Render a product list online

Version: 9.3

You use SXA Storefront to build and customize a web store. It is a flexible framework that offers different ways to render product lists on your storefront. This topic describes how to render product lists on your storefront using the following renderings:

  • The Product List rendering - use to render products within a category. This rendering is useful when you want to display products as they are structured in the catalog.

    Tip

    To better organize your content, use nested folders (available with the Product Lists template). You can have any number of folder levels.

  • The Promoted Products rendering - use to render product lists using a query, to display a fixed list of products, or to display related products based on relationship data. This rendering is useful when you want to display a selected list or a query-based list.

  • The Commerce Search Results rendering - use to render products using a search scope dynamic query that can include query tokens and boosting rules. For more information, see Customizing the Commerce Search Results rendering and Boosting search results for Commerce.

There are several things to consider when comparing the different renderings for product lists. In Sitecore 9.2 and earlier, you can use the Product List and Promoted Products rendering. We recommend that you use the Commerce Search Results rendering for Sitecore 9.3 and later.

This topic compares the three ways of rending product lists using a specific example.

Note

The procedures in this topic use the Habitat catalog.

Use the Product List rendering to render content

You use the Product List rendering on a product page to display products in a category, for example, smartphones. The Product List rendering is nested in a Catalog Item container. This rendering includes a Show more button that lets customers display additional products.

Important

Do not use the Commerce page components that enable paging for the Product List rendering multiple times on the same page. For example, do not include the Product List rendering alongside the Product List Page Info, Product List Items per Page, Product List Sorting, or Product List Pager renderings on the same page. Instead, use the lazy loading feature to display related products.

To use the Product list rendering to display content:

  1. In the Content Editor, go to sitecore/Content/<tenant>/<site>/Home, right-click the Product item and click Experience Editor.

  2. In the Experience Editor, in the Toolbox, in the Commerce Catalog section, drag the Catalog Item Container rendering onto the page.

  3. On the Catalog Item Container toolbar, click More, Edit Component Properties and, in the General section, click Data Source, Browse . Go to the relevant product category, for example Smartphones (/sitecore/Content/Sitecore/Storefront/Home/Catalogs/Habitat_Master/Habitat_Master-Departments/Habitat_Master-Phones/Habitat_Master-Smartphones), and then click OK to close the Control Properties dialog box.

  4. In the Toolbox, in the Commerce Catalog section, click the Product List rendering and drag it inside the Catalog Item Container.

    Catalog Item Container and toolbar
  5. In the Select the Associated Content dialog box, click Product List, and then click OK.

  6. On the Product List toolbar, click More, Edit Component Properties.

  7. In the Lazy Loading section, select the Use Lazy Loading check box and, in the Max Page Size field, enter the number of products that you want to display, for example, 3.

    The Max Page Size field indicates how many product cards you want to appear in the list when the visitor arrives on the page. This is also the number of items that are added to the list each time the visitor clicks Show More.

  8. To confirm your changes, click OK and, on the ribbon menu, click Save.

    The rendering looks like this:

    Product list on the live storefront

Use the Promoted Products rendering to render dynamic content

You can use the Promoted Products rendering to display a dynamic list of products using a query. For example, you can create a query to retrieve the products that you want to display in a product list. You then associate this query with the Promoted Products rendering to display a dynamic list of products.

To display a dynamic list of products using a query:

  1. In the Content Editor, go to the folder that contains your product lists, for example, /sitecore/Content/<tenant>/<site>/Data/Commerce/Product Lists.

  2. Right-click and click Insert, Named Search.

  3. In the Message dialog box, enter a name for the new product list, for example, Phones, and click OK.

  4. In the tree view, click the newly created product list, for example, Phones. On the ribbon menu, on the View tab, select the Standard fields check box and the Buckets check box.

  5. On the Content tab, in the Item Buckets section, click Build query beneath the label Default bucket query and, in the Build Search Query dialog box, build the search query and click OK when you are finished. For example, to search for Odyssey brand smartphones, create the following query:

    • Commercesearchitemtype:sellableitem

    • Brand:Odyssey Smartphone

    • Location:Phones

    • Language:en

    Search query for promoted products
  6. On the ribbon, click Save.

  7. To associate the query with the Promoted Products rendering, in the Experience Editor, go to the product page and, from the Commerce Catalog section of the Toolbox, drag the Promoted Products rendering onto the page.

  8. In the Select the Associated Content dialog box, click Promoted Products, and click OK.

  9. On the Promoted Products toolbar, click More, Edit Component Properties.

  10. In the Promoted Products section, from the Product List box, click the product list you want to use, for example, Phones.

