Artificial Intelligence
Explore the Heart of our Technologies
The core of our technology is composed of three pillars. The knowledge model and the Matching Engine, AI-driven Self-optimmization and personalization.
The core of our technology is composed of three pillars. The knowledge model and the Matching Engine, AI-driven Self-optimmization and personalization.
Product pages are crucial to Ecommerce experiences and can often be the reason for higher bounce rates. Get started with some basic optimization fixes.
Read moreCustomers may abandon their purchases for a number of reasons, this article talks about the most common ones and the different ways to optimize for them.
Read moreRead all about Guided Selling software, and the many different Ecommerce solutions that are available for B2Bs and B2Cs.
Read moreAn in-depth look at the D2C trend and how brands can use aspects of it to increase their brand presence and get more control over their product and consumer data.
Read moreWith disruptive challenges in 2020, brands and retailers adopted new strategies for Ecommerce. Get to know the top UX trends you can use to not be left behind.
Read moreProduct Guides and Advisors are used by businesses to tackle specific issues related to online selling. Find out how Guided Selling solutions solve such problems.
Read moreCustomers search tirelessly to find the perfect gift and gift finders help to reduce search time and give customers personalized recommendations. Read our article about how to personalize their gift buying journey.
Read moreB2Bs have complex products and solutions which makes it difficult to present their online customers with the required support and information. Check out our top B2B picks which successfully advise customers online.
Read moreProduct data is often technical in nature and not easy to interpret when used in online selling. Read about a smarter way to utilize product data with your expertise, and give your customers a transparent and useful purchase experience.
Read moreWith the adoption of the 'new normal', consumer behavior is changing while online shopping is gaining momentum. Read this article to know more about how consumers are adapting to changes in the shopping environment.
Read moreChatbots — or conversational agents — are a powerful tool to offer digital advice and customer support 24/7. Read all about how this service can make your customers naturally interact with your brand.
Read moreEmail marketing and personalized recommendations are a great way to generate leads and win over customers. Read through our essential tips and examples to perfect your lead generation strategy.
Read moreWe address the most fundamental questions surrounding AI and how it can be advantageous for Ecommerce and SMBs.
Read moreThe Coronavirus pandemic has changed lives and created disruptions across industries. Read about how to strategize to keep selling.
Read moreWebsites require tracking and measurement to continually improve user experience for its customers. Read more about the advantages of web analytics and how your business can grow with excentos analytics.
Read moreWhen it comes to holiday shopping retailers and brands miss out on the most significant insight. Read how gift finders can help your business tackle occasions like Valentine's Day.
Read moreIn order to convert people, they need to trust you. Inbound marketing allows you to give something to prospective buyers which is of value to them, something educational which proves you are experts in your field and...
Read moreLeading home furnishing brands use digital advice technology to give their online customers personalized recommendations. We check out some of our favorites.
Read moreWondering why your customers don't make it to the cart? Read how to provide your customers with the advice and guidance they need to navigate your online shop.
Read moreStruggling to think up ways to compete against big players like Amazon? Check out this blog post for some handy tips and tricks suited to SMBs.
Read moreSocial media, inspirational content, digital product advice, personalization and omnichannel accessibility... Just a few of the things important to your millenial shoppers.
Read moreSurprise your current customers and engage new ones with the excentos Product Finder this Easter. Providing gift inspiration to your customers has never been so easy. See excentos Workbench.
Read more"42% of buyers returned an online purchase within the past three months" - is your business suffering too? Find out how you can better educate your customers and avoid these high return rates.
Read moreMarketing has changed more in the past two years than it has in the past 20 years… is your company doing everything it can to keep up?
Read moreIt's that time of year again - Valentine's Day is around the corner! Customers are panicking that they've still not found that special gift for their special someone. Help them out with Gift Finders.
Read moreOnline shopping is changing and as the pace of life gets quicker, customers want to find their perfect product and check out within minutes. Learn from other forward-thinking companies, already using Guided Selling techniques to reduce company costs and increase revenue.
Read moreUX isn't limited to your graphic designer. Check out this blog post to see how technology can help excel your UX processes.
Read moreRetaining a loyal customer base in e-commerce can be tough business. The easy access to internet and technology means every competitor is just one click away and potentially offering a lower price.
Read moreAdvanced Guided Selling methods are changing the world of online shopping. excentos has gathered some of their favorite and most inspiring Guided Selling examples to share with you. Here are our top 3 based on usability, design, performance and result accuracy.
Read moreIn the second part of Product Detail Pages: Turn Visitors into Customers, we focus on user reviews, videos, cross-selling and stock information.
Read moreFind out what kind of product details you should be providing, in order to convert your site visitors into customers.
Read moreLearn how Smart Preselections can make your question flow more concise and avoid bad recommendations.
Read moreCan't quite understand why visitors on your site aren't buying? You probably need to invest in a Guided Selling method. Check out this blog post to see which would be best for your online shop.
Read moreWith AI intelligence, you can replicate the offline shopping experience into your online shop. It's smart, it's savvy and it's the 'in thing' for e-commerce businesses who want to get ahead of the game. Find out why in this blog post.
Read moreDuring the conceptualization stage of building a Product Guide, we are often asked what the ideal duration for the questionnaire should be? Find out all your unanswered questions in this blog post.
Read moreThe Product Guide gives an option for customers to connect with Jungheinrich at each stage of the advisory process. It contains features such as PDF generation, product comparisons, and lead generation functionalities. It also offers video explanation content and smart preselections, making it easier for customers to select specific product features.
You know your customers the best. Use the collective knowledge of your foremost experts to develop a concept that really addresses your customer's needs. Define only questions that your customers can answer. With this questionflow you ensure that your customers find what they are looking for.
