Plugin: Shopping Advisor

The biggest gap between the brick-and-mortar store and online retail is often the still missing "advisory approach". You can close this gap ideally with our premium plugin "Shopping Advisor".

"Shopping Advisor“ is the new version of our Q & A Search Assistant and was completely refurbished. These are the plugins highlights:

• Responsive Design
• Product Stream Integration
• Seamless integration in the Shopware backend
• Visual design grid for step by step advisors
• backend preview for the result listing

Installation

This extension can be found in our Shopware Store, the easiest way to find a specific plugin is the search-bar. Complete the order process and login to the backend of your store. Navigate to Configuration > Plugin manager > My purchases. You need to login and click the refresh button. Your new extension is now listed and can be installed. After installing the extension go to the menu entry installed and refresh. Activate the extension. Finally delete the cache under Settings > Cache/Performance > Clear Shop Cache and refresh the backend.

Interface

You can find the Shopping Advisor after the installation under Marketing > Shopping Advisor. If the menu item is not there, reload the backend once.
After opening the plugin you will see the following overview:

When you open the module, an overview of all currently created advisors is displayed. When you open the module for the first time, this list is empty. Accordingly, you have the possibility to add a new advisor (1) or to delete existing advisors (2).

Creating and editing an advisor

Advisor types

The plugin provides two different concepts, which you can use to create your advisor. After clicking "Add item" you have to decide between "Sidebar advisor" and "Step-by-Step Advisor":

Sidebar advisor

The sidebar advisor is the known concept, you may know from other online shops. Ideal for, e.g. technical product ranges, you are able to ask for specific requirements and show results on the fly to your customers. This way your customers can specify their results in regard of their needs. The questions or filters used in the advisor will be shown on the left side of your shop, the results will be displayed on the right. In the frontend it will look like this:

Step-by-step advisor

The step-by-step advisor finds its results in single steps, based on a visual supported display of the questions. Instead of simple questions it is possible to use emotional pictures. In the frontend it works this way: First your customer can answer question after question or jump between different questions. Each question will have an own page, at the end your customers will see a result page based on their choices.

Basic settings

When you create a new advisor and already chose an advisor type, the following menu will open. This is parted in the tabs "Basic settings", "Stream selection", "Questions" and "Result configuration".

In the basic settings you may cconfigure the following data:

• Name (1): Here you enter the name of the advisor, the name will also be used for the advisor's link.
• Description (2): This description will be shown at the start of the advisor.
• Banner (3): Here you may set a banner which will also be displayed at the beginning of the advisor.
• Active (4): This option activates or deactivates the advisor.
• Link URL (5): Using this link you can reach the advisor. At this place you can see and copy the url, after you saved the advisor for the first time.

All changes in the tabs of this module can be saved using the "Save" button or drop them using the "Cancel" button.

Before you can save the advisor, you have to configure additional options in the tabs "Stream selection" and "Result configuration"

Stream selection

The results shown in the plugin "Shopping Advisor" are based on Product Streams, which were introduced in Shopware 5.1. They provide the base selection of products available in the advisor. Product streams ensure, that your advisor will stay up to date, without taking care of each and every advisor manually. The only thing required are well maintained products. So here it is possible to select a product stream, which provides the advisor's base.

For this you select one of the streams at "product stream" (1), which you want to use for the advisor. If you did not already create the desired product stream (2), you may do so clicking "Create a new product stream". After you selected the desired product stream, the included items (3) will be shown in the preview .

Questions

This is the advisors centerpiece, the questions. This is where the actual advising of the customer happens. If you already created questions these will be shown in the overview.

Following the concept already seen in the advisor overview, you may add questions using the button "Add item"(1), or delete existing questions using "Delete all selected"(2). Additionally existing questions can be deleted, edited or duplicated using the icons(3). The order of the questions can be manipulated via drag-and drop.

Create questions

When you create a new question or edit an existing one, the following module will open.

In the module you can configure your questions:

• Your question (1): Place the question you want to ask your customer
• Information text (2): Here you can add additional information the customer will see with the question
• Weight of the questions (3): You can set the weight of the question. Using this the relevance of the answers in the frontend will be increased and matching articles will be displayed earlier. A higher weight leads to a higher position for fitting products.
• Question needs to be answered (4): Questions with this option are required to be answered by the customer, so the advisor can be finished.
• Excluding question (5): You can define excluding questions here. This means, that after answering this question, only articles will be shown, which match the question, other articles won't be shown.
• Expand question (6): This option is only used in the sidebar advisor and manages, if the question is expanded at the start or not.
• Allow multiple answers (7): This option alows the customer to give multiple answers to one question.
• Answer layout (8): Here you are able to define, how the answers will look in the frontend. The different option will be explained in detail later on.
• Type (9): This gives the option to select the type of your question. It defines the areas regarding the question and automatically influences the answers you may create. Further details will be explained in the segment "Question types".

