Personalized product recommendations help improve customer experience and drive sales. However, showing products a customer has recently browsed or added to their cart can reduce variety and limit opportunities to highlight new items.
Example use cases
Post‑purchase engagement campaigns
A customer has just bought a pair of running shoes. Instead of showing the same shoes again, exclude recently purchased items and recommend complementary products such as running clothes or accessories.
Returning visitor freshness
A visitor browsed laptops three days ago and added one to their cart but has not checked out. Removing these products from recommendations allows you to feature upgraded models or related accessories, helping keep content fresh and relevant.
Seasonal bestseller rotation
During a big seasonal sale, avoid repeating a customer’s recent browsing history. This lets you showcase trending sale products they might have missed, increasing variety and discovery.
Solution overview
Apply the Exclude Recent Activity filter to a Recommendation SmartBlock to remove products a customer has recently purchased, added to their cart, or browsed within a set timeframe. Excluding these items helps keep recommendations fresh, improves relevance, and prevents customers from seeing the same products repeatedly.
Step by step guide
Create your Recommendation SmartBlock
Navigate to Content > SmartBlocks.
Select CREATE SMARTBLOCK.
Set Placement to Website and select Product list.
Set the tactic and layout.
Complete the setup wizard to configure thr placement and name.
2. Configure recommendations
Go to the Properties tab and configure:
Tags
Campaign tracking
Merge parameters
Go to the Design tab and configure the look and feel of your recommendations.
Go to the Data Sources tab and configure your data sources.
Consider using AI‑driven sources for personalised recommendations, and crowd‑sourced sources to show your bestsellers.
Go to the Filters tab and configure filters.
3. Add Exclude Recent Activity filters
Go to the Filters tab.
Drag and drop the Exclude Recent Activity filter into the list of filters on the right.
Select the signal to target (Purchased, Carted, or Browsed) and set the time period.
For example, Exclude products purchased in the last 14 days.Consider stacking this filter more than once for different behaviors, for example, exclude recently purchased, carted, and browsed products all together.
4. Test and deploy
Select Save and Use to add the SmartBlock to a Slot.
Test and deploy as with any other content you create.
Consider split testing two identical recommendation blocks, one with the Exclude Recent Activity filter, and one without, to see how freshness impacts engagement and conversions.
Use shorter timeframes, for example, 3–7 days, for categories with frequent repeat purchases, and longer timeframes, for example, 30 days, for high‑value or one‑time buy products. This balance keeps recommendations relevant without removing too many items.