This post is about Antecons, a product recommendation engine, now part of Conversio. Antecons is no longer commercially available, but I have kept my developer diary on my website with permission.
In the last post about Antecons, I wrote about frequent patterns and MapReduce. Since then, this base functionality has been tweaked to work a little better but the main focus has been on creating the first plugin for Antecons: A Shopify app.
I have previously mentioned that it is important to me that Antecons can be easy to set up. Although focusing on the API initially was a great way to get started, it has become clear after some thought that the reach is limited if the entire product is just an API from the beginning. So I have begun implementing a plugin (or an app as they call it) for Shopify. There are two reasons for choosing Shopify as the first integrated platform for Antecons:
- It is easy to get started with app development on Shopify and their API is quite extensive.
- Shopify was simply something I knew before-hand so I did not need to research other options too much.
So far, it has been a good experience working with the Shopify API. Integrating with Python/Google App Engine was very easy thanks to their open source API bindings for python.
The Shopify app for Antecons is not finished yet or at least, I do not consider it in a state where I can release it. However, it is in state where it installs correctly and delivers recommendations to the webshop it is installed on. Instead of writing a lot about that, below are some screenshots that show the functionality. The suggestions by Antecons are the little “You might also like” products.