Combining the concept with an excellent design ensures top usability and a unique shopping experience. You can choose one of the Workbench default themes: River, Sunrise and Earth or use a custom screendesign.
You can create the concept directly in the excentos Workbench's Concept Board. The Concept Board will allow you to create and adjust your concept continuously throughout the entire process.
Watch our tutorial about the Concept Board
Benefit from excentos expertise. We can support you during the concept creation process or we can entirely develop the concept for you. Either way you benefit from our experience in countless product categories and projects.
Your agency provides the concept and we work closely with them and you to provide templates, expertise and support.
excentos offers a great selection of themes that you simply can choose from. Take a look at the free default themes.
ThemesYes. You, your agency or excentos can develop a custom screendesign.
We provide you or your agency with a User interface Briefing. This briefing defines all basics about screendesign and interaction-design, and ensures that the design works smoothly with the concept.
We support you or your agency to ensure that design achieves exactly Look'n'Feel you aim at.
excentos can develop the screendesign for you. We make use of years of experience to develop a screendesign that fits perfectly to your product and your company.
We work in close collaboration with you during every step of the development process.
Create an advisor concept which sells your products and offers your customers a unique and personalized shopping experience.
You only need one data feed in order to create a Product Guide: already existing standard data feed exports of your shop or CMS systems are enough. You can use the same data that is e.g. used for price comparison sites or affiliates, or that is contained in your PIM or ERP system.
The most common data format is CSV. Other data formats like XML can be used without a problem. If your data feed complies with the Workbench data feed requirements you can directly upload it. Otherwise excentos can support your data feed preparation.
Your data is always up to date. You can decide in the Workbench how often the data is updated automatically, daily, hourly, or live - depending on your needs. New products are shown in the Product Guide automatically.
If you don't know the file format or how to prepare it for the Workbench, excentos can help you to prepare your data feed. Simply provide excentos with the data feed from your shop system or CMS and we will do the rest.
excentos developed powerful tools for data preparation and processing. Our AI-driven tools extract additional information from free text and unstructured data, for example from product descriptions, or they are used to extract additional information from your CMS, shop system or PIM. If you want even more data we can:
Often data is hidden but available within existing structures. We can extract this data for you. So even if you do not have any data we can set up a data creation and maintenance process with you.
In the end, you can build your processes upon the improved and SEO-Optimized data feeds that excentos provides.
Yes. We can identify variants and assign, for example, color and size variants. In this way, we can intelligently handle product variants and recommendation behavior.
Yes. excentos can extract the relevant data for you from several different sources, for example, your shop / CMS system or from your PIM-system. A typical scenario is to pull the core product fact sheets from your PIM, but actual prices and availability data from a shop system or webservice.
Our process is extremely flexible and our extraction process can adjust to any data structure. All the data is immediately usable in the Product Guide, e.g. in the form of new attributes or an enlarged product assortment.
Use your already existing data to build the Product Guide. The standard data feed of your shop or CMS system is all you need.
With our AI Data Trainer, learn how to use product data in a smarter and insight-driven way for online selling.
Further insights into the prototype guides that excentos conceptualized for Bosch Power Tools
(created by Ole Tangermann, Erik Arndt, Sophie Hanny Schiessl and Ben Prasa)
Read our documentation on how to integrate Product Guides into your website or shop .
Easter - the time for family, reflection and renewal. Surprise your current customers and engage new ones with the excentos Product Finder. Providing gift inspiration to your customers has never been so easy as with the excentos Workbench.
In this blog post, we showcase some of our favorite Gift Finders and explain why they work so well for all kinds of people, genders and age groups.
Take me to the Gift Finder: Chocolat Gift Finder
Hotel Chocolat
Chocolate Specialists
Hotel Chocolat is a luxury British chocolatier and cocoa grower. With over 130 shops, cafes and restaurants, three boutiques in Copenhagen and a hotel on their cocoa plantation in the Caribbean, Hotel Chocolat are revolutionizing the chocolate industry.
What do we think? This exquisite Gift Finder is oozing in irresistible temptation and an insatiable appetite for the best chocolatey gift. Its simplistic yet luxurious design perfectly compliments the Hotel Chocolat brand. Shopping for Easter eggs has never been so fun!
There was a Gift Finder: Mytoys Gift Finder
MyToys
Children's toy specialists
MyToys is Germany's leading retailer of children's toys and accessories and one of the 12 largest online shops in the country! They are a multi-channel retailer with 14 branches.
What do we think? The variety of themes and adorable images easily gets the personality of the child across to the buyer. This Gift Finder is also quite extensive, asking several questions about the recipient to ensure it delivers suitable and intelligent AI-driven recommendations. A win-win situation for both you and your customer. Your customer happily walks away with the perfect gift and you increase your sales.
Take me to the Gift Finder: Smythstoys Gift Finder
Smyth's Toys
Children's toy specialists
Smyth's is Ireland's largest toy store and a multinational chain provider of children's toys and entertainment products.
What do we think? The simple theme and colors perfectly fit the branding of a toy store and the graphic of the young boy brings life to the Gift Finder. It's also a great idea to offer users the chance to specify their maximum spend, especially when it comes to buying things like toys which we all know can easily leave a hole in our pocket. Additionally, by filtering out products which are not within the customer's price range, you can better highlight the products which they can afford and are more likely to buy.
Take me to the Gift Finder: Magazine Gift Finder
Magazine UK
The Magazine Specialists
Magazine UK is the UK's largest online subscription site for hundreds of magazines to suit everyone's preferences.
What do we think? It's always nice to receive advice and tips on what could be a good read. This cool Gift Finder asks about the recipient's personality which is always an important factor in finding the perfect gift.
