Product: Nexternal
The Product Filter gives customers in your Online Store the ability to winnow the products displayed on a Product List screen, quickly and intuitively for a quick and easy shopping experience. The Product Filter function can be used with either the Persistent Category Template or the Standard Template (Layout / General Layout). When the Persistent Category Layout is used (which creates side navigation, typically placed on the left), the product filtering displays below the side navigation. When the Standard Template is used (no side navigation) you may choose the Filter Position - to have the filtering show up on the left or the right of the screen, and you may also set the Filter Width to suit your store design.
Using Product Filter provides successive filtering functionality, which allows for categories with large amounts of products to be reduced to small sets with only a few clicks. Shoppers' selected filter values can be seen right above the list of facets in what is called the Product Filter "breadbox". You may also display them in a breadcrumb trail by enabling the Navigation Thread option (Layout / Edit Main Layout / Use Navigation Thread).
Each category filter value is followed by a figure in parentheses showing the number of items in the collection possessing that value, which provides insight into the size of a subset that helps the shopper make navigational decisions. Customers can select filter values in any order, enabling them to reach the same goal in many different ways. If unsatisfied with the current filtered results, customers can deselect any filter value or any combination of filter values from a facet, thereby expanding the list of results.
Merchants can choose the filtering options (what shoppers can filter by), and can either set the filtering up to be collapsible or may truncate sections with lots of options in them and add an optional search box at the top of each section of the filter.
Hot Tip: Search sections are strongly recommended for those who limit section heights. Not only does this provide a visual indicator that there are more options than those in view, but also on Apple devices, scrollbars often don't show up unless a person is actually scrolling, so that visual indicator becomes important.
Example:
To learn more about what this looks like in your store and how to set it up, please watch the following 3-min video.
NOTE - Since this video was recorded, the number of custom product fields available has been increased from 6 to 20; however, we recommend being judicious about how many filtering categories you use if you are displaying them on the product detail pages, or the product pages can become unwieldy. Also since this video was recorded, the look of the store has been updated and additional filtering customization options and filtering functionality have been added. These are discussed below the video in this article. However, everything in the video still applies, so please take a look:
Here's what the updated filtering section looks like in your Nexternal Order Management System (OMS) today. This image reflects the system defaults. The fields indicated with red boxes have been added since the video was made:
If you had filtering turned on as of 1/24/23, you may not see the default values populated in the fields as you see them here, but you can use the defaults reflected here as a starting point to determine what values you'd like to use, should you use these customizations.
As you are setting up product filtering, be sure to read the ? tooltips next to each option to ensure you have all the information you need to best set up and manage your product filters.
Finally, if you set up multiple custom product fields and want some of them to show up on the product detail pages in your store, but others to be hidden (perhaps only to be used for product filtering or internal use), our design engineers can hide the fields you want to be hidden from display. Nominal charges apply. Contact customer support as displayed in the Settings section of your OMS to request the work.
rev. 1/24/23