WordPress is the world’s leading solution when it comes to website creation. It is first and foremost a blog CMS so what if you wanted to link posts or any other types of products together to not only improve your SEO but also guide your users, thus greatly increasing user satisfaction? WPSolr can help with that.
WPSolr offers a recommendation plugin that uses AI to accurately suggest related posts (and products if you have Woocommerce installed).
Why have related posts (recommendations) for your WordPress
Most popular websites offer some form of recommendations to the users. They are an automated technology designed to suggest content that is in some way related to what the user is currently viewing.
This technology can seem very similar to search (both of these technologies allow for the users to find the content they want/need fast) but recommenders differ from search because it doesn’t demand extra work from the users, instead the user is a passive participant, simply receiving the right content instead of having to type in a search bar. This increases user engagement and means that your users will spend more time on your website overall since they will discover content that they never would have known exists otherwise.
There exists a few ways of doing this and the main question you should ask yourself is : should I use a traditional keyword matching recommender or an AI recommender.
The traditional recommender tries to match the words or associated metadata and taxonomies of the content that the user is currently viewing to others. This is in hope of finding a suitable match that the user is likely to click on. While this is a simple recommendation system and probably the most cost-effective solution, it can will be able to suggest related content but not necessarily the ones that will keep the users engaged and browsing.
The AI recommender on the other hand, usually called a personalization engine, will not prioritize matching the keywords in the content but instead will use what we call collaborative filtering (instead of content-based filtering). This will take into account all of the users’ past actions (which content they viewed, which recommendations they clicked on, etc…), that was stored, then these user events will be used to train the AI so it can learn everything about the users. This is called personalization, since instead of everyone being suggested the same content when viewing a specific page, the related posts will be tailored to the users’ likes and interests.
Will related products (for Woocommerce) boost sales ?
While recommendations are growing in every online space, none is more affected by them than e-commerce. You will not find a single successfull e-commerce website without some form of recommendations.
This is for a few reasons :
- better selection = more sales : in general, the more products you display to the users, the more sales you will make. If your user only views one product it is highly unlikely that they will buy it, but recommendations will display many : tens, even hundreds. This increases the odds tenfold that products will match exactly what the user us searching for.
- better user engagement : if your website doesn’t have recommendations, the user willl search for the product they are interested in. Once they find it they will have nothing left to do but leave. Recommendations can ensure that they keep browsing, thus increasing the time spent on the website and in relation, the odds taht they will stumble onto something they love.
- Upsell, Cross-sell : Any intelligent recommendation worth their salt will offer pricier alternatives or complementary products. This will increase Average Revenue Per Customer (ARPC) but also have an added positive side-effect : your website will seem more complete (a one stop shop for all their needs) and they will leave satisfied, greatly increasing the customer satisfaction and the odds that they will return in the future).
Why WPSolr is the best recommendations plugin
WPSolr offers is the best recommendation plugin for a few reasons :
- World-class AI recommendation engines : WPSolr doesn’t use any home-made simple recommendation engine, it uses the best of the best. Recombee and Algolia are both third-party compatible engines that provide the most relevant recommendations in any situation. This is because they offer a host of AI models that you can pick and choose depending on your situation (recommend similar, popular, visually similar, personal, etc…). And despite the prices, the return on investement is nothing to scoff at : based on Recombee and Algolia‘s case studies, you can expect 40% CTR, 52% more sales, etc…
- Recommend any WordPress data-type : WPSolr will be able to send any post-types to the recommendation engines. You can recommend the posts, pages, products, forums or any other data you selected.
- Very customizable appearance : The WPSolr recommendations are powered by twig. Twig is a powerfull template engine. To modify the appearance of the recommendatiosn you can simply modify the HTML and CSS code in the twig files.