Take me to the Gift Finder: Gift Finder
Gifts.com
The Ultimate Gift Website
Gifts.com is an online shop selling a large assortment of products to suit anyone and everyone.
What do we think? These lovely images really capture the essence of everyone you could want to buy a gift for as well as the occasion to go with it. Since Gifts.com sell such a large amount of products which are suited to all kinds of people, it's important that they provide their customers with a support mechanism like a Product Finder which helps users to narrow down their search.
Take me to the Gift Finder: Douglas Gift Finder
Douglas
The Beauty Specialists
Douglas is a German perfume and cosmetics retailer with around 35,000 products in more than 1900 stores across Europe.
What do we think? Buying cosmetics online can sometimes be a challenge since you can't test it or smell it. The Douglas Gift Finder deals with this issue well by asking the right amount of questions. They also use a slider feature for people to specify their age which is a pretty important factor when buying cosmetic products but also great for usability as users don't need to insert any free text.
Take me to the Gift Finder: Whiskey Gift Finder
The Whisky Exchange
The Whisky Specialists
The Whisky Exchange is one of the largest online retailers of whiskey, advising and serving thousands of people their favorite tipple every week.
What do we think? This Gift Finder is clearly more suited to whiskey lovers since the questions are more focused towards those who know what they are talking about. The concept, however, is great, since it's always helpful to receive advice before you buy with more higher-end products like spirits and liqueurs.
Lead Generation is a process of attracting prospective customers and instilling purchase interest in a product or service. They are qualified into different lead categories which are based on their probability of purchasing and becoming paying customers. Such 'leads' can come from sources both online and offline. When we talk about online lead generation, providing a good website experience has certain advantages as people who visit your website would do so either out of curiosity or an interest in your product or service. With the right content and lead magnets, a good website is a powerful lead generator.
A Guided Selling solution such as a Product Guide is a valuable tool to generate leads. By integrating Guided Selling in your website, you optimize the purchase journey by providing personalized recommendations. Think about how in-store staff help and offer advice to customers, similarly a Product Guide provides your visitors with the best recommendations and a valid reasoning as to why they match their specific needs. This increases their interest and willingness to interact with your brand or product even more.
After getting personalized recommendations from a Product Guide, your website visitors can choose the best recommendation and generate a product information PDF, or opt to receive it via email by filling in a simple contact form. This process works as follows:
Ascertains needs
The Product Guide asks the user a set of relevant questions
Product advice
It then displays the best recommendations based on the user's input
Generates leads
The user can choose to generate a PDF and view a recommendation at their leisure. By offering to email them about it, you can receive a user's contact information and create a qualified lead
A personalized PDF of this nature provides relevant product information as per the customer's request, and can contain outbound links that could e.g. bring the customer back to the product page or direct them to any other step in the sales process. This also ensures that they have all the product information available whenever they wish to refer back to it.
Jungheinrich PDF generation
Our Guided Selling technology uses a matching engine to provide only relevant products to a user and this in turn increases their willingness to make a purchase.
All our Product Advisorshave intelligent reasoning and provide valid reasons for choosing a product as a recommendation, thereby building customer trust and reducing returns.
Machine learning utilizes the full potential of data to enhance the recommendations provided to customers.
excentos Analytics give you a detailed picture of customer purchase habits allowing you to react quicker to trends and insights.
Integrate our Guided Selling solutions across devices and covering various touchpoints such as desktop, mobile and in-store.
Lead-Generierung ist ein Prozess, mit dem potenzielle Kunden angezogen und Kaufinteresse an einem Produkt oder einer Dienstleistung geweckt wird. Sie werden in verschiedene Lead-Kategorien eingeteilt, die auf der Wahrscheinlichkeit basieren, dass sie kaufen und zahlende Kunden werden. Solche "Leads" können sowohl aus Online- als auch aus Offline-Quellen stammen. Wenn wir über die Online-Lead-Generierung sprechen, hat die Bereitstellung einer guten Website-Erfahrung gewisse Vorteile, da Menschen, die Ihre Website besuchen, dies entweder aus Neugierde oder aus Interesse an Ihrem Produkt oder Ihrer Dienstleistung tun würden. Mit dem richtigen Inhalt und den richtigen Lead-Magneten ist eine gute Website ein starker Lead Generator.
Eine Guided Selling-Lösung wie z.B. ein Produkt-Berater ist ein effizientes Tool zur Generierung von Leads. Durch die Integration von Guided Selling Lösung in Ihre Website optimieren Sie die Kaufabwicklung durch die Bereitstellung personalisierter Produktempfehlungen. Denken Sie darüber nach, wie das Personal im Geschäft den Kunden hilft und sie berät. In ähnlicher Weise bietet ein Produkt-Berater Ihren Besuchern die besten Produktempfehlungen und eine stichhaltige Begründung, warum das Produkt ihren spezifischen Bedürfnissen entspricht. Dies steigert das Interesse und die Bereitschaft der Kunden, mit Ihrer Marke oder Ihrem Produkt zu interagieren, noch weiter.
Nachdem die Besucher Ihrer Website personalisierte Empfehlungen aus einem Produkt-Berater erhalten haben, können sie die beste Empfehlung auswählen und eine PDF-Datei mit Produktinformationen generieren oder sich dafür entscheiden, diese per E-Mail zu erhalten, indem sie ein einfaches Kontaktformular ausfüllen. Dieser Prozess funktioniert wie folgt:
Ermittelt Benutzerbedürfnisse
Der Produkt-Berater stellt dem Benutzer eine Reihe von relevanten Fragen.
Produkt-Beratung
Er zeigt dann die besten Empfehlung basierend auf den Eingaben des Benutzers an
Generierte Leads
Der Benutzer kann wählen, ob er ein PDF generieren und eine Empfehlung in Ruhe ansehen möchte. Wenn Sie ihm vorschlagen, eine E-Mail dazu zu versenden, können Sie die Kontaktinformationen des Benutzers erhalten und einen qualifizierten Lead erstellen.
