Refinement Bar Customization
You can customize the refinement bar to change the order in which results appear, the look and feel of the search refinement bar, or how many refinements a customer can select simultaneously.
Changing the Order in Which Search Refinements Appear
When creating refinements, you set the order in which the entries within the refinements appear by selecting one of the following sorts:
- Sort by Value Name: sorts the categories in the category refinement according to their display name. Merchants also configure the sort direction (ascending/descending).
- Sort by Value Count: sorts the categories in the category refinement according to the number of products found in each category. This is the number of products the search result would be refined to in case the customer selected this category as refinement. Merchants can also configure the sort direction (ascending/descending).
- Sort by Category Position: sort the categories in the category refinement by category position, the refinements' explicitly defined positions within the parent category.
You can define search result refinements within a specific category in the storefront, such as category refinements, price refinements or attribute refinements.
Example
The following example shows the results of the three sorting modes. Assume that the Site Catalog, with sorted subcategories is as follows:
| Women's Clothing |
| Women's Accessories |
| Women's Jewelry |
The customer searches for "silver".
| If the category refinement is... | Then the sorted order is... | The hit count is... |
|---|---|---|
| Sorted by Value Name (alphabetical) | Women's Accessories | (56) |
| Women's Clothing | (235) | |
| Women's Jewelry | (12) | |
| Sorted by Value Count | Women's Clothing | (235) |
| Women's Accessories | (56) | |
| Women's Jewelry | (12) | |
| Sorted by Category Position | Women's Clothing | (235) |
| Women's Jewelry | (12) | |
| Women's Accessories | (56) |
Changing the Appearance of the Refinement Bar
Developers can change the appearance of the refinement bar using the
productsearchrefinebar.isml template. Developers can change the placement of
the refinement bar by editing any of the pagetype templates that wrap the search results:
pt_contentsearchresult.isml or
pt_productsearchresult.isml.
The standard search refinements are available for all categories. In addition, you can add up to five search refinements per category and inherit refinements from parent categories. The most significant restriction on the number of search refinements you choose to have is the amount of page space you want to devote to the refinement bar.