Christian is a computational linguist and philosopher by training and has been working at excentos for the past twelve years. His focus is to develop techniques around natural languages with special emphasis on methods that enable computer systems to unlock the knowledge contained in large amounts of textual data. He is an active contributor to the research field and utilizes his findings to further develop the Machine Learning technology used in excentos’ Guided Selling solutions.

Christian: Artificial Intelligence (AI) research aims to create systems that are able to solve non-trivial tasks in an intelligent way. In the context of cognitive science, it tries to mimic functions of the human mind such as problem-solving.

The field of AI emerged early on with the development of modern electronic computers in the 1950s. Almost from the beginning, there have been two competing paradigms that approached the recreation of intelligence from different principles. The first is the so-called 'Symbolic AI' which is based on large handcrafted systems of deductive rules and the descriptive power of formal logic. The second approach, originating from 'Computational Cognitive Science', is inspired on how a human brain works on a neural level. These were competing paradigms in extreme places on the map of AI, and they work in different ways.

Blurring its original meaning and usage, the term 'AI' is now used almost synonymously for Machine Learning (ML), albeit being associated, is actually much more restricted than the general concept of AI. That being said, ML currently is without a doubt the most important concept in regard to the practical relevance of AI-related techniques. ML enables computers to learn from experience and in that sense perform human-like tasks by processing large amounts of data and recognizing data patterns.

Christian: Perhaps the most prominent applications of AI-related technologies in Ecommerce are search and recommender systems which are almost omnipresent in online shops and websites in general. From a broader perspective the uses of AI in Ecommerce can be considered regarding to two major aspects:

User-Centric Functionalities: In the context of online shops or web presentations for brands, AI enables consumers to explore and navigate voluminous product assortments by search and recommender functionalities as well as by applying techniques for data clustering, which means to come up with automatically created groups of product items based on their underlying data representation. In this way it is possible for a fashion website e.g., to present a range of thousands of different dresses and in terms of a manageable number, let’s say ten automatically and smartly determined product clusters based on available image and text data.

With knowledge-based recommender systems AI also enables the possibility to provide highly personalized recommendation services by combining insights from data-driven consumer behavior analysis with specified user requirements acquired by web questionnaires or conversational interfaces. By these means AI enables consumers to access complex product domains geared to their actual needs and guided by expert knowledge.

Schematic representation of excentos analytics tool

Business-Centric Functionalities: Complementing user-centric applications, like the ones mentioned so far, AI is also used to contribute business-centric functionalities such as optimizing warehouse logistics in terms of demand forecasting or providing valuable consumer insights from collected usage data. Thereby, the latter is a typical use case in which user and business-centric functionalities go hand-in-hand, as customer intents gathered by user-interactions via conversational interfaces can provide a reliable data basis for AI-based consumer insight analytics, as well as product requirements research.

Christian: Today, small teams or even single developers can use various resources to solve specific problems. While this may have been difficult in the past, there is a lot that has changed during the last decade. Despite the tremendous increase of computation and storage capacities, one of the main influences that drove this development was a cultural change that took place in the AI research community, which was essentially taking the contributional work to the open source community mainstream. Therefore, there is a huge amount of high-quality open source software, data collections and research papers freely available to everyone.

The Deep Learning approach to Machine Learning recently led to impressive performance leaps for several tasks like voice recognition, computer vision or natural language processing. Although in principle available to everyone in terms of open source software, applying Deep Learning methods successfully from scratch requires massive amounts of data and computation which heavily limits its accessibility in practice. Even if the costs involved are affordable for a company there simply won’t be sufficient amount of data for many business relevant use cases.

To tackle these limiting aspects of Deep Learning a particularly useful technique called Transfer Learning is in place. Transfer Learning benefits from the fact that the research community and especially the big players in field like Google or Facebook use their vast computational resources along with their huge reserves of data to train state-of-the-art models and make them freely available. Transfer Learning exploits the implicit domain-independent knowledge represented in pre-trained models and transfers it to target domains with limited amount of available data. Smaller businesses that possess the technical knowledge can use these kind of pre-trained models for their domain-specific problems and operate successfully with limited data and resources. But at the same time, for businesses that don’t have any expertise or have even fewer resources, there are several service providers that supply the required expertise for AI-based solutions.

Christian: AI technology has always been at the core of our Guided Selling solutions as we utilize knowledge representation, recommender engines and nautral language processing. We’ve been working on Guided Selling software since 2007, and over the years we have developed and heightened our personal expertise in this field. In the early days, we realised that there was a greater demand for technical expertise to just create a concept for a Product Guide. Hence, self-sufficiency has always been one of our goals and a major change has been to our project delivery process.



With the launch of the excentos Workbench platform, we were able to provide our customers with an easy-to-use tool, while abstracting away from the technically demanding details. Now they can create a Product Guide on their own in 5 simple steps. To get there and to keep going in this direction we are constantly pushing and adopting state-of-the-art results from relevant areas of the field.

Christian: What is surprising at the moment is that a system can go quite far by using language as a stream of patterns. It was thought that it would require a deeper level of understanding to be able to distinguish between a positive statement from a negative one, but this was not necessarily true and it was surprising to see that a system could do this by just using language as a stream of patterns.

Hence, there is a lot of potential to get smarter with recommendations when it comes to creating a system that can extract meaning from what it processes. One example would be a book recommender that goes through the text of a book and states the kind of prose or writing style, the quality of the writing itself, etc.

Extending the scope of knowledge extraction could be very powerful and helpful to us. Imagine that we have some kind of semantic representation that can go through thousands of medical research papers pertaining to cancer and detects a valuable pattern, insight or a finding. This is the kind of AI-powered assistance we need because the key insight is that it complements human endeavor and doesn’t hinder it.

If you’re not in the techie group, you’re most likely not going to be aware that when people talk about chatbots, they are, in most cases, actually talking about what the AI experts call conversational agents or dialog systems.

To get this straight, let’s take a quick side trip down to the history of 'talking' AI systems. The term chatbot, which is quite popular these days, was originally coined in the 1950s, in the context of AI research endeavor that aimed to simulate a human communicator by a computer program. By doing so, the resulting level of communication would be ultimately so authentic that it couldn’t be identified as an artificial system by humans anymore. In accordance with that original meaning of the term, the main purpose of chatbot systems was the computational modeling of human dialog itself. The famous ELIZA chatbot from the 1960s is still one of the most popular references in that regard.

Conversational agents, meanwhile, are a different story. Their aim is to serve as language-based user interfaces for a wide range of specific applications and, therefore, highly relevant for real-world industry applications. For example, virtual assistant systems like Alexa, Google Assistant, or Siri are designed to fulfill a wide variety of tasks by processing voice or text-based user requests such as providing weather forecasts, playing music, or booking flight tickets online. These systems, in general, proceed by collecting the relevant information needed from the user to fulfill the task at hand with a dialog-based user interaction. This pattern of providing automated digital services proved itself to be a powerful tool for a vastly growing number of industry applications.

However, the term “chatbot” became, for some reason, more popular and what the audience chose to adapt to when referring to conversational agents. So, for the sake of it, we’ll also call them chatbots.

Main differences of the terms ‘chatbot’ and ‘conversational agent’ in the Artificial Intelligence field.

