Product List Page Sort Order – AB Commerce Online Help

The order of products on a list page can have an impact on conversion, and is optimised through core settings in AB Commerce. This operates on a few levels from sitewide through to the customer.

This article outlines key information about:

Hierarchy of Sort Order settings
Sort Order options
Category specific sort order
Change sort order (manual updates)
Actions and further questions

Hierarchy of Sort Order in AB Commerce

Sort order settings are added and applied at a number of levels in AB Commerce and there is a hierarchy to how these get used.

The default sitewide sort order gets automatically applied to each category, brand category, and dynamic page on the site. This is popularity by default, but can be changed. The sitewide sort order setting can be overridden on an individual category page if desired. The next layer is an option to manually change the sort order and artifically promote a handful of products to the top of any list. Lastly, your customer can then choose to change from this initial list display by manually changing the sort order to one of their choosing.

Lowest Priority	Default sitewide	This defaults to Popularity - falls back to New
	Sitewide	If explicitly added - falls back to New
	Category Specific	If explicitly added
	Change Sort Order	If manually updated - only visibly on initial page load
Highest Priority	Customer Input	If sort order dropdown on product list page (PLP) is used*

* Even if customer reselects what was default, e.g. Popularity, anything moved via Change Sort Order will be ignored once dropdown is used at all

Sort Order Options

There are a number of options for the sort order view on product list pages available to you and your customers.

	Sort order value & how it works	Active by Default	Sitewide Option	In PLP Dropdown	Editable Title
DEFAULT	Popularity Product views in last 90 days	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
NEW	Best Sellers Number of orders in last 90 days	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
NEW	Our Recommendations Rating (manual - Popularity used to use rating)	No	Yes	Yes if active	Yes
	What's New By date added to catalogue - new to old	Yes	Yes	Yes	No
	Product Code Numerically 0-9 and then alphabetically A-Z	Yes	No	No	No
	Title Alphabetically by product title A-Z	Yes	No	No	No

To change to the default sitewide sort order, edit the titles, or to activate Our Recommendations please contact helpdesk@magico.com as these are not settings which you have access to.

Category Specific Sort Order

The sitewide default sort order is Popularity, which is dynamic and works off the number of views of a product for the past 90 days. This is a great way to keep products your customers are currently interested in at the top of the default view.

However, there may be times when you want to offer a different initial view to your customers on a specific category. If you do change the default sort order on a specific category, all its sub-categories will then receive this new default sort order also.

This is not applicable to any dynamic or automated categories which generally use the sitewide default, with some exceptions:

the dynamic New In categories which are always by what's new as default.
the automated sale category - which is always use views in the last 90 days

To update the sort order on a specific category/page, follow these steps:

Browse to the front-end of the category you wish to change
Click Edit Category/Page (this is just above the category/page title):
In the Admin Panel which opens, you will see the options available for Sort Order:
To change from the sitewide default, select another option and then click Save

PLEASE NOTE: like the default sitewide sort order, your customer ultimately controls how they view the list of products and can change the order of products via the on page drop down.

Change Sort Order

There is also an option to manually change the sort order on a specific category. Especially now that both Popularity (views) and Best Sellers (orders) are dynamic and related to your customer activity on the website, this feature should be used sparingly.

See point in Actions & Further Questions below on how we can clear these for you if you have (over) used this feature in the past.

If you would like to use this and need more information:

➡️View our full article on how to use the Change Sort Order functionality

Actions & Further Questions

To take full advantage of these updated analytics-based changes, it might be worth removing some existing manual changes you may have made in the past. Please contact helpdesk@magico.com if you would like assistance with any of the following:

Manual sort order

We can clear products which you may have moved using manual Change Sort Order functionality. This is recommended if you have moved more than 10 items in more than 10 categories manually.
Category specific sort order overrides

Clear category specfic sort orders where you have set a category to use something other than the sitewide default. Even if you want a few categories different, it might make sense to clear all and then reset those you wish to include again.
Using Rating for Our Recommendations

If you would like more information about the idea of Our Recommendations as managed via Rating, please get in touch.

Any other questions

Please contact us helpdesk@magico.com