Eine personalisierte PDF-Datei dieser Art bietet relevante Produktinformationen entsprechend der Kundenanforderung und kann ausgehende Links enthalten, die den Kunden z. B. zur Produktseite zurückbringen oder ihn zu jedem anderen Schritt im Verkaufsvorgang leiten können. Auf diese Weise wird auch sichergestellt, dass der Kunde alle Produktinformationen zur Verfügung hat, wenn er darauf zurückgreifen möchte.
Jungheinrich PDF Generator
Unsere Guided-Selling-Technologie verwendet eine Matching-Engine, um einem Benutzer nur relevante Produkte anzubieten, was wiederum seine Kaufbereitschaft erhöht.
Alle unsere Produktberaterverfügen über eine intelligente Argumentation und geben stichhaltige Gründe für die Wahl eines Produkts als Empfehlung an, wodurch das Vertrauen der Kunden gestärkt und die Retouren reduziert werden.
Das maschinelle Lernen nutzt das volle Potenzial der Daten, um die Empfehlungen an die Kunden zu verbessern.
Mit excentos Analytics erhalten Sie ein detailliertes Bild des Kaufverhaltens Ihrer Kunden und können so schneller auf Trends und Erkenntnisse reagieren.
Integrieren Sie unsereGuided-Selling-Lösungen geräteübergreifend und für verschiedene Touchpoints wie Desktop, mobil und im Geschäft.
Copy the JavaScript code into your CMS or shop system. The Product Guide is integrated as a single-page application and you can start using it straight away.
An Overview of Important Guided Selling Terms and Concepts.
Discover the various facets of Guided Selling, the advantages of Product Guides and learn how to build your own Product Guide in a matter of minutes.
A Product Finder Tool helps customers make quicker buying decisions by providing accurate product recommendations as per the customers' needs. They optimize the customer journey and help guide them to the shopping cart.
Product Configurator Tools allow a customer to customize a product to a desired variation that best suites their needs. They are particularly useful for customizable and complex-natured B2B products.
Guided Selling is a perfect tool to complement your lead generation strategy as it generates leads directly from your website and organically provides a higher lead quality.
A Guided Selling tool like the Product Selector gives your customers a more holistic product search experience and displays concise recommedations matching their exact requirements.
A Product Advisor helps online customers just like a salesman assists customers in a the store. You can integreate your sales knowledge and expertise to advise customers by answering their queries on the spot.
Gift finders are great digital tools to increase holiday revenues and target special occasions. Customers are able to find the perfect gift quickly, without the need to spend additonal time and effort. Gift finders can also include special wrapping and delivery services.
A product quiz is an interactive tool that recommends the best-suited products to customers based on their preferences and tendencies. Quizzes increase customer interest with gamification elements and can recommend smart product recommendations.
Conversational search uses AI-driven interfaces that work to understand a customer's needs and assist them in their product search process. Conversational agents such as chatbots and voice search assistants are popular forms used for search processes.
Sales Enablement is used to guide sales representatives successfully through sales conversations with the right materials.
The payment terms and contract durations for all SaaS-related services are defined in § 11 and § 12 of our General Terms and Conditions. The following intends to provide you a faster overview. In case of any conflict, the General Terms and Conditions are binding.
We invoice the edition according to the features you are actively using or that were configured by excentos upon your request for your Product Guides.
The standard contract duration is 12 months with monthly billing. You can also choose the reduced price with annual billing and 24 months contract duration. The exact definitions are contained in § 12 of our General Terms and Conditions.
The minimum contract term begins once the development of your Product Guide is completed (see definition below). That way, you can fully utilize the contract duration to assess the Product Guide's success.
If you continue to use the Workbench or the Product Guides after your free trial period but did not go live yet, excentos will only invoice a monthly DEVELOPMENT fee. The DEVELOPMENT fee covers the Workbench provisioning and server instances provided by excentos until go-live of your Product Guide1.
The DEVELOPMENT fee will be invoiced only for one Product Guide, so you can test with as many Product Guides as you like before taking them live.
After go-live, we will invoice according to the edition and number of Product Guides and markets you are using.
The price of the DEVELOPMENT fee equals the price of the START edition, unless you require features or customizations of a higher edition (we will then invoice the corresponding PROFESSIONAL or ENTERPRISE edition).
The same accounts if you assigned excentos with providing market / channel / instore Systems and did not yet go live with them: We will only invoice a DEVELOPMENT fee for every System until you actively use it.1
Yes! Once you are a customer of excentos and are paying for whatever edition, you can build as many additional prototypes for free and invoicing only starts once the new Product Guides go live.
The following payment terms account for all services provided by excentos:
Preliminary work is sometimes required in order to find out whether the excentos platform actually matches your needs for great product advice, or not.
We define preliminary work as all professional services provided by excentos before you as our customer actually sign the contract. Preliminarry work covers services only that later on save you time and budget since they created a clear business value for you:
Unless you let us know beforehand that you perceive it as unfair since we did not create any business value, excentos will invoice the preliminary work as follows:
Auf den ersten Blick ist Online-Shopping deutlich bequemer, als sich in überfüllten Geschäften mit langen Warteschlangen herumzuärgern.
Was online jedoch fehlt, ist eine professionelle Beratung. Woher sollen Kunden bei der großen Auswahl an Produkten wissen, welches das richtige für sie ist? Und genau hier kommen digitale Produktfinder ins Spiel.
Ein Produktfinder (engl. Product Finder) ist eine KI-basierte Software, die Online-Kunden bei der Such nach dem richtigen Produkt unterstützt und zur Entscheidungsfindung beiträgt.