Conversational AI is maybe not going to play the main role in your website, but it is, however, certainly going to make a huge difference. Why? Because it’s a great way to interact with your customers and automatically fulfill their requests and demands even with that additional old human touch that you thought only brick-and-mortar shops could have. Businesses — especially those that focus on Guided Selling Solutions — already use conversational AI to offer professional services such as real-time user support, shopping assistance, and expert knowledge-driven solution advice.

When developing AI frameworks for creating conversational agents that show impressive performances — in terms of language sophistication —, as well as the complexity of the topics to deal with, software providers have to overcome hard problems. Controversially, when considering operating a chatbot solution, customers mostly focus on the first part and tend to underestimate the second one. It’s not a good idea to conflate the conceptual representation of the topic with the language processing part.

You should make sure to keep both of them apart. Why? Because it takes a lot of effort to represent topic knowledge on its own. Only in this way will you be able to reuse the topic knowledge independently from the chatbot. This is because chatbots are only one way to fulfill a general pattern that is behind almost every service that is covered by a particular chatbot.

The user specifies their requests and the system comes up with a solution. This applies to a lot of cases, like asking for the weather or describing the demand for a particular product in terms of user requirements and getting a proper recommendation from the service.

There are a lot of possibilities that exist out there to realize this user interaction pattern. Questionnaires done as ordinary forms in websites, illustrated/animated content, or more recent approaches making use of natural language interfaces via text or even voice-based interaction are some of them.

AI-powered conversational agents and virtual assistants dwindle bad customer experience (CX) and prove their users their market worth. Credit: iStockphoto.

To decide which one to use, there a few things to consider. As to briefly mention some of them here, depending on the environment of your shop and on your target group, one can be more suitable than the other. Besides, considering what you want to achieve, as well as how complex your domain is, is paramount when developing such a solution.

In this matter, there is a notable advantage of a chatbot tool driven by a technology that allows you to keep apart the topic representation from the communication interface, like the excentos Workbench does for Guided Selling Solutions by enabling you to use exactly the same concept knowledge and recommendation behavior with different interaction approaches.

The programmed structure of a dialog flow allows the system to assemble all necessary input from the user and deliver smart recommendations. Source: AI-powered chatbot developed by excentos for VAUDE Sport GmbH & Co. KG.

Not only do customers want to see efficient solutions to overcome the problems they encountered and their inquiries being quickly and effectively resolved, but they also crave human-like interaction. In this sense, customer experience is a key factor and also expected to have as much a great value as the final product itself. Fail to do so and you’ll pay a high price for making a bad impression (and delivering a poor service) on your customers. They will remember for a long time what you didn’t do, and the inconvenience is going to endure for even longer as, thanks to the unlimited number of choices the market offers, your competitors will promptly swoop in and take care of things (that you didn’t manage to).

An average shopping experience was never enough and the great business goals of today are to increase customer satisfaction levels. So why are AI-powered chatbots a remarkably good way to enhance omnichannel experiences? They are there 24/7, therefore available to assist customers during out of hours; they can speak multiple languages; and, as importantly: they provide the opportunity to learn more about your customers, their product preferences and needs. You can additionally use these learnings together with Guided Selling Solutions to improve your domain knowledge and develop your service even further.

AI is changing customer experience — for the better — and there’s no arguing that. One consequence is, in the long run, inevitable: the reduction of staff.

Customers need that personal, human touch and the best experience possible when shopping, returning a product or reporting a problem. Now, is it right to assume that the goal is to replace human agents for chatbots? Not necessarily. As the LogMeln 2018 AI Customer Experience Report pointed out, “65% of organizations say that if chatbots could reduce the number of inquiries to their call center, agents would then be trained to handle different or additional tasks”, i.e. not giving the space for chatbots to replace them. This likely means, according to the report, it would provide agents with the opportunity to deal with more complex and strategic tasks and even develop new skill sets.

Frankly speaking, there might have never been a more appropriate time to engage in discourse than nowadays. It would come as no surprise if chatbots were to be ranked as one of the best Ecommerce tools to strengthen customer experience during COVID-19.

Apart from medical essentials, the industries of toys, wellness and work from home were some of the ones which reported a sales increase of up to almost 90%. Credit: royalty-free stock.

With the ongoing global pandemic that 2020 brought all of us, together with the social distancing restrictions and most in-stores being closed, customers might feel more than ever the need to engage with you and have human-like representatives to help them in their quests.

According to the data presented by the Common Thread Collective, only in April, Ecommerce consumer sales increased their revenue by more than 50%, especially in the entertainment and wellness industries. In this sense, regardless of what may come next, we can all agree that AI-powered chatbot solutions for your customers couldn’t ask for a better time to come in.

Erfolgsgeschichten

What our customers say...

Jungheinrich forklift advisor

Height and weight mapping

• During the consulting process, customers only answer questions that they can answer with confidence. At the same time, they are informed about the product and the various advantages it provides. In this way, the Product Advisor is able to dramatically reduce the complexity of application and guides each customer to a well-founded purchase decision.
• Tedious calculations such as the dependence of the lifting height and the weight of the load, are calculated by the system and conveyed to the customer in a user-friendly way using a slider.

Environment configuration

• Customers always have the option to get personal advice at every stage.

Jungheinrich forklift recommendations

• It also lets customers select between purchasing a new forklift or a used one, as well as simply renting one.
• This Product Guide is used in different markets and has been translated into several languages such as Deutsch, English, Danish and Dutch.

Brother printer setup cost analysis

Print volume estimation

• The Product Guide uses estimations to get an idea of printing volume and subsequently provide the most sustainable option. It considers the size of the office environment in relation to employee productivity.

Explanation content

• As it uses Guided Selling it is able to give relevant explanations during various points of the Product Guide.

Recommended printer strategy for environment

• Brother addresses real purchase consideration factors of their customer: How much do we need? And how economical can we get?
• This is a good example of a design that successfully integrates the brand and concept presence.
• The Product Guide asks all necessary questions within 5 stages.

Heroal aluminum systems

Type of window and door system

• The Product Finder is to-the-point and addresses a vast section of applications within one stage itself.
• As the answer options are specific, the Heroal Product Finder is able to provide precise or optimum recommendations to their customers.

Performing features

• A customer can find an optimum product quickly and in a couple of minutes.
• This particular Product Finder is aimed towards a customer who has existing knowledge about such systems and hence targets a specific type of audience.
• The design reduces the complexity of the concept while simplifying the information.
• The Product Finder asks all the necessary questions within 4 stages.

Heroal product recommendations

• All recommendations are displayed with the reasoning behind them, giving the customer complete transparency.

As fall approaches, homeware and furniture brands are highlighting their best Scandi hygge, nomadic prints and grey hues. As ever, the season trends have been unveiled on thousands of furniture and homeware sites; ready to be snapped up by eager home-lovers and design enthusiasts.

As with many other consumer products, technology continues to play a major role in helping consumers make a choice in the home and furniture retail space.

A lucrative and ever-growing market, fashion retailers are also starting to realize the potential. Urban Outfitters, Asos, Zara and H&M are just a few of many who are now selling furniture, textiles, ceramics and home accessories online. With this increased competition, traditional furniture and homeware brands have been put to the test.

We take a look at how some brands are performing well to triumph over the likes of fashion retailers, by providing a personalized service which online consumers love.

MADE and Dulux take personalized advice online and assist their online shoppers to find their perfect products.

