and ask it for a suggested term that satisfies what we are looking for. This suggested term is what is being used to match products that go well together.
Step 5: Preview Results
We use the suggested search term shown under Products Matching from AI to search your catalog for the most relevant products.
Click the Preview Results bar to see what the Vexture Search returns.
Not quite, right? Refine your prompt in the prompt window located on top left of the page until it produces results that feel just right. This quick iteration helps you refine your merchandising strategy without any guesswork. Adjust the wording, add more specific instructions, or modify the context you're referring to until you achieve the desired product suggestions.
Note: Products marked Exclude from Search Results are removed from both traditional and AI-powered search results and may not appear immediately due to indexing and caching.
Where Do the Search Results Show Up for the Shopper?
Once your prompt is ready, you can connect it to your storefront using Flex Components like Product List or Carousels.
Here are some examples of where each token works best:
- Product Detail Page: Use a prompt with the {product} token to show complementary or similar items.
- Category Page: Use the {category} token to suggest products associated with a specific Category.
- Basket Page: Use {basket_contents} to suggest last-minute add-ons to the Basket Contents Page.
Path: User Interface > Content Management > Page Builder > Product Display
Select or add a Flex Component to add Vexture Merchandising to the page of your choosing.
How to setup Vexture Merchandising with Product List Flex Component:
Path: User Interface > Content Management > Page Builder > Product Display
Click + Add Component from the Component search on left side bar
Drag the Component on the Components List where you would like it to appear on your Product Display page. In this example we will be using the Product List Flex Component.
Click on Product List Flex Component to edit the Component, this is where you will add your Vexture Merchandising Prompts
Scroll down to Product List > click on Products > click on the Product Set dropdown, select Vexture Merchandising from list
Merchandising Prompt now appears below the Product Set dropdown, Click on Look Up to select the prompt you want to use.
Your Vexture Search results are now displaying in the Product List Flex Component you just added.
To see a recorded walk through of setting up Vexture Merchandising with different Flex Components click Ask Wayne.