  11. In the Lazy Loading section, select the Use Lazy Loading check box and, to confirm your changes, click OK.

    The rendering looks like this:

    Product List rendering on the live storefront

Use the Promoted Products rendering to render a selected list

You can use the Promoted Products rendering to display a fixed list of products. In this case, there is no Show more button.

To display a fixed list of products:

  1. In the Content Editor, go to sitecore/Content/<tenant>/<site>/Data/Commerce>.

  2. To create a static list of products, right-click Product Lists, click Insert, Selected Products and, in the Message dialog box, enter Selected Products, and click OK.

  3. On the ribbon, on the View tab, clear the Buckets check box and the Raw values check box.

  4. On the Content tab, in the Products section, go to the folder that contains the products you want to display, for example, sitecore/Content/<tenant>/<site>/Home/Catalogs/Habitat_Master/Departments/Phones.

  5. On the Content tab, in the Products section, click in the Title field and enter a name, for example Odyssey Phones.

  6. In the Products List, go to the folder that contains the products, for example, sitecore/Content/<tenant>/<site>/Home/Catalogs/Habitat_Master/Departments/Phones. Double-click all the products you want to move to the Selected List , for example, all the Habitat Odyssey phones. When you are finished, on the ribbon, click Save.

    Product list defined selection
  7. To associate the fixed list with the Promoted Products rendering, in the Experience Editor, go to the product page and, from the Commerce Catalog section of the Toolbox, drag the Promoted Products rendering. onto the page.

  8. In the Select the Associated Content dialog box, click Promoted Products, and click OK.

  9. On the Promoted Products toolbar, click More, Edit Component Properties.

  10. In the Promoted Products section, from the Product List box, click Selected Products.

  11. In the Lazy Loading section, select the Use Lazy Loading check box and, to confirm your changes, click OK.

    Promoted Products rendering on the live storefront
  12. To save your changes, on the ribbon, click Save.

If your commerce system contains data about related products, you can add a list of related products to a product page. You can choose which type of relationship the products in the list have to the product on the page.

Note

In Sitecore 9.3 and later, we recommend you define a commerce search scope and use the Commerce Search Results rendering to display related products. To see an example in the Storefront site template, in the Content Editor, go to /sitecore/Content/Sitecore/Storefront/Presentation/Page Designs/Commerce Product Page, right-click Commerce Product Page and click Experience Editor.

To display a list of related products:

  1. Insert the Promoted Products rendering on a page that has a current catalog item, for example, a product details page.

  2. In the Control Properties dialog box for the rendering, select an option from the Relationship Type drop-down menu, and click OK.

    The Control Properties dialog box

The rendering shows placeholder data in the Experience Editor, but on the live storefront it displays products that are related to the current product. The list of products is derived from the corresponding field on the Relationships tab on the catalog item.

The Relationships tab

On the live storefront, a header appears above the list:

The header on the live storefront

You can configure the header text for each relationship type on the respective relationship type item, in the /sitecore/content/<tenant>/<site>/Data/Commerce/Relationships folder:

The Relationship Type field
Note

Each instance of the Promoted Products rendering can only display one list. If you fill in both the Product List field and the Relationship Type field in the Control Properties dialog box for a single component, only the product list is displayed. To include more than one list on a page, you must insert multiple instances of the Promoted Products rendering on the page.

Use the Commerce Search Results rendering to display dynamic content

This procedure is quite similar to using the Promoted Products rendering to display dynamic content, except that Sitecore provides SXA search facets as well as Commerce-specific facets that you can use when you build a query and configure facets.

To use the Commerce Search Results rendering to display dynamic content:

  1. Go to sitecore\Content\<tenant>\<site>\Settings\Scopes, right-click Scope, click Insert, Scope, enter a name, for example Optix Products and click OK.

  2. On the Content tab, in the Scope section, click Build query, click in the query box and define a search query, and then click OK. For example:

    • Commercesearchitemtype: sellableitem

    • Brand:Optix

    • _LatestVersion: true

    • Excludefromwebsearchresults: false

    Build Search Query dialog box
  3. In the Boosting section, click Edit rule and define a boosting rule, for example, to promote DSLR cameras to the top of the search results list, and click OK.

    • where the _displayname field contains DSLR adjust boost by 1.1

    Create rule dialog box
  4. On the ribbon menu, click Save.

  5. In the Experience Editor, open a page and, in the Toolbox, from the Commerce Catalog section, drag the Commerce Search Results rendering onto the page and, in the Control Properties dialog box, configure the rendering properties, and then click OK. For example:

    Control Properties dialog box for the Commerce Search Results rendering
  6. In the Toolbox, in the Search category, drag the Load More rendering onto the page and, in the Control Properties dialog box, enter the same search signature that you used in the previous step, for example, Optix products, and click OK.

    On the live storefront, the rendering looks like this:

    Commerce Search Results rendering on the live storefront

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