With just a few simple questions, the user provides valuable information about their personal taste and preferences. The product advisor then finds recommendations which are personalized to suit the user's needs. Product advisors can also be great fun for your users to interact with, as they add that special touch to the online shopping experience.

Without product advisors, users can become easily confused amongst the thousands of products a website has to offer. By minimizing the amount that users see and focusing in on what matters to their individual needs, companies increase their chances of getting a sale.

MADE Sofas, Furniture & Homeware — https://www.made.com/

Source: MADE

What we love:

• ✓ users are provided with an array of images which portray different styles and inspiration.

• ✓ the social media-style interface is interactive and allows users to easily scroll and give an image the thumbs up.

• ✓ by providing visuals instead of words, it also makes it quicker for the user to envision their ideal home.

What we love:

• ✓ the feature to email ourselves or social share our results with friends.

• ✓ personalized color, material and print recommendations

What we love:

• ✓ personalized product recommendations which suit the user's taste.

• ✓ products shown within different settings to further help the user imagine their perfect home.

What we love:

• ✓ Dulux place their Product Guide as the very first thing a user sees when entering their website.

• ✓ the Product Guide caters to all types of customers: those who already know what they want and those who require assistance.

What we love:

• ✓ visually appealing

• ✓ users can state the finer details such as location, surface and finish.

What we love:

• ✓ practical tips such as primary color options, as well as colors to be mixed

• ✓ only shown the color which we stated we were interested in

Image searches help users to find products via images instead of text. They work by using query by image content (QBIC) and content-based visual information retrieval (CBVIR). Users simply upload an image they like or feel inspired by and the website search engine delivers similar products available within their product assortment. In addition, if users don't know the name of a product but simply have an image — it's a perfect way for them to identify a product name and get more information.

• ✓ image attributes instead of descriptive metadata to search — helpful if the user doesn't know the product name or wants to find visually similar looking products

• ✓ user-friendly interface and easy for mobile users who can upload images from their phone galleries

Live chat functions and virtual assistants mean that you can provide your users instant feedback and support and at no extra cost for them.

"38% of consumers are more likely to buy from a company if they offer live chat support." — kayako

In comparison with traditional phone support and customer hotlines, live chat and virtual assistants are much more convenient for the majority of customers.

Live chat can provide answers quickly and has the ability to mimic natural style conversations which you would have in-store with a human sales-assistant.

Virtual assistants are the automated version of live chat tools. No man-power required: just AI and machine learning, a virtual assistant can advise users within seconds and quickly point them to the products they are looking for.

• ✓ by showing the face behind the chat operators, it makes the tool much more approachable and personal.

• ✓ the integrated search engine is a more engaging way to provide answers to FAQs

• ✓ users get an answer within a few clicks.

• ✓ users have a live chat option, should the virtual assistant not give them sufficient enough advice.

Wondering why your customers are leaving your website early or simply don't make it to the cart? It could be down to the lack of personalization on your website.

Personalization tools such as Product Guides, sophisticated search engines and virtual assistants can help your customers, your customer support team and best of all, your revenue!

The KOS Klima Product Configurator handles a dynamic and complex range of customer needs, reducing the need for multiple inquiry calls. It provides a systematic process from the beginning to help build a potential relationship with a customer.

As physical mobility has been deterred, customers are shopping online and are reacting to the fear of running out. According to NielsenIQ, consumers are focused on products that support health maintenance as well as focusing on finding everyday commodities, in these days of lockdowns. This would appear to be the new normal for the weeks to come, and it is important for businesses to realize consumer priorities. This also means an increase in adoption of digital channels by consumers, yet they will always expect intuitive and apt services and this provides an opportunity for businesses.

A report by ContentSquare says that, “These purchases clearly correspond to the logic of the Maslow pyramid: in order to satisfy needs at the base of the pyramid, consumers are stocking up mostly on food and health necessities, ensuring they have the basic equipment to stay at home (TV, PCs, headsets, fridges…) and taking care of their finances. At the same time, any purchase that falls into the top tier of the Maslow pyramid of needs, such as non-necessary items and of course, any outdoor activities, are dropping significantly.”

The following graph by ContentSquare gives an industry-wise overview:

'Local governments and merchants are distributing vouchers to boost consumer spending in the short-term. As compared to the U.S. and U.K. which are handing out cash to citizens, vouchers are a way of directing consumer behavior purely towards the purpose of spending. “The eastern Chinese city of Hangzhou announced a plan to issue e-vouchers via Alibaba's online-payment service Alipay Thursday. By 4 p.m. Sunday, the resulting consumer spending had amounted to 453 million yuan (about 64 million U.S. dollars), 15 times as much as the total of the vouchers given out, with the redeemed government subsidies reaching 28.93 million yuan, data from local commerce bureau showed,” said one xinhuanet.com article.

Taobao is a e-commerce marketplace owned by Alibaba Group Holding. Recently they launched an initiative to help transform traditional factories in China. Hai Wang, general manager of Taobao’s C2M business unit said that, “Stepping up our made-to-order strategy is an ongoing Taobao initiative to diversify product supplies across the ecosystem to meet demand from our consumers and help manufacturers lagging in the digital race to use technology to transform their processes. Manufacturers will benefit from increased efficiency and reduced costs and will be able to generate higher revenues.”
Taobao expects that the C2M initiative will bring 10 billion new orders to factories from across the country over the next three years, while transforming 1,000 manufacturers into “super factories” with output exceeding 100 million yuan (US$14 million) each, driving productivity at 10 factory clusters in China to 10 billion yuan or more. (Source: The South China Morning Post)

Huawei was set to launch its P40 series in France, which had a total of 1412 cases at the time. Due to rising concerns for public safety, the event was cancelled and Huawei decided to launch the new series through an online event instead.

In order to quickly change tack and adapt, Cosmo Lady, the largest underwear and lingerie company in China, enlisted employees to promote and sell through their social circles via WeChat. They created a sales ranking to drive motivation and participation.

1. Prioritize communicating through digital media by shifting your marketing and sales activities online.


2. Your website should host a comprehensive FAQ section to address all the changes made to your business activities in light of the crisis.


3. Work more on communicating with current customers but ensure you do not overwhelm them.


4. Ensure your website is optimized and working efficiently for customers and potential leads.


5. Keep track of current consumer behavior as certain aspects might become habitual in the foreseeable future.

The economic impact of COVID-19 will be potentially grave. Businesses need to survive through the current slowdown while simultaneously planning around scenarios for a recovery period, with most saying that this period is likely to occur in the last quarter of the year. As the pandemic might be prolonged, transforming offline activities to some form of a digital channel is a necessity given the current situation around the world. Hence, businesses should focus on digital channels along with building a good customer experience.

After a period of adjustment, the ‘new normal’ has ushered in new consumer behaviors. A report from Mckinsey suggests five consistent trends observed amongst 45 countries –
1) Consumers have become more mindful of their spending habits.
2) More consumers are using online shopping.
3) Consumers have tried new products due to supply chain disruptions.
4) They prefer to shop in stores that create a safe environment.
5) Largely, consumers do not feel entirely confident about returning to out-of-home activities, however, shopping certainly remains a priority.

Mckinsey Consumer Behavior

In the United States, the bureau of economic analysis estimated that consumption expenditure in May 2020 increased from -12.6% to 8.2%. Although this is a considerable increase in spending, Greg Daco, chief U.S. economist at Oxford Economics stated in this barrons article that, ”…with uncertainty still elevated and virus fears resurfacing, frugal consumer behaviors should persist in the coming months and weigh on the recovery.”

