Attributes, Facets, and Filters

Attributes

Attributes help to better define and describe a product. They are the specific features and characteristics of a product that have not been captured elsewhere on the product. Attributes can both be customer facing, like Folder Capacity, or serve an internal function, like Available to Sell.

Attributes are typically structured as key : value pairs. Where the Attribute is the key and the Attribute Value is the value. Let’s take the example of Sleeping Capacity for a tent.

"Folder Capacity": "50 Sheets"

In the example above, Folder Capacity is the Attribute and 50 Sheets is the Attribute Value.

Facets

Facets are the customer-facing options displayed on a PLP that allows a customer to request a subset of the visible products by selecting one or more facet values. Facets can be powered by attributes, but they can also be powered by other data, like Price and Inventory. Within each facet are facet values, which represent all active available values for each product attribute.

Filter

Filters use facets and facet values to update product sets. Filtering refers to the action taken when interacting with facets. Let’s imagine a customer selected the 50 Sheets value in the Folder Capacity facet. They are effectively saying, I only want to see envelopes that can hold 50 Sheets. They trigger this by clicking the 50 Sheets facet value, and the result is the PLP is filtered to only show those products.