Question types

There are four given options you may use to define the type of your question:

• Attribute: The answers will be selected from the items attributes. The attribute you want to add needs to be filterable. You can find this setting under Properties > groups > filterable.
• Property: For this type you can select the answers from the properties available in your shop.
• Manufacturer: Here you can use the manufacturers available in your shop.
• Price: Here you can define answers regarding the price of the items.

Questions regarding attributes, properties or manufacturers

When you create questions of this type, a drop down will appear, where you can define the actual option, e.g. which property shall be used. Based on this you can select the answers, you want to use in the advisor.

By clicking on the desired answer, it is entered in the "Answers" area. Here you can assign a different text or a CSS class to it if you wish, or also adjust the order of the answers with Drag & Drop.

The selection of answers depends on the articles and available values in your product stream.

Price questions

When creating a price question you may select one of the known answer layouts or a price slider. In the first case you may define values as you wish, for the price slider you define minimal and maximal values.

Answer layout

Here you can customize the appearance of your response options in the frontend. The thumbnail view gives you a first impression of how these options differ from each other.

The first option is the "Single selection - Text". With this selection, only one answer can be specified at a time. In the frontend, these questions appear to the customer as follows:

This display form is also available for a multiple selection as "multi selection - Text". The look only differs a bit.

The option "single selection - drop down" is only available for sidebar advisors without multi selection. In the frontend questions with this layout will be displayed this way:

Additionally you can use a price slider, which looks like this:

Image supported questions - Step-by-step advisor

When you create a Step-by-Step advisor, you got the possibility to use another answer layout: "Single selection - Image" provides the option to use a design grid to include emotional image worlds within your advisor.

You got the option to add an image for each answer (3), additionally you can configure, whenever the answer text is shown or not (1).

With the button "Fill grid" (2) you open the editor, which you can use to alter the layout of the answers.

On the left site of the editor you see the layout grid, here you got the chance to alter the grid regarding the following options:

• Add row (1): Adds a row to the grid.
• Remove row (2): Removes a row from the grid.
• Number of columns (3): Sets the number of columns in the grid.
• Image height in px (4): Defines the height of images in the grid.

You can easily assign your answers to this grid. You can find these answers in the overview on the right side, from where the answers can be assigned to the grid using drag & drop. If you don't like the order of the answers in the grid, you can also move already assigned answers again. You can also add new answers or edit existing ones in the usual way using the overview of answers available here.

In your frontend the question will look like this, chosen answers will be marked with a check mark.

Result configuration

The result listing at the end of the advisor can be altered in the tab "Result configuration":

You got the possibility to alter the layout and texts of this listing.

• Listing title filtered (1): Here you can specify how the title for the product listing should look like after filtering.
• Title for remaining products (2): This sets the title for products without hits.
• Product layout (3): This alters the listing layout, further information can be found in the segment "result listing".
• Highlight top hit (4): Highlights the highest rated hit.
• Top hit title (5): Specific title for the top hit.
• Information link text (6): Defines the text for the information link. This link shows the description of a question in a sidebar advisor.
• Search button text (7): Defines the text for the search button.
• minimum amount of answers (8): Amount of answers, which is needed to show a result
• Sorting (9): Sets the sorting which is used as a third factor after hits and weight of questions.

If you define no texts, default texts will be used.

If you use the premium plugin "Advanced Promotion Suite", you have to consider the following: Discounts from this plugin will not be considered in "Shopping Advisor". It may occure, that the sorting of hits will not be displayed correctly.

Result layout

Under "Product Layout" you can choose between different layouts. Each representation contains a small graphic of the item and a short explanation of the layout. The layout show matches shows the matching properties in the result listing.

If you select the show all layout, the listing will show all the information, i.e. the matching properties as well as the others.

The following three product layout options are the default layouts of the listings that you know from the categories. However, no additional hits are displayed here.

Layout Detailed information

Layout Only important information

Layout Big image

Preview

In the preview you can check your advisor, including results and their sorting. For this you can answer the questions on the left side and after a click on "Show products" the results will be displayed.

Result listing in the frontend

The configured result listing will be displayed to the customer like this.

Sidebar advisor

Step-by-step advisor

Forwarding of an advisor and storage with registered customers

The plugin "Shopping Advisor" saves the advisors of your customers in the shop. Accordingly, a registered customer can benefit from the fact that his advisor, including his results, is saved in a user. He can therefore call up an advisor again at a later point in time via the link.

Even if a customer is not logged in, his advisor can be called up again later via an alphanumeric value attached to the advisor's link. So the customer can pass on his advisor with his own answers via the link to a friend, for example, who can then see the answers and add them if necessary.