Online shopping has significantly increased.

The average consumer will weigh all his options before deciding to make a purchase, and will be more cautious as there is also risk and exposure at the forefront of decision-making. Retailers and brands hence need to consider products that provide value for money for such a consumer. This may also lead to a decrease in brand preference and loyalty.

Although stores have opened, consumers are yet hesitant towards store visits. The presence of a store and the nature of sales interactions have changed, making way for a more hybrid sales strategy involving both online and physical stores. However, convenience is an aspect that will remain crucial for customers even in the recovery period, especially considering current phenomena such as contactless deliveries, pick-ups, social media selling, etc.

Consumers who were once unsure of online buying now welcome it, ushering in more acceptance and adoption. At the same time, brands and retailers are also trying to stay relevant to consumers who are constantly changing their preferences.

Nielson-online-shopping-report

Brick-and-mortar stores still remain important in terms of overall shopping experience. A consumer can visit a physical store to browse through and get more information about products in a real-world sense. Similarly, there is also the option of providing a digital advisor or an in-store solution for shop customers. A BBC article also suggests that customers tend to spend more money in-store then they do online as they see more and are caught up in a kind of ‘shopping euphoria.’

But one can argue that this is more valid in the context of having the physicality and mobility available in the store experience. E.g. when one decides to spend a leisurely afternoon in a mall. This was a common browsing pattern and consumers will in all probability adapt to a new behavior.

Consumers could find better offers online.

At the moment, there is also an abundance of sales and discounts, but a consumer could potentially find a better deal online or combine both these channels e.g. by purchasing online and picking up the product in the store. Hence, a functional shopper would have no barriers in online shopping while a leisurely one would perhaps no longer have the intrinsic motivation to step into a store.

Online shopping is on the rise and will continue to be a source of convenience for customers. Retailers and brands naturally need to provide an online experience that is helpful, interactive and easy.

According to this Harvard business report, “Customers will no longer tolerate sub-par digital shopping experiences like they may have before the crisis. Retailers have to make sure their sites are mobile-responsive, offer integrated services such as ‘buy online pick up in store’ (BOPIS), and deliver a consistent, reliable digital experience across devices and channels.”

Consumers are not expecting a virtual replication of the in-store environment, but they do expect the same amount of expertise and care. Our Guided Selling tools like Product Guides have this exact ability where existing in-store knowledge can be utilized to give the best advice to your online customers. Guided Selling provides customers with the necessary reasoning and recommends the best-suited products. Hence, this increases their willingness to make a purchase. Guided Selling-enabled Product Guides are informative, convenient and can deliver a seamless website experience for your customers.

As more people are working and staying at home, providing a good website experience is essential. 360 leads says, “If there was ever a time for lead nurturing and acquisition, it’s now. Most of us have found ourselves with extra time, working from home, online for the better part of the day, and, with social distancing being the new normal, longing for human connection and reassurance.”

For B2Bs especially, having an online presence and a solid customer experience strategy will not only benefit them in the present moment, but also in the long run. With regard to customer experience, the chart below from hotjar.com, gives us an idea about the major frustrations customers face according to customer experience professionals. Before the ‘new normal,’ we can note that the top three problems were longer response times, not understanding customer needs, and unresolved issues.

hotjar CX graphic

Although shops are opening, the nature of interacting with a customer has changed, as seen with contactless deliveries, curbside pick-ups, and even with in-store staff. At the present moment, it is difficult to foresee when things will go back to the way they were and one way or the other, some offline activities can be routed to online mediums. Hence, employee interaction with customers can take an online form (e.g. video, email or chat) or has been solved by simply providing relevant advice and information on websites. E.g. during the lockdown in China, retail selling has taken the form of chat, and several brands have adopted this as a new and additional sales channel.

A Product Advisor is an ideal tool as it provides advice based on the needs of the customer, in other words, it can use your in-store knowledge to strengthen your website experience. By utilizing this knowledge, personalized recommendations are able to deliver an informative experience.

Jungheinrich Forklift Guide

An example of this is how Jungheinrich — a leading manufacturer of logistics products, uses a Product Advisor to display product recommendations to its website visitors. By using the excentos Product Advisor, Jungheinrich is able to recommend the best forklifts to hire. A visitor is guided through a series of questions to ascertain which kind of forklift is required, and as this could prove to be quite technical, they have also provided an option to seek personal advice directly. Once the visitor gets a recommendation through the advisor, they can generate a PDF with all the product details and reasoning ready at hand. In this way, Jungheinrich uses every interaction point as a lead generation opportunity throughout the experience.

Jungheinrich PDF generation

The PDF itself can also contain outbound links that could e.g. bring the customer back to the product page or connect them to any other step in the sales process. According to an Accenture report, "91% of consumers also say that they are more likely to shop with brands that provide offers and recommendations that are relevant to them." Product Guides and Advisors are an asset for websites as they not only help to assist visitors, but are able to generate leads to ensure that no opportunities are lost.

Email marketing is an important component of lead generation, which more than often is mismanaged. 70% of millennials say that they are frustrated with brands sending irrelevant emails. Brands can stay ‘top of mind’ by sending product recommendations through personalized emails. A lot of people still prefer receiving product information via emails, so ensure that you have a dedicated space on your website with the right solution that encourages sign-ups. The visitor should be curious and interested enough with the website content to voluntarily sign-up to receive personal recommendations, thereby also establishing a higher lead quality. Occasionally, you may also need to send cold emails and although it is an obvious point, it bears repeating that it is essential to have a well-thought-out email template.

'From' name

The ‘From' name is an element that is most prominent when one receives an email. To add a human touch to the email, you can send emails from a sales representative or manager who is assigned to the lead in question.

Subject of the Email

Always personalize the subject of your email as it is one of the first things the subscriber will read. A good example is to use the subscriber's name in the subject line, while also addressing the request they have signed up for.

*example text

Opening Text

The same goes for the opening text of the email, it is important to make the subscriber feel that you are addressing them on a one-to-one level. You should work on the tone as per the intended context, as the same would carry forward through the body of the email. Check out this Sephora example:

*example text

Product Attributes and Images

When sending emails related to your product, always remember to systematically display product attributes to ensure that the subscriber has all the information at hand and that it is clear and easy to understand. Sephora often uses great personalized emails to recommend products that are perfect for the individual customer. Visuals speak louder than words, so ensure that you use the latest images of your products and that they are of good quality.

*Sephora personalized email

Outbound links

Remember to always have a few outbound links to relevant website pages such as product details page, shopping cart, contact information, etc. Always double check whether each link leads to the intended page and whether there are any errors. Asics uses several outbound links in this example:

Asics reminder email

Call-to-Action Button

Create a visible and benefit-focused call-to-action button that will prompt the subscriber to click it. The design and placement of the button are equally important, make sure its position matches the overall reading flow of the email. The same Asics example has excellent CTA buttons at the bottom of the email, that prompt the user to act.

Asics reminder email

Lead generation needs a pragmatic approach and one way to achieve this is to develop your own lead generation strategy:

1. Conduct a Marketing Channel Audit

By conducting an audit you will get a better understanding of which channels might work better to generate leads. Email marketing will probably remain a priority in this list, but also consider the impact of social media, paid advertising, search engine optimization, affiliate marketing, guest blogging, etc. on your lead generation strategy.

