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What is Guided Selling and how does it work?

Find out more about digital advice on your website

Advise customers through the shopping process to the cart with Guided Selling software

Advise every customer like you would in-store.
Construct a dialogue which is able to advise every customer, in-line with their individual needs and wishes. Personalized and individual advice which will increase your cart sales and decrease your return rates.

Watch video: build a Product Guide in 45 seconds

with the excentos Workbench, everyone can develop a Product Guide both quickly and easily. See how easy it is with this video:

Advice integrated into your website

Guided Selling software such as Product Guides are extremely easy to integrate into every shop or CMS system. Be able to offer advice the minute your customers start searching for a product. The Product Guide will be adapted to your product assortment and target group, in order to fulfill the needs of your customers.


What is Guided Selling?

Guided Selling allows websites to advise and guide their customers to make quick and easy buying decisions. At first, customers are led through a series of question stages to understand the exact nature of their needs. Based on the answers, intelligent Guided Selling tools then get to work and recommend products which really match these needs. Hence, Guided Selling allows every individual customer to receive personalized advice and recommendations.




What are the different types of Guided Selling solutions?

Guided Selling solutions come in many forms and differ slightly in the way they work. The common types of Guided Selling solutions are as follows:

Product Guides, Product Advisors and Product Finders


These types of Guided Selling solutions advise your customers about products and guide them to find the best recommendations. They ask a series of questions to understand the customers' needs and make technical product data more understandable. Customer needs are matched perfectly with the AI recommendations.

Product Configurators and Product Selectors


Product Configurators and Product Selectors allow customers to configure a customized version of a product. These are useful when presenting a product that is capable of providing several variations that a customer can select. Product Configurators are used for complex products while Product Selectors can be used in combination with cross-selling features.

Gift Finders and Quizzes


Gift Finders are useful tools designed specifically to recommend the best-suited gifts for a person. They are useful when targetting recurring holidays and special seasons such as Valentine's day or Christmas. Quizzes on the other hand drive customer engagement and can provide a unique user experience.



When does my website require Guided Selling and Online Product Guides?

Guided-Selling technology can help tackle specific problems such as large product assortments and products that require detailed information for customers to arrive at a buying decision.

Product Advisors often act in the same way as an in-store sales advisor would, and hence are a great form of customer service. Guided Selling can help your business in the following way:

  • Large product assortment = increased demand for advice

    Large product assortments are difficult to navgiate through and prove even more difficult to define and present.

    The rule of thumb for Guided Selling is that if you have more than 10-15 products which are suited to different requirements, your customers will most likely need advice. Some Product Guides have almost 100,000 products — but even with fewer than 10 products, a set Guided Selling mechanism allows customers to know more about their actual requirements and leads them to make the right purchase decision.

  • If your customers ask, "What was the difference between those products again?"

    If your shop has products which require explanation, not every customer knows which products will fulfill their requirements. This means customers need to carry out extensive research which they are not prepared to do. They want to make a buying decision quickly and easily.

    Products which particularly require a lot of explanation are products which offer many technical features and characteristics — the kind of features which can be easily forgotten about but can make a difference to whether a customer makes a purchase or not.

  • Easily manage thousands of products

    If you have a dynamic assortment where products routinely keep changing, a Guided Selling system will keep up with such changes and helps salesmen to be up-to-date with product specifics.

    Digital Product Guides clearly have an advantage here, since they can remember infinite numbers of products and all their details. Therefore, Guided Selling is ideal for an ever-changing assortment of products and can also serve as a handy support system for sales staff.

  • Different target groups - different demands

    Those who sell to different target groups need to adequately present their products to each. Target groups can be:

    • First-time buyers versus experienced repeat-buyers, who have different levels of knowledge
    • B2C versus B2B customers, who are buying with completely different requirements in mind
    • younger versus older customers who have different demands when making a buying decision

    With Guided Selling, you can successfully serve different target groups. Product Guides pose intelligent questions which interactively adapt to the needs of each target group. This provides every customer with the information that is relevant to their individual purchase decision.




When is Guided Selling not necessary?

There are of course scenarios in which online advice is not particularly useful. For example, if you have a simple product selection or a very small product assortment which rarely changes. In these situations, it's best to explain your products through statistical content (e.g. with product descriptions). With a small product assortment, buyers have enough time to read through the details of every product. In most other cases, interactive product advice is much quicker, more user-friendly and effective when leading customers to a buying decision.



How does Guided Selling work and how does it increase my sales?

  • At many points in your shop, customers get lost, for example, on long product overview pages, in complicated menu structures or in category overviews where the user is unsure which sub-category is suitable or pages with cryptic product descriptions..
    Banners and links to Product Guides can help solve this issue, even helping users with no product knowledge to find something suited to their needs.
  • If you provide customers with questions which are enjoyable and relevant, you can understand what they really want to buy. This is exactly how the Product Guide proceeds: all relevant questions surrounding the buying decision are prepared to perfection. Alongside great questions, explanatory descriptions, understandable illustrations and example images, to explain features and reasons for buying certain products.
    In addition to helping customers, you can also help your business and gain valuable consumer insights, as you learn more about customers' motivations for buying
    The result is a user profile, which contains comprised information about the user and their buying behaviors.
  • Guided Selling recommends every customer the exact products that fulfil their requirements. An intelligent recommender calculates product recommendations, which fit the customer's needs and thereby increase the likelihood of them making a purchase.
  • Guided Selling increases conversion rates because Product Guides proceed like an intelligent sales rep would. Every product recommendation provides reasoning which persuades the customer why they should buy. Other useful functions, include: bookmarks which provide dynamic product comparisons and the shopping cart function which is situated directly in the results list to increase sales.



What do our clients say?

  • We saw significantly higher growth rates for all products integrated in the advisor compared to the overall product range. The excentos staff were always there to support us for any questions and helped us to get the most out of the platform.

    - Ortlieb

  • Customers who use the excentos Gift Finder are 3 times more likely to make a buying decision than those who do not.

    - myToys

  • Digital consulting with excentos is now an essential part of our marketing, and we are very satisfied with the results.

    - Vaude




Test out our Camera Guide
to see how easy buying decisions can be

Your customers want to have it as easy as possible. With intelligent Product Guides, you simplify buying decisions for every visitor on your website:
Your customers get the sales advice they need, thanks to digital Guided Selling online, chatbots or in-store solutions.

excentos-camera-guide




Proven success of Product Guides

45%

Increased conversion

98%

Higher session duration

55%

Increased shopping cart value