Produktfinder sind digitale Tools, die mittels kurzem Integrationscode in Websites oder Apps eingebunden werden. Sie gehören, genau wie Produktkonfiguratoren und Geschenkefinder, zu den Guided Selling-Lösungen.
Zusammengefasst bezeichnet Guided Selling den Prozess, digitale Beratung auf allen Kanälen verfügbar zu machen, um Kunden zielgerichtet zur Kaufentscheidung zu führen.
Ein Produktfinder führt Kunden mit leicht verständlichen Fragen durch die Beratung und liefert Produktempfehlungen, die optimal auf deren Bedürfnisse abgestimmt sind.
Um die Bedürfnisse des Kunden zu ermitteln, werden anwendungsorientierte Fragen gestellt. Das bedeutet, technische Produktmerkmale werden in Kunden-Sprache übersetzt.
Beispielsweise würde ein Waschmaschinen-Finder nicht nach benötigtem Fassungsvermögen in Kilogramm fragen, sondern „Wie viele Personen leben in Ihrem Haushalt?“. Diese Frage ist für den Kunden einfach zu beantworten und erfordert kein technisches Wissen.
Die Software findet dadurch heraus, welche Anforderungen das Produkt erfüllen muss und generiert auf Basis der verknüpften Produktdaten und Produktattribute eine perfekte Empfehlung. Der Kunde findet schnell, was er braucht und kann eine informierte Kaufentscheidung treffen.
Das Beratungsgespräch ist dynamisch. Mit anderen Worten: Die Fragen, die das Produktfinder-Tool stellt, variieren je nach ausgewählter Antwortoption des Kunden. Sollte eine Frage aufgrund der getroffenen Auswahl nicht mehr in den Fragefluss passen, wird eine andere Frage gestellt, um die Anforderungen des Kunden zu spezifizieren.
Das Beratungsgespräch wird also optimal auf den Nutzer abgestimmt und ist dadurch genauso professionell wie eine persönliche Beratung im Fachgeschäft.
Ein einfacher Produktfilter kann dabei helfen, Produkte anhand ihrer Merkmale zu selektieren. Voraussetzung hierfür ist jedoch, dass die Kunden wissen, wonach sie filtern müssen. Genau das ist aber häufig nicht der Fall.
Viele Kunden brauchen Beratung, weshalb Produktfinder die bessere Wahl sind, wenn es darum geht, Online-Kunden einen echten Mehrwert zu bieten.
Der excentos Produktfinder kann plattformunabhängig in Ihr CMS oder Shopsystem, wie z.B. Shopware, Woocommerce oder Shopify integriert werden. Wir stellen Ihnen einen kurzen Integrationscode zur Verfügung, mit dem Sie Ihre Beratungslösung ganz einfach und ohne Prorammierkenntnisse einbinden können.
Mit der excentos Workbench bauen Sie Ihre digitale Beratungslösung ganz einfach selbst.
Sie haben noch offene Fragen zu digitalen Produktberatern oder unserer excentos Lösung? Dann nehmen Sie gern Kontakt zu uns auf. Wir freuen uns auf Sie!
At first glance, online shopping is significantly more convenient than dealing with crowded stores and long queues.
However, what is missing online is professional advice. How are customers supposed to know which product is right for them with such a vast selection? And that's exactly where digital Product Finders come into play.
A Product Finder is an AI-based software that assists online customers in searching for the right product and contributes to decision-making.
Product Finders are digital tools that can be seamlessly integrated into websites or apps using a short integration code. Like product configurators and gift finders, they belong to the category of Guided Selling solutions.
In summary, Guided Selling refers to the process of making digital advice available across all channels to guide customers purposefully towards making a purchase decision.
A Product Finder guides customers through the consultation with easy-to-understand questions and provides product recommendations that are perfectly tailored to their needs.
To determine the customer's needs, use-case-oriented questions are asked. This means that technical product features are translated into customer language.
For example, a Washing Machine Finder wouldn't ask about the required capacity in kilograms, but rather "How many people live in your household?". This question is easy to answer and doesn't require technical knowledge.
As a result, the software identifies the product requirements and generates a perfect recommendation based on linked product data and attributes. This allows the customer to quickly find what they need and make an informed purchasing decision.
The advisory process is dynamic. In other words, the questions posed by the Product Finder Tool vary based on the selected response option of the customer. If a question no longer aligns with the flow due to the chosen selection, another question is asked to specify the customer's requirements.
The conversation is thus tailored perfectly to the user, making it just as professional as a personal consultation in a specialty store.
A simple Product Filter can help select products based on their features. However, the prerequisite for this is that customers know what they need to filter for. Yet, this is often not the case.
Many customers require guidance, which is why Product Finders are the better choice when it comes to providing online customers with real added value.
The excentos Product Finder can be seamlessly integrated into your CMS or shop system, such as Shopware, WooCommerce, or Shopify. We provide you with a short integration code that allows you to easily incorporate your advisory solution without any programming knowledge.
With the excentos Workbench, you can easily build your digital advisory solution yourself.
If you have any further questions about digital Product Advisors or our excentos solution, please feel free to contact us. We look forward to hearing from you!
The Product Guides integrate as a Single Page App with only one line of JavaScript code into your shop or CMS system. You don't need any additional IT infrastructure.
See how easily and quickly our example Camera Guide can be integrated into your website with out QuickTest.