2. Raise Awareness and Motivate Interest with the Right Content

Once users click-through to your website, ensure you have created the required landing pages and have left no stone unturned to produce content that gets you results. Keep the aim of such pages in mind—is it to inform the visitor? Or is it a page that should encourage them to sign-up? Guided Selling tools like Product Advisors can be particularly useful as they are interactive in nature and recommend products and solutions based on the customers' needs. Create such relevant lead magnets and ensure they are available at the appropriate stages in a customer's sales journey.

3. Analyze and Adjust

Whichever medium you use, measurement is the surest way to decide what is working for you, hence analytics should unquestionably be a part of your lead generation strategy. You can track visitor behavior, click-through-rates, bounce rates, performance of landing pages, and conversion by using analytics platforms such as Google Analytics, Matomo, Cyfe, etc. There are many more free tools and services available as well. Track email marketing metrics such as click-through-rates, open rate, bounces, sign-ups, unsubscribes, etc. to help create better email templates.

Lastly, remember that relevant communication and presentation of information play a key role in lead generation.

1. A gift finder is an ideal solution to compare different kinds of gifts and get alternative recommendations.


2. Customers get decisive advice from AI-based recommendations, thereby increasing buying decisions.


3. Online shoppers expect swift and useful digital interactions and gift finders fit the bill perfectly.


4. You can target different kinds of customers with a single interactive experience by integrating different stages of awareness within one gift finder.


5. Gift finders also take into account your expertise input. So, by using your personal insights you are able to deliver gifting options which stem from human intuition and experience.

L'occitane gift finder

Smartwool gift finder

Smartwool recommendations

Uncommon goods gift finder

Uncommon goods recommendations

Example taken from Amazon

excentos camera guide

excentos AI Data Trainer

excentos AI Data Trainer

excentos AI Data Trainer

Ski equipment encompasses not just the ski gear, but clothing and protective gear as well. Beginners don't always get concrete advice on what they need, hence they don't know where to begin. On the other hand, regular skiers are particular about what they’re looking for and want to quickly find their favourite products.

Building beginner, advanced and versatile ski equipment sets, curated for different types of terrain will save valuable time for your customers.

With omnichannel options on the rise, a Product Guide can target both beginner and professional skiers visiting your Ecommerce site. This means that you can segment multiple target groups and create different advisory processes within the same Product Guide.

You can also design the Ski Equipment Guide in line with your sales strategy and include price comparisons, renting or financing options.

Cross-selling and up-selling

Our Guided Selling solutions come with many configurable functionalities. For ski equipment especially, cross-selling and up-selling features will increase shopping cart value thereby increasing revenues. You can recommend additional products to customers and can explain in detail, the advantages of buying a more expensive product.

As Product Guides offer the real reasons, they maintain full transparency and customers naturally feel more inclined to purchase a product of higher value.

Camping trips themselves differ based on climate, season and region, but there are also other factors a customer must take into account. With the online Tent Advisor solution, you are able to recommend tents according for very specific needs. E.g. the kind of material used or the number of people going for the trip, etc.

With the Tent Advisor solution, you are able to provide a digital buying guide that covers every kind of camping trip in detail and the exact equipment required for it.

The Tent Advisor solution advices the customer in a systematic manner and covers all essential needs. It also considers needs that the customer may not have thought of, and hence is a useful digital tool for both beginners and experienced campers.

As all the relevant information is provided by the Tent Advisor, your return rate reduces as customers receive plenty of transparency and are satisfied with their purchase.

Cross-selling and up-selling

Our Tent Advisor solution also includes upselling and cross-selling capabilities, allowing you to extend recommendations and provide a complete list of products for a camping trip. These complimentary products are essential, hence customers find it useful as they find everything they need in one place.

Integrating upselling and cross-selling mechanisms increases the shopping cart value for each customer and in the long run yields higher revenues from your Ecommerce.

An example of poor representation of products

Nøie's user reviews

Apple's cross-selling

Huel's subscription marketing

Vans product configurator

scnsoft.com's - personalization vs customization

Master and Dynamic website

Ecommerce websites have a tendency to go overboard when it comes to product content and design. Minimalism has been a long-standing trend and continues to be so. Too much and it’s overbearing, while too little will leave the customer wanting more information. It is essential to hit the ‘just right’ spot for content and the subsequent design. Product Guides naturally contain this balance as they successfully integrate the relevant information with a minimalistic style. Take a look at these themes for example. At the same time, adopting this kind of minimal style is beneficial for your mobile presence. The Master and Dynamic website is also a good example, its design is minimal, but it provides a good balance of visuals and text.

RayBan virtual try ons

Websites rely on the power of visuals. But these can often be a hindrance, especially if they affect loading speed. It’s a bad first impression. While images and videos are important elements, their usage needs to be precise. So, reimagine how you can use your product galleries to solve for experience. For example, RayBan provides a virtual mirror for its customers to try on its eyewear, which is quick and responsive. But it also uses a static image to show the specific shade, thus providing an efficient preview from both sides of the lens.

Leesa's product page

A great example of optimum feature representation is Leesa’s website. They have many interesting features integrated in the page, e.g. the cross-selling tab to purchase a base for the mattress, every available size and their special prices, a quick list of features and other freebies. They also provide a competitor comparison alongwith user reviews. Every answer can be found on the page and only relevant product data has been used.

An AI-driven approach is especially useful here, as it can translate raw product data into a customer-friendly format for product presentation. Guided Selling solutions like Product Advisors help to manage your inventory and product information, as specific aspects can be tracked and measured. Read this blog article to learn more.

Nordstorm's omnichannel service

There is now a need to operate with an omnichannel functionality in mind as customer behavior and delivery mechanisms have changed. BOPIS (buy online, pick up in store), find in store, local store personalization, etc. are good examples of some omnichannel capabilities. But there has never been a better time to make deliveries and returns easier, as customers are exhibiting cautious buying behaviors. User experience must hence consider the customer journey before, during and after the purchase.

Decathlon's quick checkout

Use hierarchy and breadcrumbs to create an efficient check-out process. Websites also tend to create barriers such as long registration processes during checkout. Presenting such options after a purchase is always a better strategy, at thr same timethere are quicker registration processes available. Voluntary customer registration is far better in the long run as it’s easier to establish a transparent relationship. Decathlon has a clean and quick checkout process both instore and online.

Success of Harley Davidson's 'Albert' campaign

To give an example, Harley-Davidson used an AI marketing solution to optimize their leads and find who their other audiences were. The AI started by analyzing existing customer data and created characteristics and behaviors based on high-value customers. By understanding specific events such as adding an item to an online cart, viewing website, completeing a purchase extra, they were able to create micro segments and crafted marketing messages across digital channels accordingly. In the end, they attributed 40% of sales to Albert (AI) and significantly increased website views and lead quality.

Consumer attitudes have changed due to the pandemic and they will be seeking for more personalized experiences while shopping instore as well. “Coming out of this crisis, we're going to see even more distinction between the idea of going shopping as an experience and actually having to buy something… the shopping experience and buying have become disintermediated,” as shared by Pam Danziger — luxury retail expert and author, in this bloomreach podcast.

Glamlab by ulta beauty

Ulta Beauty — a beauty retailer, integrated a try-on experience called Glamlab in its app and website, and also deployed 80 in-store beauty advisors. This allowed them to bounce back from the pandemic disruption by providing a digital solution that worked for the needs of the customer at that time.

