Magento

My category pages by default are sorted by ‘Best Value’ but I don’t understand how this is calculated. The products are not sorted by price so what constitutes best value? I have a feeling this might be starting me in the face (not enough caffeine and too much staring at the screen I think).

Also is there a way to choose name or price by default?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

I’ve been wondering about this too. I’ve tested it out with some reviews and ratings but that seems to have no effect on the sorting. Its strange because ascending or descending the list makes no difference. Seems to be completely random.

here’s how to change the sort order

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/1176/

i have no clue how best value is calculated. would be interesting to know though.

pixelpusher - 01 June 2008 03:03 PM

I’ve been wondering about this too. I’ve tested it out with some reviews and ratings but that seems to have no effect on the sorting. Its strange because ascending or descending the list makes no difference. Seems to be completely random.

I agree, I have tried a few things and it makes no difference. It does just seem to be random or the order the product was added? Can any of the Magento developers (or anyone else in fact) shed some light on this?

sdb - 02 June 2008 09:25 AM

here’s how to change the sort order

http://www.magentocommerce.com/boards/viewthread/1176/

i have no clue how best value is calculated. would be interesting to know though.

Thanks, might just move it around till its a little clearer.

Hey everybody. I’m not sure if you’ve figured this out already, but I thought I’d chime in.

“Best Value” is really just a marketing-friendly to describe “putting products in the order that the store wants you to see them.” As noted in other threads, the order parameter in the URL becomes position when you sort by Best Value. Seeing this, I realized that there must have been a position attribute somewhere within the Admin.

[list=1]
[*]Go to Catalog → Manage Categories
[*]Edit a category that has products
[*]Open the “Category Products” tab to view all the category’s associated products
[/list]

Low and behold, the position attribute at the far right of the table. By default, they are all set to 0. Therefore if you modify a product’s position to be a higher number, you’ll see the product move further back in the product list on a category page. Note that it also seems to order by position first, then by product ID.

So if you didn’t know about this feature, be sure to tell your marketing department—they’ll be sure to give you a high-five. They love doing that stuff.

Thanks Matt! Good find.

nice! im glad to have that question answered.

Ok. Now I understand that sort by “Best Value” is controlled from the Manage Category > Products tab.

But, what happen with the products ratings???

I think everybody is considering that “Best Value” refers to “Ratings / Reviews”.

How can I sort my products by stars value?

The problem with “best value” sorting (near as I can figure anyway) is that while you can manually set the order of products on your defined category pages, you cannot do so for the dynamically generated pages. So when a user filters using layered navigation or does a search, it defaults to near random ordering of the products.  Has anybody figured out the right syntax or file to tell it to sort by ascending “best value” but to sort by descending price if no “best value"/position is defined?

Sort by best value in this moment for me means that magento put in the first position the first product I created.
Then it seems that the order is the number of ID in database!

Please check and let me know!

@chiaraweb
Yes the product ID seems to be the default sort value if all product positions are set to “0”

@ everyone else
I got “best value” all set up in my category views and it works great, until you edit a product. Once any saves are done to the product it gets bumped up the list to the top. All thats needed to revert your best value order is to go in and edit the category and resave it (no changes needed just save).

Can anyone else confirm this behavior? Please let me know.

Without being too picky (something I’m actually good at...) does anyone know how to change the default from “Best Value” to “Name” or “Price”?