1 | <script 2 | src=”//service.excentos.com/bikeshop/DE/bikeadvisor/de_DE/loadadvisor?theme=responsive 3 | </script>
The integration code injects the excentos JavaScript client into your integration page. The excentos Product Guide is then responsible for the entire user interaction of learning the user’s needs until presenting product recommendations. Every product recommendation links into your shop or CMS (e.g. into the product detail pages)
You can deeply integrate the Product Guides into your website’s customer journey. Simply preset parameters of the Product Guide to make it even more personal. This way you can connect content of your website with personalized recommendations. For example, the following code sets the parameters bikeType=racingund gender=female.
1 | <script 2 | src=”//service.excentos.com/bikeshop/DE/bikeadvisor/de_DE/loadadvisor?theme=default&xcReset&$bikeType=racing&$gender=female”> 3 | </script>
In addition to this, it is possible to set parameters to define a specific entry point for the customer journey. Combine this functionality with the parameter preset mentioned above and you can even lead customers directly to the result list so that they do not have to answer any questions.
1 | <script 2 | src=”//service.excentos.com/bikeshop/DE/bikeadvisor/de_DE/loadadvisor?theme=default&xcStartAt=xcAjaxClient.wizard.recommendation&xcReset”> 3 | </script>
Yes, the excentos Product Guide can integrate into any shop or CMS system. You only need an empty integration page and copy-paste one line of JavaScript.
excentos already integrated with all most commonly used shop systems like Magento, Shopify, IBM Websphere, Intershop, Shopware, Plentymarkets, Oxid, Hybris, Demandware and many more. Besides providing an empty integration page, you do not need to make any changes to your shop system.
Our Product Guides easily integrate into basically every CMS system. Some examples of CMS systems we already worked with: Typo3, Wordpress, Drupal, Joomla, FirstSpirit, Ghost, Silverstripe, Wix Magnolia. You only need to create one integration page to integrate your Product Guide.
The Product Guide is connected via the data feed and the Integration page. So you simply have to create a new integration page and copy paste the one line of code in the new CMS or shop system.
No. excentos technology doesn't require iFrames or plugins and works in any relevant browser. Hence the content is better indexed by search engines (SEO) and the integration into your website is absolutely seamless. However, if you prefer using an iFrame, we of course also support iFrames.
Our analytics track the behavior and actions of visitors and give you a clear picture of individual events and user journeys. This generates valuable customer data for your business.
We are experts in Guided Selling and our solutions have been used in various product categories and span across many industries.
Our AI-driven solutions help reduce returns and increase revenues.
Product Guides and configurators assist your customers and guide them towards making quicker buying decisions. Our Product Configurators use the same Guided Selling attributes as our Product Guides, which give them more advantages.
Screencast shows how to configure Cross Selling, "expression" data binding, widgets, reasoning
Concept and configuration by Ben Prasa, excentos, 28.01.2020.
Please let us know in case you have any questions.
We are open for part-time (e.g. working student) or full time (e.g. trainee, internship) positions, and prefer full time positions.
If you want to be part of a leading E-Commerce technology provider and accelerate your career, send us a PDFof your CV and letter of
motivation in English to
We look forward to meeting you!
We strategically invest into our team (see also here), so you can look forward for these benefits:
{module Jobs benefits EN}This job is a unique opportunity of working with a passionate team with a diverse and open-minded background in our lovely and buzzing office in the heart of Potsdam.
"Millennials want it all and they want it now." - Guven Ordun, Research Gate
Millennials, Generation Y - buzzwords which we hear all the time. The primary target group aged between 22-35 years old have certain expectations in mind when they go shopping and their demands continue to grow exponentially.
Some prevalent trends which grace this tech-savvy generation include the influence of social media, aesthetics and more recently, the importance of protecting the environment and fighting for social justice.
This blog post will look into the five main contributors in successful targeting of the millennial shopper.
Source: Facebook PlayStation
Top of the list has to be social media. Generation Y spends over 2 hours on social media per day and this phenomenon is not slowing down any time soon. Social media also continues to develop as something more than networking amongst friends and has become the go-to medium for people to be inspired, shop, leave reviews, interact and share experiences.
Thousands of shops and retailers have started investing serious money in social media to attract more customers and increase sales, and why wouldn't they? Social media is the holy grail for marketers and has made the targeting of all ages, genders, personalities and demographics so much easier.
PRODUCT ENDORSEMENT AND INFLUENCERS
With the rise of Instagram, millennials have proven that they are crazy for visual content and are easily influenced by what their favorite celebrities are doing, wearing, eating or where they are going on holiday.
Take for example Meghan Markle's Sarah Flint ballet flats, which were spotted online and consequently sold out minutes later. People feel good about themselves when they know that they are wearing the same shoes as an actress, sports star or influential personality and if they are die-hard fans, then they will undoubtedly flock to the shops and buy every product which they see their idol wearing; regardless of whether they can truly afford it or not.
Source: Sarah Flint https://www.sarahflint.com/
Source: Meghan Markle Style Blog http://meghanstyle.org/
There are influencers in every industry - you just have to find them. Previously, businesses would only invest in influencers with at least 500k followers but this prerequisite no longer exists and companies see value in gifting even those with smaller numbers.
Source: Instagram @tagheuer
SOCIAL MEDIA SHOPPING
Source: Instagram @uniqlo
Promoting your products via social media is an easy way to get a wide reach and directly connect with your customers. Facebook, Snapchat and Instagram also have new shopping features which allow you to insert product tags and scan barcodes which link directly to the checkout page. Competitions, giveaways, coupons and vouchers are also appreciated by customers and allow them to get involved and interact with your brand on their favorite social media channel.
Source: Instagram @gopro
ONLINE CONTENT
Hand in hand with social media comes good quality content. Inspiring content which users love will gather support and attention from genuine followers onto your page, as well as save you some money on paid-ads. Target groups and personas are not limited to gender, demographics, lifestyle choices and income but also generation. Generation takes all factors into account and since people from the same generation have lived through the same events, experienced advances in technology together, share similar values, etc - they are an ideal target group.