Voice commerce is gaining even more popularity: 75% of U.S. households are estimated to have smart speakers by 2025. AR and VR are existing technologies that have successfully been used to reduce physical barriers. Consumer expectations will certainly evolve as we continue to develop viable technologies and reduce digital barriers.

Mit dem Kamera-Berater finden Sie die perfekte Kamera.

Der digitale Produktberater stellt spezifische Fragen, um herauszufinden, wonach der Kunde sucht.

Beispielsweise fragt der Zelt-Berater von Vaude, wie viele Personen im Zelt schlafen, welche Wetterbedingungen in der Zielregion zu erwarten sind und auf welchem Untergrund das Zelt aufgebaut werden soll.

Der Kunde beantwortet die Fragen und erhält Produktempfehlungen, die ideal auf seine Bedürfnisse abgestimmt sind.

Zusätzlich bietet der Produktfinder Erklärungen zu den Produkten und Produktmerkmalen, damit der Kunde eine fundierte Kaufentscheidung treffen kann. Das ist wichtig, denn es gibt Produkte, die anspruchsvoll sind und einer Erklärung bedürfen.

Sie möchten erfahren, wie Guided Selling im Detail funktioniert? Dann schauen Sie sich doch mal unser Whitepaper: Guided Selling an.

Eine Besonderheit des Produktfinders sind die intelligenten Begründungen (Intelligent Reasoning). Der Produktfinder zeigt nämlich nicht nur Produktempfehlungen an, sondern begründet individuell, in wie fern die vorgeschlagenen Produkte zu den Anforderungen des Kunden passen.
Der Kunde bekommt also überzeugende Kaufargumente präsentiert und kann eine sichere Kaufentscheidung treffen.

Intelligente Begründungen helfen Ihren Kunden dabei, eine fundierte Kaufentscheidung zu treffen.

Conversions steigern und Retouren minimieren:
Der Produktberater führt Ihre Kunden schnell und sicher durch den Kaufprozess. Gleichzeitig lassen sich durch die gezielte Beratung Fehlkäufe vermeiden und die Anzahl an Retouren minimieren.

Kundenzufriedenheit erhöhen:
Mit einer professionellen Produktberatung sorgen Sie dafür, dass Ihre Kunden ein passendes Produkt finden und mit ihrem Einkaufserlebnis zufrieden sind.

Cross Selling für noch mehr Umsatz:
Darüber hinaus können Sie Cross Selling in Ihren Produktberater einbinden und dadurch für noch mehr Umsatz sorgen. Beispielsweise würde der digitale Produktberater passend zum Zelt auch einen robusten Schlafsack und weitere Camping-Ausrüstung anbieten.

Beratung 24/7:
Mit Guided Selling stellen Sie Ihren Kunden jederzeit eine digitale Beratung zur Verfügung. Selbst an Wochenenden und Feiertagen begleitet der Produktfinder Ihre Kunden bei der Produktauswahl.

Wertvolle Customer Insights:
Mit excentos Analytics gewinnen Sie wertvolle Insights über die Präferenzen und Anforderungen Ihrer Kunden. Sie können Trends beobachten, Ihre Zielgruppe genauer definieren und deren Bedürfnisse nachvollziehen.

Find the perfect camera with the Camera Guide.

The digital product advisor asks specific questions to find out what the customer is looking for.

For example, the vaude tent advisor asks, how many people will sleep in the tent, what weather conditions are to be expected in the region and on what kind of ground it should be set up on.

The customer answers the questions and receives product recommendations tailored to his needs.

In addition, the Product Finder offers explanations of the products and product features so that the customer can make a well-founded purchase decision. This is important for products that are complex and need explanation.

Would you like to find out how Guided Selling works in detail? Then take a look at our Whitepaper: Guided Selling.

A special feature of the Product Finder are the intelligent reasons (Intelligent Reasoning). The Product Finder not only shows product recommendations, but also provides individual reasons as to how far the suggested products match the customer's requirements.
The customer is presented with convincing purchase arguments to make a safe purchase decision.

Intelligent reasoning help your customers to make an informed purchase decision.

Increase conversions and minimize returns:
A Product Finder guides your customers quickly and securely through the purchasing process. At the same time, through targeted advice, bad purchases can be avoided and the number of returns minimized.

Increase customer satisfaction:
With professional product advice, you ensure that your customers find a suitable product and are satisfied with their shopping experience.

Cross-selling for even more sales:
You can also integrate Cross-selling into your Product Finder to ensure even more sales. For example, offering a robust sleeping bag and other camping equipment to match the tent.

24x7 digital advice:
With Guided Selling, you can provide your customers with digital advice at any time. Even on weekends and public holidays, a Product Finder is there to help your customers in their product selection.

Valuable consumer insights:
With excentos Analytics you win valuable insights into the preferences and requirements of your customers. You can observe trends, define your target group more precisely and understand their needs.

Direct-to-consumer may be on the rise, but the story behind it remains well known — getting rid of the middle man. A consequence of the pandemic was in a sense, loss of control over supply chains and dealing with changing consumer behavior. In compensation, Ecommerce sales have picked up, yet there remains a sense of uncertainty for many businesses. With the current atmosphere being in somewhat of a flux, let’s examine why brands would choose to go with the D2C model.

Product data is often misrepresentated

Brands often face the issue of having no control over how product data and information is presented in a retail environment. This leads to bad customer experiences online and the brand image, both offline and online, also suffers. Customers are more likely to hold the brand in a bad light if they find something missing in their shopping experience, and they will always remember a negative experience more than a positive one. In fact, this PwC report states that 32% of customers say they will walk away from a brand they love after just one bad experience.

Traditionally, a brand’s customer was predominately the retailer’s distribution and sales teams, where brands operated within a B2B model. In this setting, brands could not collect customer contacts and had no possibility to even engage in simple things like email marketing or user reviews and feedback. With no interaction, there was a deficit of insightful data on the customer. This marooned brands on a remote island, as they had no sense of communication or useful engagement with their customers.

The only feedback would be hearsay received from the retailer or expensive market research, which is not continual and often a one-time source of information. This has deeper implications, a brand can’t pre-test a product and cannot draw upon the type of product features and characteristics preferred by customers. A brand will end up manufacturing a product that will not be accepted well in the market. This will prove to be troublesome for a product planning to distribution cycle, while being a massive waste of time and resources. Thus, consumer insights are a a powerful and valuable asset.

Consumer insights and data should never be ignored

The other problem of not having any customer data, is that there isn’t enough in the brand pool to build any real sense of business intelligence, especially using AI. For example, Spotify and Amazon both are great examples of how the simplest form of customer preferences are used for targeting and personalization. But this is also possible because a certain volume of data has been reached. Ecommerce afterall, is all about personalized experiences. In their CX report, PwC says that 63% of U.S. consumers are willing to share more information with a company that offers a great experience.

Influencer marketing is a big plus

Let’s take the example of the skincare brand Nøie. They use a skin cream configurator which is based on skin problems. Their marketing message is based on authenticity as they use images posted voluntarily by customers after using their products. Authenticity in product and experience is important for customers, especially with younger generations, as they have no problems sharing personal information with brands. What a company values is also a deciding factor, hence sustainability and a brand’s outlook on various issues also remains important.

