Fresh Relevance supports product variants (SKUs) to represent variations of a base product, such as color or size. Each variant inherits common properties from the base product but can have different titles, images, prices, stock, and tags. All variants share the same Product ID but have a unique SKU.

A product, also called a Base or Parent product, may have several variants, such as different colors or sizes.

Product variants inherit shared properties from the base product but can differ in price, stock, images, and tags. To identify a variant, both a Product ID and a Variant ID are required.

The SKU for a product or variant is usually the code used in other systems to identify the specific physical item. All items with the same SKU are identical in all attributes, such as size and color.

Tag Groups and Tag Values are the primary way to categorize and filter items within Fresh Relevance in a way that can be indexed and used to learn a user's intent. A Tag Group is a named category that can contain a Tag Value for each product. Tag Values often differ between different variants/SKUs of a base product, such as colors and sizes, while some may remain constant, such as brand.

When you look at a product under Data > Products, you can select the Expand Products with Variants switch to display variants in the table.

These variants share the same Product ID but have a unique SKU.

Product Variant/SKU support expands the abilities of Triggered Messages, showing the relevant details, such as title, image, and price of the browsed, abandoned, or purchased variants.

Price drop and back-in-stock messages trigger based on the price or stock status of individual variants.

By default, recommendation data sources display base products. To show variants of these products, go to the Advanced tab of the SmartBlock and enable SKU-level Product Variants.

Some data sources are more granular than others when considering variants.

Recommendations that use personalized data sources, such as Frequently Browsed, can show the relevant variant the customer has been browsing.

AI data sources, like Purchased with, Last Purchase, and People Like You Buy, are also variant aware, helping to more effectively identify the perfect product combination for customers.

Crowd-sourced data sources, such as the Frequently Purchased list, recommend variants of the most purchased base product, adhering to any applied filters, helping to prevent recommendation fatigue.

To show multiple variants for each base product, increase the Number of Variants Per Base Product value. When Fresh Relevance fetches recommendations, it applies variants in this order:

Some Recommendation filters, like the Best Tag Value filter, allow targeting variant product data.

To target variant product data, go to the filtering tab of the SmartBlock, then select the Apply Filter To SKU-level Variants checkbox. The Best Tag Value filter can filter product recommendations based on customer behavioral data.

To target product variants when creating a Tag Blend in a Recommendation, go to the Merchandising tab of the SmartBlock, then select the Apply Tag Blend to SKU-Level Variants checkbox.

Advanced Customer Tagging within Analytics supports product variants in a similar way to the Best Tag Value filter. You can choose Tag Groups to calculate the best Tag Value for each known person and sync this value to your messaging provider to use within segmentations or campaigns.