IBM Product Recommendations in the Aurora starter store

IBM Product Recommendations, formerly known as Coremetrics Intelligent Offer, is a solution that you can subscribe to that automatically generates personalized product recommendations for display on the storefront. The recommendations are based on the browsing, shopping, and purchasing behavior of individual customers.

Web activity that displays a dynamic recommendation — Figure 1: Example of IBM Product Recommendations in the Aurora starter store

Storefront support for IBM Product Recommendations

In the Aurora starter store, the display of IBM Product Recommendations is supported by using two different methods:

Specialized e-Marketing Spot:
The page JSP file can include a specialized e-Marketing Spot snippet that has extra code to retrieve dynamic recommendations from IBM Product Recommendations. These e-Marketing Spots are included in specific pages that are not managed in the Commerce Composer tool.
Commerce Composer widget:
The page can be assigned a layout that contains a widget that retrieves dynamic recommendations from IBM Product Recommendations. This method applies to pages that are managed in the Commerce Composer tool. The name of the widget is IBM Product Recommendations widget

The Commerce Composer tool was introduced in the Feature Pack 7 version of the Aurora starter store.

If you are using the Feature Pack 5 or Feature Pack 6 Aurora starter store, IBM Product Recommendations are displayed in the specialized e-Marketing Spots. The Commerce Composer widget option is not available.
If you are using a Feature Pack 7 or later Aurora starter store, your store uses a combination of both methods. This is because some of the store pages are managed in the Commerce Composer tool and others are not.

Specialized web activities for IBM Product Recommendations

To display dynamic recommendations in the Aurora starter store, you must create a web activity. The web activity must use the Display IBM Product Recommendations action, specifying the zone ID of the offer you want to display. This web activity is required for both the specialized e-Marketing Spots and for the Commerce Composer widget. When you publish the Aurora starter store, no prebuilt web activities of this type are running in the store. However, you can create a web activity yourself using the Zone IDs set up in IBM Product Recommendations.