The D2C market is estimated to grow at 19.2% in 2021. D2C brands greatly benefit by using a subscription-based model, along with digital, social media and influencer marketing strategies. Again, this is where customer contact and satisfaction play a big role. Depending on the brand, product and the audience, it is easier to pick a method of promotion and to measure the impact of your product and marketing online. E.g. there are brands that choose smaller influencers or micro influencers to try out and promote their products. The more authentic an introduction, the better the response is to it.

While the D2C world sounds good, it isn’t a perfect picture, as surviving without a retail route is difficult. In the retail environment, you will find multiple brands within a particular category of products. This is particularly true of Amazon e.g. There is a tendency to get lost in the crowd, hence, ratings and recommendations of a product are so crucial to stand out. For a brand to be visible and available on the internet too, the products and marketing really need to stand out.

But the internet can prove to be a crowded space, and with bigger brands entering the D2C space, smaller players could have trouble in the future. Another big issue lies in logistics and when you’re not relying on a retail partner, managing your own supply chain will be a big challenge. A brand has to fill in the gaps and this can be daunting and messy. Additionally, you’ll probably need some expertise to manage the backend better.

Brand websites when done right can retain more customers in the long run as they have recurring visits and purchases. With the D2C model, brands can rely more on Ecommerce and offer the same quality of advice online as they do in-store, as it builds upon personalization. D2C allows brands to successfully establish a product-to-distribution cycle to get all the benefits of data. On the one hand, they have more control over the product data being shown and on the other, they receive consumer data and valuable product insights. There’s also the fact that they can establish a connection with their customers and hold a one on one conversation with them.

Brands that don’t receive enough information for product development can greatly benefit from a Guided Selling solution like a Product Guide. Product Guides collect data at every stage of the advisor process by asking precise questions to customers regarding their needs and preferences. Unlike other analytical tools, there is no real need to interpret results as you get the complete picture, i.e. a real user persona. As there is no guess work involved, this method of obtaining insights is at par with what you can expect from market research methods.

Hence, asking the right questions gives you authentic data that is collected directly from customer input. This can also be used to personalize online shopping experiences. It is also multi-faceted in nature as it gives you an accurate picture of customer types and the ideal products that they expect.

excentos bike advisor recommendations

Product Guides also add more levels to your product data. In this way, the more insights you receive about your products, the more you can improve how your product data is represented. Tools, such as our AI-data trainer, allow you to represent product data in a smarter way by assigning attributes, characteristics and emotional aspects to product features. This method connects better with the customer, when trying to solve their problems. Guided Selling solutions come in many forms and solve for both, your product and your customers.

Guided Selling solutions such as Product Guides and Product Advisors, allow you to maintain more control over your brand and your data. This means that you can build one digital advisor that can be integrated across every retailer channel you use, which includes both online and in-store. In this way, you can easily connect with your customer base and get faster insights without having to lose valuable retailpartners. Product Guides and Product Advisors are essentially extensions of the brand as they successfully reflect the personality, values and problem-solving aspects of a business. So whether you’re strictly going the D2C way and whether you have a more hybrid strategy, the Product Guide is always there to optimize your selling.

Whether you’re a small or big brand, D2C looks like a big leap to take, though many brands are adopting it. From the perspective of being a data-led change, there has definitely been an increase in D2C this year and there will be more to come. Brands looking to adopt must decide what they seek from switching over and whether it is truly a feasible option for them.

It is often said that it’s the thought that counts and not the gift. But in reality, we all know that thoughtfulness is often measured by the kind of gifts one gives. With each new year a person celebrates holidays, birthdays, anniversaries, new and old traditions, and many more occasions. If we consider the sheer volume of purchases and returns, these seasons bring forth a lot of chaos for shoppers, brands and retailers alike. Online shopping sites struggle with finding new ways to promote themselves, while brands and retailers tend to invest heavily into advertising, promote festive products, and cut sharp deals to get a bigger slice of the holiday pie. Retailers in particular, make as much as  30% of their annual sales during the holiday seasons.

As a result, shoppers have it pretty bad as well. !-- Episerver’s online shopping report--> Episerver’s online shopping report says, that around the holiday seasons, retailers are prone to use fear-based-tactics to provoke shopper worries such as, missing out on the best deal, product scarcity, timed deliveries, etc. These sales-driven strategies work well for shoppers who are aware of products and are looking to buy quickly, along-with a discount and free delivery. But, what about the shoppers who don’t know what to buy? Retailers and brands miss out on the most significant insight when it comes to gift shopping, i.e. the number one concern for most shoppers is not knowing what gift to buy. Herein lies the opportunity to give guided selling advice to online shoppers looking for the perfect product.

Online shopping has also given rise to last-minute shoppers, as they have come to expect fast and free deliveries. Let's look at a few mobile shopping trends, Adobe analytics revealed that 61% of all traffic for Cyber Monday in the U.S. came from mobile devices and 39% of all ecommerce sales were made on a smartphone.It has also become evident that big holiday sales provide promotional opportunities for smaller players, because smaller online retailers received a significant boost of 32%.

While Amazon remains a popular choice, shoppers will more than often navigate through a brand’s website to search for products and their features. As long as websites provide a good customer experience, shoppers will not be shy to buy from lesser known brands or retailers, no matter which country they come from. By integrating a gift finder, retailers and brands can not only provide an excellent customer experience, but also establish a relationship with their customers.

Contrary to the general belief, Valentine’s day is no longer about hearts, candies and flowers; in fact, according to the National Retail Foundation, the percentage of American consumers planning to celebrate Valentine's day has gradually decreased over the last 10 years. However, the ones who want to celebrate it are willing to spend more money and were expected to project an expenditure of a little more than 20 billion in 2019. Millennials and Gen Zers are looking for new ways to celebrate and would like to treat themselves by buying an expensive product or indulging in a luxurious experience. This provides an excellent opportunity for brands and retailers to engage with them. The excentos gift finder used by Douglas is a good example of how gifting can be aimed at occasions such as Valentine’s day.

Douglas gift finder

Douglas is one of Europe's largest beauty products retailer, with more than 35,000 products, which includes perfumes, cosmetics, care products and accessories. The gift finder provides an interface which is user-friendly and interactive. This saves shoppers the hassle of an exhaustive search for gift ideas and confusion-riddled browsing.

Douglas gift finder

The Douglas gift finder first establishes the relationship between the shopper and the gift-receiver. As they truly possess an expertise about customers’ needs and products, the questions and answers are conceptualized to target very specific relationships and connections.

Douglas gift finder

It then asks for a little more information about the gift-receiver’s personality to take into account personal taste and style. The shopper can select two or three answers to give a variety of options within selective parameters. This is a particularly useful feature for beauty, décor and fashion products. Hence, guided selling is an insight-driven solution that traverses across categories.

Douglas gift finder

Depending on the concept and its intent, gift finders can be easily adapted to target any season, holiday, occasion and event. For e.g. Douglas concentrates on well wishes and helps to celebrate important milestones and special occasions.

