OVERVIEW

Product Recommendations adds an additional exchange option to your return portal, powered by Loop's product recommendations engine. When enabled, shoppers will see personalized product suggestions alongside variant and Advanced Exchange options during their return.

Important: This feature is currently being tested to measure its impact on exchange rates and revenue retention. When enabled, product recommendations will be shown to 50% of shoppers, while the other 50% will see your standard return experience.

Product Recommendations integrates Loop's recommendation engine directly into your return flow. When a shopper initiates a return, they'll see an option to exchange their item for products recommended by Loop's engine alongside your existing exchange options.

The recommendation engine analyzes your product catalog and shopper behavior to suggest products that are likely to result in a successful exchange. This feature is designed to:

• Increase exchange rates by presenting relevant alternatives

• Decrease refund rates through strategic product suggestions

• Drive upsell opportunities with recommended items

• Improve overall revenue retention

Because the recommendations are powered by Loop's engine rather than manual curation, shoppers may see products at different price points than their original item. The engine prioritizes relevance and likelihood of exchange over price matching.

Before enabling Product Recommendations, verify that your shop has:

1. Exchange outcome enabled - This feature works alongside variant exchanges. If you don't currently offer variant exchanges, Loop won't show Product Recommendations.

2. Refund or store credit outcome available - Merchants must have one of these two options available to handle partial refunds when exchange prices differ.

3. Stripe connected - Necessary for processing upsell charges.

   Note: Upsell via Shopify Invoicing is also supported as a mechanism to collect upsell.

4. Different Priced Exchanges configured - Since the recommendation engine suggests products at various price points, merchants must be set up to allow exchanges with different prices and collect upsell or issue partial refunds.

5. Advanced plan - The configurations required for Product Recommendations are only available on Advanced plans.

Product Recommendations is currently available through a request process:

1. Verify your account meets all requirements listed above.

2. Complete the Product Recommendations request form or contact your Merchant Success Manager to request access.

3. Loop will enable the feature flag for your account.

4. Once enabled, 50% of your shoppers will see product recommendations as an exchange option, while 50% will continue to see your standard return experience.

You may have products that shouldn't be recommended to shoppers, such as gift cards, return fees (like Checkout+), or package insurance (like Route). To prevent specific products from appearing in recommendations:

1. In your Shopify admin, go to the product you want to exclude.

2. Add the tag loop_recommendations_exclude to the product.

3. Tagged products will be blocked from the recommendation engine and won't appear as exchange options.

Product Recommendations requires an Advanced plan. The feature requires configurations that are only available at this plan level.

If you want to add this feature, please contact your Merchant Success Manager to amend your account.

Why do only half my shoppers see product recommendations? This feature is currently being tested to measure its impact on return metrics like exchange rate and revenue retention. The 50/50 split allows us to compare performance and validate the feature's effectiveness.

Can I control which products are recommended to shoppers? The recommendations are generated automatically by Loop's engine based on your product catalog and shopper behavior. However, you can prevent specific products from being recommended by adding the loop_recommendations_exclude tag in Shopify.

What happens if the recommendation engine doesn't return any products? If the call to the recommendation engine fails or no suitable products are found, shoppers simply won't see the product recommendations option. They'll still be able to complete their return using your other configured exchange options.

Do recommended products need to match the price of the returned item? No. The recommendation engine prioritizes relevance and likelihood of exchange over price matching. This is why Different Priced Exchanges must be configured to handle upsells and partial refunds.

Can I use this feature without offering variant exchanges? No. Product Recommendations works alongside variant exchanges and requires that outcome to be enabled.

Please reach out to support@loopreturns.com with any additional questions.