Visual content should be of professional quality and written content should engage the reader, maybe teach them something new or leave a positive impression on them. Give your readers something to think about, something to discuss or simply something to make them smile.
Unfortunately, not all businesses have the budget to invest in marketing resources, however, free copyright websites such as pexels and unsplash provide a large range of professional, copyright-free images and you can find freelance content writers who charge at an hourly rate to provide you content as and when you may need it.
Content which is in vogue at the moment relates to philanthropical issues of social injustice as well as protecting the environment and discussion of ethics and sustainability.
Source: Instagram @thebodyshop
Source: Instagram @thefemalecompany
OFFLINE CONTENT:
Of course online retail is huge and vital for survival but brick and mortar businesses are still not dead and there are measures to be taken to keep them alive. For example, traditional storefronts and displays have become outdated and customers are on the search for exciting and interesting designs which provide them with more than a shopping experience. The kind of experience which is "Instagrammable". Take the example of American fashion retailer Abercrombie&Fitch who across all their stores worldwide have topless male models at the entrance for excitable customers waiting in the queues outside to get their photo taken.
Other popular and innovative in-store trends include: huge flower garlands, interactive gaming stations, in-store DJs, pop-up food stalls and in-store devices which can be linked up to the internet to provide a more fluid shopping experience for not only your customers, but your staff too.
Douglas Gift Finder https://bit.ly/2HBNunv
ONLINE GUIDED SELLING SOLUTIONS
Generation Y are complaining that their online shopping experience isn't personalized enough. Customers lack good-quality advice online and in a world of choice overload, they are becoming easily frustrated and consequently leaving your shop empty-handed. Many online shops have become overcrowded with products which are difficult to navigate from the user's point of view.
Product Guides act like a virtual sales assistant who can give you advice and guide you to the right product. They do this by asking a few quick and simple questions which AI-driven Guided Selling technology uses to provide you with intelligent recommendations based on your individual needs.
OFFLINE GUIDED SELLING SOLUTIONS
Product advisers are also useful accompaniments in-store and can aide your employees when trying to help customers find their perfect product while also giving them a better product overview. In-store Product Guides can also be used as a helping hand in your busier stores or at peak times. For example, instead of allowing customers to stand and wait to speak with the next available member of staff, they can receive advice independently with the self-sufficient Product Guide.
Source: Apple
Customers tend to expect an answer straight away, 24 hours around the clock and thanks to advances in customer service tools, this is now possible! In addition to human exchange, you can also automate your customer service with online chatbots and troubleshooting guides. Chatbots and troubleshooting guides assist your business with out of hours requests as well as deal with issues which can save your support team valuable time.
Generation Y are workaholics who lead fast-paced and active lifestyles. They need access to your shop on every available device they own; from desktop to mobile, watch and IPad. Not only this, but they want it to work as smoothly on their phone as it would on their laptop. Omnichannel accessibility also means that your website is in sync across all channels and your customers can conveniently access everything your website has to offer regardless of the channel they are using.
This overview of timezones around the world is supposed to help excentos customers and staff finding meetings in international projects. The UTC numbers are without respect to summer time / daylight saving time. They show winter time UTC; so during summer, add +1 everywhere (Berlin = UTC+2 in summer).
Best slots: Berlin morning 06:00 / 07:00 = New Zealand evening 17:00 / 18:00 or Berlin evening 22:00 = New Zealand morning 09:00.
excentos Software GmbH
Reiterweg 1
14469 Potsdam (near Berlin)
Tel.: +49-331-730 768-10
Fax: +49-331-730 768-19
E-mail:
Access to our parking: From Jägerallee (Bundesstraße 2)
just before the intersection to Reiterweg, enter the parking on our premises.
The timetable information of the BVG (Public Transport) will help you to find the quickest option.
If you arrive by car from Berlin or from the Berliner Ring, please
The timetable information of the BVG (Public Transport) will help you to find the quickest option.
Located across the street of the excentos office.
Large and professional, practical since it is close by, but a bit impersonal
Distance to excentos: 150m
Website
An elegant 4-star hotel in the center of Potsdam.
With bars and pubs in close proximity as well as the tram lines
Distance to excentos: 850m
Website
A small and classic hotel in the inner city of Potsdam.
A cosy hotel with unique charm and ambience
Distance to the excentos: 1km
Website
The hotel is located in the historical Dutch Quarter of Potsdam.
A boutique hotel with friendly personnel and a familiar atmosphere
Distance to excentos: 1.2km
Website
The 4-star hotel is located at the Luisenplatz, directly at the center of Potsdam.
An elegant hotel next to the Park Sanssourci, ideal for some sightseeing
Distance to excentos: 1.5km
Website
The excentos office is quickly reached via the nearby tram station.
Well known symbol of Potsdam. The main train station is only 500m away.
Distance to excentos: 2km
Website
As you know, high return rates can be a real pet peeve for any online shop as well as have a detrimental effect on both margins and profit.
Leading retailers are already implementing numerous measures to try combat the masses of refunds and returns they receive every day. However, levels continue to remain high which is not only having a damaging effect on orders but also on business.
Of course, customers do sometimes have a good reason for returning one of your products: maybe they were sent the wrong one or maybe it was faulty. However, on more occasions than not, they are sent a product which doesn't fit or isn't how it was described; it is these kinds of reasons which can be easily avoided and save your business time and money. According to Narvar, 42% of buyers returned an online purchase within the past three months. These high numbers show that returning is the new fashion in which shoppers are taking advantage of free return policies by buying items in three different sizes with the intention of sending at least two back.
This blog post will explain why excentos Online Product Advisers better inform your customers about your products so they know exactly what they are buying and won't feel the need to return it.