Douglas gift finder

In five steps, Douglas guides online shoppers through the decision-making process and towards shopping carts. The excentos gift finder uses recommender logic and a matching engine to generate accurate product recommendations. As these provide valid reasoning, it increases a shopper’s willingness to pay, which leads to more conversions and establishes transparency. This in turn provides a wholesome interactive experience for shoppers and increases customer satisfaction.

myToys is a leading German retailer of children’s toys and accessories and is one of the largest online shops in Germany. Their extremely large product assortment made it difficult for shoppers to buy a gift, especially those unaware of children’s products and trends. The excentos guided selling tool solves this particular problem by allowing online shoppers to easily find the right products from such a big product assortment.

myToys Gift finder

Along with the gender, the tool first takes into consideration the relationship between the person buying the gift and the person receiving it. This creates a unique layer of personalization by moving beyond traditional filter categories.

myToys Gift finder

myToys has to present an assortment of 150,000 products. In order to maintain specificity, ages are evenly spread to give the shopper the option to choose every age, thereby avoiding any irrelevant overlap.

myToys Gift finder

A shopper can then select the occasion or season providing a narrower filter for a gift that is perfect for it.

Douglas gift finder

The last step is to choose an interest or theme, for e.g. a shopper can choose superheroes, if they know that the child is a fan of Batman. On the other hand, even if the shopper does not possess such information, the gift finder will still present you with gift recommendations.

MyToys Gift finder recommendation

• Helps with decision-making for the unsure shopper
• Provides personalized recommendations based on customer insights
• Saves the customer the anxiety of going through an exhaustive search process
• Increases conversions during a highly competitive shopping period
• Easily integrated across every device and touchpoint

At excentos, we are experts in guided selling solutions for ecommerce businesses.

Every website receives some form of user engagement, for e.g., a visitor clicking a link or a button or simply browsing a website or purchasing something online. Web analytics are used to measure, track and analyze such usage metrics to optimize and improve the performance of a website. They provide data that reports on how your business is performing versus its competition; insightful information about its key demographics; user behaviors and insights; the reach and impact of advertising campaigns; awareness of seasonal traffic behavior etc. to name a few. Analytics continually track such varied events and are hence capable of reporting on specific analyses across a vast range of data.

Regular analytics will give you insights, but excentos analytics offer customer insights for specific and defined aspects. Click the button to skip the introduction to web analytics and read directly about excentos analytics.

Businesses differ on principles, objectives and plans, which are also translated to their respective websites. Websites themselves could have an objective other than just selling or even multiple different ones. Goals are used to define different parameters or steps to drive strategies based on set objectives. Analytics provide a way to set customized goals according to your website’s competencies. For e.g. A website can track how many responses they receive for their newsletter subscription or their query form. Such a goal-based approach is quite effective and methodical for optimization.

Web analytics and tracking tools of course keep track of the number of visitors, as well as detailed information about the visits themselves. A user-centric overview is provided about the average time spent by visitors; how many pages were visited per user session; how many visitors are returning to the website and how often. These show the average navigation path taken by website visitors and indicates reasons a visitor might bounce. Other insightful information about demographics such as location, device, real-time reports are all essential to deliver good website functionality as well as to create a data-driven marketing strategy.

While improvements and changes are expected within a website, it is also crucial to know more about how traffic is driven to said website itself. Sources are where the users were browsing before they arrive at a particular website and medium is the method they chose to get there. For e.g. a user is browsing an external source website, sees an ad, clicks on it and navigates to a landing page of the linked website. This makes the first website the source and the cost-per-click ad a medium. This helps to know how much traffic is being generated from organic vs. paid channels and is a good indicator of how much time, effort and money should be spent on each. While search engine optimization provides organic visibility, it is also an important performance indicator as it shows the quality of a website quality and its trust ranking. When it comes to paid advertising, such insights directly impact strategies related to a websites' rate on investment.

Pages on a website host different information and it is important to maintain good and relevant information to ensure quality and to keep the visitor engaged. Analytics track which pages on a website are more popular with visitors and which ones aren’t. As mentioned before, this helps maintain quality which retains visitors and is also used to measure content effectiveness. Behavior is also measured by actions taken on a website and it is valuable to see whether a site’s design is user-friendly. Analytics throw light on which pages cause the maximum bounces and contribute to a higher percentage of the bounce rate.

Ecommerce websites have a transactional or sales-focused functionality and analytical tools are configured to the core purpose of selling and revenue. Hence, tracking customer journeys can give better insights and substantially improve sales margins. More knowledge is always powerful as timely analyses and reporting enable continuous learning from customer behavior and purchases. There are also various tools that report on how a particular product or category is performing. Therefore, with customer and product-centric viewpoints, one can view an online business from different perspectives and can recognize patterns and work towards establishing a good customer relationship.

A product guide leads a customer through a sales funnel that is based on insightful consumer behavior. It engages with them while asking relevant questions specific to their needs. Such an optimization tool is particularly useful for products which answer niche needs, product categories that are complicated and even large product assortments. It also targets navigation and functionality problems such as visitors browsing through countless product pages or manually setting filters to choose products. Although useful in certain circumstances, filters primarily have a functionality akin to settings. Hence, they provide a general output lacking valid reasoning and at times don't even provide results at all. A product guide on the other hand takes the consumer through a series of questions and answers, providing a valid reason at every step of the process and as a consequence, will always display a recommendation. It is also structured to reduce wasteful browsing, which stops visitors from bouncing of your website. For this reason it is an on-site optimization solution.

Schematic repersentation of excentos Analytics

This shows you that out of all the traffic that clicked-through, which category of a consumer was most interested in the bikes. Furthermore, you can narrow down on segments to find out particular choices. For e.g., you could find out the average height of adults who come from a specific country and if there is any correlation with a type of bike or some other related feature.

The image used to illustrate the example gives a schematic view of excentos analytics and shows individual events such as user journeys, bounces and exit points. You can track single journeys through the funnel or get a collective view of all. Data visulizations can be changed to sift through and draw appropriate conclusions.

It shows you which products are performing better than others and their individual click-through rates. You can evaluate product items that are not working in a particular market or segment and plan your inventory accordingly.

An easy overview allows you to know if your products are getting traction in other countries, as well as comparisons between number of visitors, revenue, clicks, popularity and other such parameters.

As it learns from customer data, excentos analytics provides helpful suggestions and steps you can use to potentially improve your business.

Special metrics can be tracked and measured, if they are an integral part of the product guide and customer journey. To give an example, this can apply to products which have a customization feature, and hence can track which color, pattern, template, etc. is more popular with customers.

This also shows us that analytics and tracking don’t have contextual usage barriers. They can be used for general performance monitoring or can be customized to optimize and measure frequently visited parts of a website. Regular web analytics are essential to track, maintain and improve websites, but online businesses can benefit even more by integrating a unique tool such as a product guide. excentos analytics show you exactly how your products are doing with customers from across segments and provide you with even more customized options for optimization.

Integrate popular options

What is retargeting, really? - Unbounce

Use an efficient email marketing strategy

Relevant and personalized information is the key to effective inbound marketing activities. Known as attention economics, there is only so much information a human can process and will choose to pay attention to. Therefore, it's important that what you provide stands out, but is also relevant to your different segments and target groups.

"Attention is a resource, a person only has so much of it" - Matthew Crawford on attention economics.

Your different consumer segments require different levels of information and of different depth and complexity. For example, you receive 100 site visitors from an ad campaign, which you ran. Only 5% of these automatically convert and make a purchase. The remaining 95% need 'warming up' before they get to the cart. Sending them inbound marketing material over a defined period of time will help to educate and subtly persuade the lead, as to why they need your product.

E-Commerce Funnel

Marketing Funnel