An introduction to Klevu
An introduction to Klevu
Klevu powers an incredible merchandising experience for Adobe Commerce and other ecommerce platforms. They have been in the Magento / Adobe Commerce space since 2013 and have invested much in great search experiences. Magento has historically lacked significant capability in this vital area because of how difficult a good search experience is to deliver. Klevu fills this void.
Klevu is a SwiftOtter partner. I thought including a section about them here in this course would be a good fit. While they are sponsoring this section, no money is being exchanged, and we are free to provide our honest take on their offering.
Because Klevu is SaaS (software-as-a-service), your configuration options will be spread across the Klevu Merchant Center (KMC) and your Adobe Commerce admin.
Comparing Klevu with Magento Open Source and Adobe Commerce
Klevu is most similar to Adobe Commerce's additional merchandising features. Live Search and Live Recommended Products are powered by Adobe services and do not reside in your production codebase. Thus, performance is excellent.
Magento Open Source has some search and product recommendation capabilities, but it's minimal. If you use Magento Open Source, you will want to use Klevu.
Categories / Visual Merchandiser
This list compares functionality after adding items to a category. Adobe Commerce's Visual Merchandiser feature includes virtually associating products with a category (like a brand page). Since Klevu takes over after these actions, this is outside of its scope.
One thing to note is that the Adobe Commerce Visual Merchandiser "Match products by rule" is compatible with Klevu.
| Klevu | Magento Open Source | Adobe Commerce | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Rule-based category sort order | - | - | ✅ |
| Drag and drop product order in categories | - | - | ✅ |
| Rule-based product boosting | ✅ | - | ✅ |
| Exclude product from category | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Logic in product boost rules | ✅ | - | - |
| Customizable amount in product boost rules | ✅ | - | - |
| Banners on category pages | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Easily accessible analytics | ✅ | - | ✅ |
| Machine-learning-powered product boost adjustments | ✅ | - | - |
| Scheduled category boost rule changes | ✅ | - | - |
| A/B rule testing | ✅ | - | - |
One of the biggest value-adds of Klevu is that it watches user behavior and adjusts product rankings to the optimum location. You still have a helpful degree of control.
Product Recommendations
Adobe Commerce's Live Recommendation tool seems to have borrowed some ideas from the Klevu book. Imitation is the highest form of flattery. However, there are a few key things that provide excellent value on Klevu's side:
| Klevu | Magento Open Source | Adobe Commerce | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Hand-picked product recommendations | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| Rule-based product recommendations | ✅ | - | ✅ |
| Machine-picked product recommendations | ✅ | - | ✅ |
| Non-developer-controlled visual recommendation templates (GUI) | ✅ | - | - |
| Native PageBuilder recommendation widget | - | - | ✅ |
| Attribute-based filters for machine recommendations | ✅ | - | ✅ |
| Ability to hide recommendations on targeted pages | ✅ | - | - |
| Report-based insights into user behavior | ✅ | - | ✅ |
One of our favorite features is the ability to change the recommendation templates. You control not only the styling but also the structure. You as a business user have complete control over how these look. You can create and tweak at your leisure. You can associate a template with each recommendation object.
Live Search
While there are some similarities of Klevu and Adobe Commerce's merchandising features, search is where Klevu stands out.
| Klevu | Magento Open Source | Adobe Commerce | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Includes CMS pages in search | ✅ | - | - |
| Fine-grained control over auto-complete layout | ✅ | - | - |
| Include product recommendations in auto-complete | ✅ | - | - |
| Control over facet placement | ✅ | - | - |
| Control over "no results found" page | ✅ | - | - |
| Rule-based product boosts | ✅ | - | - |
| Individual product boosts (for specific keyword search) | ✅ | - | ✅ |
| Global product boosts | ✅ | - | - |
| One-way and two-way synonym control | ✅ | - | ✅ |
| URL redirect for specific search query | ✅ | ✅ | - |
| Display banners for search terms | ✅ | - | - |
| Selection type per facet | - | - | ✅ |
| Force facet to always be visible | - | - | ✅ |
Should I use Klevu?
You will happily include Klevu's capabilities on your website if the price is no issue. If you are Magento Open Source, you have a significant budget differential that you can put toward supplemental tooling. If you are using Adobe Commerce, the answer is more nuanced but still definitely recommended.
Adobe Commerce now includes Live Search and Live Recommended Products. These both do the job. They are backed by machine-learning intelligence and are included in your licensing fees.
Here is where we would recommend Klevu:
- If search is heavily used on your website and you want to control. You have fine-grained control backed by machine learning. We like how search is more comprehensive in that CMS pages (and other content types) are also searchable. Individual products can be boosted by a Magento attribute. You have clear visibility into which products are boosted by a rule or an attribute.
- If you need rule-based customization to your search capabilities. Adobe Commerce's Live Search does not provide broad strokes for boosting (or deboosting) products. We also like how you can include product recommendations in the autocomplete box.
- If you have a frequent number of no-result searches. We like Klevu's effortless ability to customize what appears on this page.
- If you like to see detailed analytics on how customers utilize your merchandising features.