It is important that your product descriptions are written in detail as this will not only improve your SEO and make it easier for customers to find your products but will also inform them of the specific details which really matter. The customer can then ultimately decide whether that particular product fits their requirements or not. Things to include: color, size, fit, style, measurements, material, fabric, washing instructions, purpose etc. Is your product data complete and detailed? Don't worry if not - excentos can help you to clean up your data and ensure it's ready for making an optimal Product Guide.
Pinpoint the exact products your customers love and use this knowledge to your advantage. With excentos Product Guides, you can provide your customers with intelligent recommendations which they are bound to love.
For fashion brands and retailers, it is particularly important that you include vital information on size, color and style. It is also a good idea to try make this visual. Include sizing tables with unit conversions if you have international customers and try include photos of the product in every different color you offer. The excentos size matching feature takes factors such as body types, wearing habits and style into account and our color matcher uses image analysis algorithms to simplify the color search without confusing customers with different color names.
Pay attention to your usage data and draw conclusions from it. What does your typical customer profile look like? Which products are your customers buying? Do your customers cross-buy across certain products? Which of your products have good and bad customer reviews? Utilizing your data to provide better product recommendations to your customers is the best way to sell and results in both better targeting and marketing messages. Another great way to help customers in choosing a product is by using the excentos Customer Reviews feature which showcases the most common customer reviews within your Product Guide.
As well as analyzing which products your customers love, it is also important that you understand the reasons why customers send back certain products. When sending out your products, ensure that you include a few questions on the product return form where the customer can briefly state their reasons for returning.
Great images are crucial to the presentation of your products. Include as many images as possible and the more angles the better! Zoom functions and even videos of your product in action can really assist your customers in understanding whether that is the right product for them.
Marketing has changed more in the past two years than it has in the past 20 years… is your company doing everything it can to keep up?
In a world of choice overload, it can be difficult for retailers to keep up with their competition but good marketing tools can certainly give a business the edge. With advances in technology, marketing has become so much more than generic white-papers and social media ads. Leading companies are ploughing millions into their marketing departments as they constantly try to find the next best campaigns and creative concepts. This also includes finding the latest AI technology for the most modern and savvy marketing initiatives. However, one thing has and will always remain the same and that is the wise words of wisdom - ‘know your audience!’
This blog post will delve into some of the newest and most innovative marketing methods out there and explain how they can help your different target groups to feel inspired and purchase your products.
A personalized customer experience is simply expected these days, especially when it comes to sending out things like birthday emails or even just emails which address the customer by their first name. Unfortunately though, this just doesn’t quite make the cut anymore and customers aren’t too impressed. According to Infosys, 31% of customers wished that their shopping experience was more personalized and only 22% were satisfied with the current situation of online shopping.
Guided Selling Technology offers a broad range of tools which can be integrated directly into your website and offer your customers a personalized advice service as well as help them to navigate your products. It's new, it's modern and it works! So let's weigh up the options out there and analyze which suit your target group best.
Product Guides help your customers to make educated buying decisions as well as help you as a business to understand their needs by asking simple questions which lead them to ideal product recommendations.
Product Guides are particularly suitable to customers who are unsure about what to buy - especially when it comes to electronic products like cameras, TVs and washing machines where most people don't claim to be an expert and therefore, need a helping hand.
Opticians MrSpex demonstrate excellent personalization with their Virtual Try On Tool. They prove that even buying glasses online isn't risky business anymore. Instead of having to go into a MrSpex store, you can now try different pairs of glasses on from the comfort of your own home. All you need is a webcam or a camera phone and with the help of face recognition, you can then try on all the glasses you wish and see which suit best.
Some customers will naturally still prefer the traditional method of going to buy a pair of glasses from the store but this visual fit tool is perfect for your target groups with hectic lives and those people who just need to make a quick purchase without any hassle.
The Victoria's Secret bra collection allows you to browse different colors and designs quickly and easily. They even show the model wearing every kind of color and design which makes it super easy for customers to just flick through and decide which they prefer best.
This kind of personalization feature works well for fashionistas where those little adjustments to things like color and pattern can make a big difference.
Gift Finders are a personalization tool suitable for everyone. They are user-friendly and built on an algorithm which provides great recommendations to all kinds of people with all kinds of preferences meaning nobody is going to be left empty-handed when they get to the checkout.
Take the above example from European Beauty and Cosmetics leader "Douglas" whose Gift Finder provides their customers with personal questions that show they care about their needs and helping them to find the perfect gift.
You either love or hate Siri and Alexa... the same applies to online chatbots which can be integrated into your online shop to help advise customers find their perfect product. Available as an auditory or textual bot, chatbots are designed to make you feel like you are having a conversation with a human. When customers shop in-store and don't have the energy to go looking for something themselves or need some product advice, they simply ask the nearest sales assistant. Chatbots allow online customers to quickly ask what they want too, no matter where they are or what time of day it is.
Whole Foods Supermarket uses chatbots to advise customers on recipes as well as informs them of the nearest store to go buy all the ingredients.
Chatbots are particularly suited to customers who need an answer quickly and who don't get frustrated by talking to robots.
Convince your customers with individual arguments in a user-friendly language and watch your conversions increase. By simply showing your customers that you understand their needs and are transparent in what you are selling, you will see positive changes in your customer loyalty rates.
Providing your customers with intelligent reasoning is basically telling them that a product fulfills all the criteria that they want the product to have, in order for them to buy it. Intelligent Reasoning is used by Product Guides which asks the customers what their product requirements are and then leads them to an ideal match. For example, the Bose headphones state that they include world-class noise cancellation, are lightweight and comfortable to wear and also Bluetooth compatible - everything the customer asked for!