As a unique and extremely handy tool to aid web-designers, Nosto features a recommendation preview-mode.

When preview mode is enabled, you’ll be able to see what your recommendations would look like to customers if you were to publish them now.  Preview-mode also enforces recommendation placeholders to show up in your browser. Mock-up images are used if Nosto can’t display any products due to missing data or misconfiguration of the recommendation.

When enough data is collected and processed and assuming that one or more recommendation slots are placed on the site itself, recommendations can be enforced to show up in preview-mode by adding a preview string ?nostopreview=true after the page’s url in a web browser. Just like with debug-mode, adding string ?nostopreview=false will disable the preview-mode.

When preview mode is enabled a toolbar with Nosto logo appears on the top section of a browser. Clicking Close Preview disables the preview-mode.

Mockup-products are never displayed publicly and only when preview-mode is enabled in a browser. See example below.

If data is not found from Nosto’s index to display the set recommendation and when the preview-mode is enabled, Nosto automatically displays mockup products instead of actual product data collected from the site. Mock-ups are intended for web-designers or persons responsible of site’s layout to get a good overview how the site would appear, if there would be data. Mockup products are replaced with actual products when enough data is collected. Mock-ups are never displayed for site’s regular visitors even when recommendations are live. Typically preview-mode shows mock-ups immediately after implementing Nosto on the site and for longer time or permanently if Nosto is implemented on a test side inaccessible from the Internet. Read more about test environments and Nosto here.

Read related article how to debug misconfigured recommendations here.