What is an eCommerce recommendation engine?

An eCommerce recommendation engine chooses which products each shopper sees across product pages, cart, search, email and the homepage, using behavior, product data and business rules such as stock and margin.

An eCommerce recommendation engine decides which products appear for each shopper: similar items and frequently bought together on product pages, add-ons in the cart, the order of search and category results, personalized homepages, and products in emails and notifications.

A good one does three things well. It reads complete, current product data, including price and stock. It respects business rules such as margin, promotions and items that should never appear together. And in B2B, it works within each account’s catalogue, pricing and reorder patterns. Increasingly it also feeds AI shopping assistants that build a full basket from a single request.