Use Product Finder to create a guided questionnaire that delivers filtered recommendations to customers based on a recommendation strategy that you select.
Make a Product Finder questionnaire part of an experience by adding it as a WHAT action. Like other actions you add to an experience, you can apply action conditions to further guide customers to recommended products as well as customize for that experience the appearance of the questionnaire and results and include a welcome message to compel customers to take the questionnaire.
You can make any question multiple choice. When the customer answers a multiple-choice question, then they advance to the same next question regardless of which answer choices they selected. For a single-choice question, you can make each answer option direct to a different question. For example, if you create a single-choice question with four answer options, then the customer can advance to one of four different questions after, depending on the answer selected. See Planning the Questionnaire in this documentation for more information.
A Product Finder questionnaire can either show recommended products at the end once the customer has answered all the questions or show recommendations each time the customer answers a question. If there are no recommendations to display, then the customer sees a "No Results Found" message, which you can customize when configuring the Product Finder action. After seeing this message, the customer can restart the questionnaire or move back to the previous question, depending on how you configured the questionnaire or the Product Finder action.
Planning the Questionnaire
Before you create the Product Finder questionnaire in the platform, sketch or map the paths you plan to create amongst the answer options and other questions. You can also download Monetate's Product Finder Template Excel file to plan the questions.
The questionnaire doesn't have to be a linear path that's the same for each customer regardless of the answers selected. You can have a question-and-answer entry that a customer sees only if they select a specific answer to a different question. A customer doesn't even have to be exposed to every question-and-answer entry you create in the questionnaire if you choose to end the questionnaire if they select one answer to a question while the other answer options would advance the customer to the next question.
While a questionnaire can have multiple end points, it must start with the same question every time. Be aware that you cannot delete the first question-and-answer entry of the questionnaire once you create it in the Product Finder wizard, nor can you later select a different question-and-answer entry to be first. The only way to change the first question is to rewrite the text for the first question-and-answer entry. Therefore, to avoid this situation, be certain which question you want to appear first before you build the questionnaire in the wizard.
A question must have at least four characters and no more than 64 characters. It cannot have any special characters except a question mark and parentheses.
An answer cannot exceed 128 characters and cannot include any special characters.
You must create at least two answers for each question. Until you've created two answers, you can neither save the question nor create a new one.
Recommendation Strategy and Filters
Another planning measure you should take is selecting which recommendation strategy to use in the questionnaire.
If you select a local recommendation strategy that doesn't use the account's default product catalog, then you should reacquaint yourself as necessary with the product catalog associated with that strategy so that you know what products could be recommended by the Product Finder questionnaire.
You should also reacquaint yourself with any filters the recommendation strategy has as well as any global filters set for all recommendation strategies created for the domain. If you add a filter to an answer option that conflicts with one of these existing filters, you don't see any warning alert in the Product Finder wizard. Conflicting filters or excessive filters can prevent a questionnaire from returning recommendations.
For more information on these topics, see Global Recommendation Settings, Global and Local Recommendation Strategies, Recommendation Algorithms, and Filters in Recommendation Strategies.