When you build a fine-tuned version of EliteAI™ Ultra, you shape its recommendations with two kinds of rules: filters and boosts. This article explains the difference and walks through every option.
New to fine-tuning? Start with the overview article first.
Filters are hard rules. A product that fails a filter is removed from the recommendations entirely. Use a filter to require (or forbid) something.
Boosts are soft rules. A boost makes a matching product more or less likely to show, but never removes it. Use a boost to prefer something.
A simple way to remember it: to exclude products, use a filter. To prefer products, use a boost.
Several rules refer to the trigger item. That's simply the product already in the cart (or on the product page) that EliteCart is recommending against. So "the same vendor as the trigger item" means "the same vendor as the product the shopper is already looking at or buying".
Note that, if several items are in the cart, EliteCart returns the highest-confidence recommendations across those.
In the Filters section, click Add filter to add a rule, or Add group to bracket several rules together. Each filter reads as a sentence starting with Only recommend products that....
If you have more than one filter, use the And / Or control to decide how they combine. With And, a product must pass every filter. With Or, it only needs to pass one.
You can filter by:
Price - have a price greater than, or less than, a fixed amount.
Price vs the trigger item - compare to the cart item's price as a ratio (0.5 = half, 2 = double). For example, "at most 2x" only recommends products up to twice the cart item's price.
Tag - have, or not have, certain tags, or share tags with the trigger item.
Vendor - same vendor as the trigger item, a different vendor, or one of a list you choose.
Product type - same type as the trigger item, a different type, or one of a list. (Same/different aren't available when you build on CrossCategoryBoost.)
Collection - in the same collection as the trigger item, or in (or not in) collections you pick.
Title - have a title that contains, or does not contain, a word. The match is on whole words and ignores capitalisation, so "kit" won't match "kitchen".
Info: If two filters can never both be true (for example "same vendor" and "different vendor"), EliteCart highlights the row so you can fix it before saving.
Each filter can be made conditional, so it only applies to certain cart items. Every filter starts with If the trigger item set to is any (meaning: always apply). Change that to a condition and the filter only kicks in when the cart item matches.
For example:
If the trigger item is tagged "premium", then recommend products that have a price greater than $50.
For any other cart item, that filter simply doesn't apply. This lets one version behave differently depending on what's in the cart.
In the Boosts section, click Add boost. Each boost reads Boost products that... and re-ranks matching products without removing anything.
You can boost by:
Tag - has certain tags, or shares tags with the trigger item.
Vendor - same vendor as the trigger item, a different vendor, or one of a list.
Product type - same type, a different type, or one of a list.
Collection - in the same collection as the trigger item, or in collections you pick.
Price compared to trigger item - prefer products that cost less, or more, than the cart item.
Popularity - prefer your bestsellers.
For most boosts you set the strength on a five-step scale:
Strongly dampen - Dampen - Neutral - Boost - Strongly boost
Dampen options (shown in red) push products down the list; boost options (shown in green) push them up; Neutral does nothing.
For the Price compared to trigger item boost, the scale is directional instead:
Much cheaper - Cheaper - No preference - Pricier - Much pricier
Pick "cheaper" for classic cheap add-ons, or "pricier" to nudge shoppers toward upgrades. You can only have one price boost per version, since it's a single control.
Info: A boost can never hide a product, even on "Strongly dampen". To remove products completely, use a filter instead.
Tight filters can sometimes leave a cart item with no eligible products. The Fallback (recommended) setting decides what happens then:
Show fallback recommendations when nothing matches (on, recommended) - the location falls back to general EliteAI™ Ultra Original recommendations so the shopper still sees something. These fallback picks intentionally ignore your filters, to avoid an empty space.
Off - nothing shows when your rules find no match. Choose this only when showing nothing is better than showing off-target products.
Cheap, on-brand add-ons:
Filter: Only recommend products that are from the same vendor as the trigger item.
Boost: Price compared to trigger item → Cheaper.
Premium upsell for premium carts:
Filter: If the trigger item is tagged "premium", only recommend products that have a price greater than $50.
Boost: Popularity → Boost.
