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| Name / Concept | Notes | Example | ||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| WORKBENCH USER INTERFACE | ||||||||
main menu | The menu on the top in your web-browser. See Workbench Views Overviewviews overview | |||||||
| navigation bar | The navigation bar with context-specific actions on the left side of your web-browser. | |||||||
| view | A view displayed by the Workbench to show data or perform certain configuration tasks. | |||||||
| GENERAL | ||||||||
| account | Typically associated with a customer company | demo, playground | ||||||
| user | User of the Workbench associated with an account | |||||||
| role | Collection of permissions to perform certain actions or view certain data in the Workbench. Every user must have one or multiple roles. | |||||||
| permission | Atomic access right to a specific action (like Create Question) | |||||||
| DATA | ||||||||
| data feed | The file that contains your product data. When Product Guides are rolled out to several countries / markets, we distinguish the Master Data Feed contaning the product base informatione and the Offer Data with prices and availablity. | product-assortment.csv, productdata.XML | ||||||
| data source | Source of product data (local or URI file) | product-assortment.csv | ||||||
| data attribute | Attribute of the product data source | price, brand, weight | ||||||
| data attribute value | Value of a specific entry (or 'data cell') of a data attribute in the data source | 700,- € (in the "price" data attribute), Asics (in the "manufacturer" data attribute) | ||||||
| product | Record (or 'row') of a data source | |||||||
| product field / product attribute | Defined aspect of a product associated to one (or more) data attributes in the data source | price | ||||||
| product field value | Product specific value(s) of a product field | 700,00 | ||||||
| PROFILES and FIELDS | ||||||||
| profile field | Defines an aspect within a domain specific user model, that serves to specify a certain user requirement. It determines the features (or constraints) for appropriate products. For this purpose a profile field is typically associated to one (or more) product fields (of the product data schema). | |||||||
| profile field domain | Domain of a profile field, specifying the set or range of valid profile field values | 0 - 10.000 | ||||||
| domain type | Specifies the type of a profile field domain (discrete, continuous, ordinal, numeric) | numeric | ||||||
| profile field value | User specific value (or constraint) for a profile field ( → concrete value selected by the user), typically associated to an Answer Option | <= 500 | ||||||
| user profile | Specifies the product requirements a of an user by means of a constraint set associated to the fields (of a given product guide) | |||||||
| ELEMENTS OF A PRODUCT GUIDE | ||||||||
Product Guide | Instance of a product advisor visible in your website. Simplification of a former concept of hierarchy of project, system and application. | |||||||
| Product Guide concept / advisor concept | The Product Guide concept or advisor concept defines how all the (complex) buying decisions the user needs to make are presented to the user and how this is put into an effective selection process that is actually fun to use. It consists of all elements of a Product Guide described hereafter. | |||||||
| Question Flow, advisor process | Sequence of Stages and Facets of a Product Guide as well as the logic of the visibility of each Stage, Question and Answer Option. Since the Question Flow defines which Question and Answer Options are presented in what context and what order to the user, we also call it the advisor process. | |||||||
| Stage | Collection of Questions in one Stage (i.e. one step in the Product Guide process) | Stage 1: Your requirements Stage 2: Your budget | ||||||
| Question (or Facet) | A Question (or more general: Facet) is the handler for a question-/answer - combination within a Stage of a Product Guide. The Question can be a real question (e.g. "what is your preferred brand?" with several Answer Options such as "Mustang", "Levis") or also a directly selectable option (e.g. for Boolean yes-/no - Facets such as "I want Bluetooth"). That's why, more generally spoken, we also call them Facets. | Stage 2: Price | ||||||
| Answer Option | One or several Answer Options of a Question. More technically: Set of selectable value(s) (or constraints) presented to the user; associated to the domain of the profile field (could be empty e.g. for text search fields) | 10, 20, 30, ..., 100 € | ||||||
| explanation content | The content used to explain and describe the Stages, Questions and Answer Options. The explanation content can consist of text, images and illustrations. | |||||||
| RECOMMENDATIONS | ||||||||
| Presentation of one product in the recommendation list of the Product Guide. This is where all the intelligence of the excentos recommender comes in and presents the relevant products for the user's buying needs. | |||||||
| The widget (or user interface element) that contains one product recommendation. Depending on the client theme it is displayed in a certain layout together with some product attributes (e.g. product name, price, manufacturer, articleID etc.) and a reasoning which describes why the product either fits or not. | |||||||
| recommendation list | List of product recommendations (structured by recommendation groups) | |||||||
| recommendation group | A group of several product recommendations within the recommendation list, e.g. | "Top Recommendations" (products that fulfill all user requirements) or "Alternatives" that don't match all of your requirements | ||||||
| Reason | A Reason is an argument why the product is recommended to the user. It reflects the user requirements (i.e. selected Answer Options relevant to a certain product attribute). There are 4 types of Reasons: | |||||||
| Pro Reason | Shown if the relevant product attribute of this recommendation matches to the selected Answer Option. | "+ your selected brand (Mustang)" | ||||||
| Con Reason | Shown if the product attribute does not match the selected Answer Option. | "- different brand (Levis instead of Mustang)" | ||||||
| Nearly Reason | Nearly Reasons are used if a product recommendation almost fulfills the corresponding selected Answer Option. | "~ a bit more expensive than expected (800 € instead of 750 €)" | ||||||
| Fill Reason | The Fill Reason is used if a product recommendation shall show "neutral" product attributes, no matter whether the user selected a corresponding Answer Option or not. | "Features: Front Suspension, Disc Brakes" | ||||||
| theme | The Theme defines the look and feel of your Product Guide and has a certain layout. You can style the theme according to your needs. See the list of our themes here. | |||||||
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