CartModules: Smart Inventory Mix

Keep new arrivals fresh and older products visible — your category pages sort themselves

Smart Inventory Mix takes care of how your products show up on your category pages. Newest products get shown first. Older ones don’t get lost — they still show up mixed in a little further down the page. The order shuffles once a day, so repeat visitors always see something different. Built for store owners who want their shop to always look fresh without reordering products by hand every week — turn it on once and forget about it.

A quick example: a shopper visits your Shoes page. First they see any products you’ve hand-picked to feature at the top. Then they see the newest arrivals in order. Then the rest of your shoes come next, woven together — a few older, a few newer, a few older — so the whole page feels alive. Works on CS-Cart Store Builder and Multi-Vendor; on marketplaces each vendor’s catalog stays separate.

Key Features

• Runs on Its Own — no manual sorting, ever
• Newest Products First — brand-new arrivals always get the spotlight
• Pin Your Favorites — tick a box on any product and it jumps to the very top
• Older Products Still Get Seen — a smart weave mixes them in with newer ones so nothing gets buried
• Fresh Every Day — the order shuffles at midnight so regular visitors see something new
• Pre-Orders Stay Put — products on pre-order hold a stable position so shoppers can find them again
• Customer Choice Wins — if the shopper picks “Sort by Price” or “Sort by Name”, your custom order steps aside
• Shop Page or Every Category — a single setting to choose where it applies
• Marketplace-Safe — vendor admins can’t touch the pin-to-top setting; only you (the store owner) can

How It Works

1. When a shopper visits a category page (or your main shop page), Smart Inventory Mix takes charge of the order
2. Products you’ve marked as “featured” show up first
3. Then your newest products fill the next spots — how many is up to you (50 by default)
4. The rest of the products get woven together in a smart pattern — a few older, a few newer, a few older — so shoppers scrolling down still see interesting things
5. Once a day at midnight, the mixed-in products shuffle into a fresh order, so regular visitors see something different tomorrow than they saw today

What Shoppers See

Take a category page with 100 products, with the add-on on and default settings:

• Positions 1–2: any products you pinned to the top (if any)
• Positions 3–52: your 50 newest products, freshest first
• Positions 53 to the bottom: the remaining products, woven together — four older, four newer, four older — so no section feels stale

Tomorrow, the weaving section shuffles into a different order; the pinned and newest sections stay the same.

Requirements

• CS-Cart Store Builder or Multi-Vendor (single or multiple storefronts) 4.6.3 or higher
• PHP 7.4 or higher (tested up to PHP 8.3)

Installation

1. Go to Add-ons > Manage add-ons, click Manual installation, and upload the addon zip file
2. Activate the addon and enter the license key
3. Click Configure to review the settings (see below) — the add-on starts working right away; visit a category page on your storefront to see it in action

Configuration Options

Daily refresh: every night at midnight the mixed section of each category page shuffles into a new order; pinned and newest products stay where they are, and pre-order products hold their position from day to day. When a shopper picks a sort (Price or Name), the add-on steps aside and remembers their choice for the rest of the session.

Support

For help, updates, and feature requests, contact us at www.cartmodules.com.