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Tire Recommendations Interactive Tutorial

Tire Filtering Interactive Tutorial

Article: Tire Recommendations Part 2


Use Tire Recommendations As Much As You Like

If you decide not to setup any tire recommendation rules for yourself, your TireConnect turnkey widgets will continue to work just fine. The original TireConnect tire recommendation algorithm will continue to perform as it always has. If however you decide to create your own tire recommendation rules, then the current tire recommendation algorithm will be bypassed in favor of your new rules. The nice thing about tire recommendations is that you can use it as little or as much as you like. The rules can be configured at a very deep and detailed level, but how far you take it depends on you. That means you can start basic and progress to use more sophisticated tire recommendation rules as needs grow.


Let's Get Going

To begin creating your first tire recommendation rules, login to your Client Administrator's account. Tire Recommendations is available only to Client Administrator and is not accessible to individual dealers. Once you’re logged in you’ll see a navigation button in the left-side vertical menu called Tire Recommendations. Click on it to begin.

Image: Client Vertical Menu with Tire Recommendations link


Right now you don’t have any tire recommendation rules created, so your tire recommendation rules list will be empty like the one shown below. 

Click on the New button to begin creating your first rules. A new Rules Configuration Editor will open as shown below.

Don’t be intimidated by the number of tabs shown. It’s actually much simpler than it looks. There are four classes of rules that you can create, Tire Recommendations, Featured Tires - Top 3, Tire Filtering, and Advanced (Tire Filtering) Options. That being said, you can simply setup the basic tire recommendation rules and leave it at that. So let’s start there…


In addition to the Default Tire Recommendations rules that apply to all vehicle types, you can also set tire recommendation rules tailored to particular vehicle types.


Creating Basic Tire Recommendation Rules

If it isn’t already selected, click on the Tire Recommendation tab to begin. You will see two tabs directly below named Step 1) Select Preferred Tires and Step 2) Set Preferred Sorting Rules. Click on the Step 1 tab. This is where you select the brands and/or the individual tires you wish to sort to the highest position. Click on the large Add Preferred Brand/Model button near the bottom of the tab window. You will see a new box appear with a pop-up menu that allows you to select between different tire brands.


You can select as many Preferred Brands/Tires as you wish. Remember to click the Save button at the bottom whenever you make changes here.. These brands will now be sorted at the top of the search results. Keep in mind that the tires you selected here must exist in the customer's search result in order to be sorted at all. If they are not found in the search results, other tires will appear in their place instead. This is something you should always keep in mind when testing your own tire recommendation rules.


If your Preferred Brands/Tires aren’t in the customer's search results, the original tire recommendation algorithm will apply.


More Detailed Preferred Tire Sorting

Now checkout the image below. It’s the same Select Preferred Tires tab we just looked at, but with a few additions.


As you can see we’ve added three (3) brands to the Preferred Tires List. Whenever these tires are found in our search results, they will be sorted to the very top. Furthermore, you’ll notice that we’ve set the Max Items field for Tire Brand #1 to 2. Setting this field means that the platform will try to find two (2) matches for Tire Brand #1 before it looks for Tire Brand #2. Finally, I’ve also added two individual models under Tire Brand #1. Doing this means that the system will only add those specific tire models in the first two spots as long as they are found in the search results list. If they are not found, then the system will look for the next Preferred Brand in the list (Tire Brand #2). Note: You can change the order of Preferred Brands/Tires by using your mouse to drag their boxes up/down in the list.


Let's Sort Some More

So now we know how to select both brands and specific models we want to sort to the top of customer’s search results, however we can take things further even still. Now click on the Step 2) Set Preferred Sorting Rules tab and you’ll be presented with the following options as illustrated in the image below.


If the ability to select Preferred Brands/Tires wasn’t cool enough, you also have the option of applying additional sort rules to your Preferred Tires. Note: These rules can be reprioritized by dragging them up/down using your mouse. Let’s take look at each of these Preferred Sorting Rules one by one...

  1. Sort by Preferred Tires - This basically says, “Don’t do any additional sorting. However search results are sorted based on settings in the Select Preferred Tires tab is fine”.
  2. By In-Stock: Prioritize POS/Custom Inventory First - This rule says, take the Preferred Tires that we found and check if any of them come from our in-house stock. If so, put them at the top of the search results.
  3. By Price: Sort all tires by price low/high or high/low - This rule says, look at the preferred tires we found in the search results and further sort them by this price rule.

Conclusion

As you can see, tire recommendations is extremely powerful and flexible. You can use it to sort your tires in virtually any manner you can imagine. And believe it or not, we’ve just scratched the surface of what you can do with tire recommendations. This feature challenged everybody here at TireConnect to fully comprehend, so we won’t inundate you any more right now. In our next article we’ll dive back into Featured Tires - Top 3. In the meantime, if you have any questions about Tire Recommendations or need help configuring it for your business, please contact us at support@tireconnect.ca.