Boost CVR with a Product Finder
For retailers, guiding customers to products they’ll love is an important part of creating good online shopping experiences. Customers, for their part, want to discover new products without getting lost in a barrage of irrelevant choices. Achieving the right balance of guidance without overwhelming shoppers is challenging on digital channels. Websites and apps don’t have the benefit of in-store visual merchandising strategies like displays and signage. They also lack sales associates who can provide guidance and make personalized recommendations.
AI can help bridge the gap between in-store merchandising experiences that guide shoppers to products they’ll love and online experiences. Often choice paralysis can overwhelm digital shoppers online. By asking customers a few simple questions, a smart eCommerce product finder can quickly narrow down your product assortment to a curated selection of items tailored to a customer’s individual needs and preferences.
From our own experience with retailers that sell everything from coffee to shoes to skin care essentials, a product finder improves conversion rates. Product finders also increase sales by presenting relevant and meaningful suggestions to people as they shop.
What is a product finder?
A product finder is an interactive quiz that asks people a series of simple questions to learn more about the customer’s interests, preferences, and expectations. You can use this information to build a more comprehensive profile of each shopper. This allows you to guide customers to products that are relevant to what they need. The tool uses AI and ML to create a curated list of product recommendations based on their quiz responses.
For example, Nespresso, a premium coffee brand, used Monetate Product Finder to create a quiz that asks website visitors questions to pinpoint their interests and needs. Questions focused on things like coffee intensity, flavor preferences, and brewing method. The product finder then suggested specific coffees from Nespresso’s assortment that aligned with the shopper’s tastes.
This type of guided selling experience helps retailers home in on a few curated products with qualities that the customer has identified they’re interested in. Monetate Product Finder can be seamlessly integrated with your website and customized to match your brand’s aesthetic where it becomes part of the overall shopping experience.
Why use a product finder?
A product finder can significantly improve key metrics like engagement, conversion rates, and average order value. Here are some tangible benefits of using one as part of your eCommerce merchandising strategy:
- Fight choice overload: Minimize the choice overload and overwhelm that can cause shoppers to bail before they complete a purchase.
- Make informed recommendations: A product finder uses the customer’s quiz responses to make actionable recommendations that feel personal and relevant to the shopper. This kind of personalized guidance provides a “human-touch” experience similar to what customers get when interacting with sales associates in-store.
- Boost conversions: When shoppers are presented with the right product for their needs, they’re more likely to complete the purchase. This is evident from our own clients who typically see a 2X higher conversion rate, on average, when they use our product finder.
- Increase average order value: Product finders are excellent tools to incorporate as mechanisms for upselling and cross-selling. Suggesting complementary or higher-value products encourages shoppers to add more items to their cart and spend more per transaction. It can also help shoppers visualize how to use a product (e.g., pair this shirt with these jeans) and discover more items they may like in your catalog.
- Improve the digital shopping experience: By making online browsing more engaging and personalized, a product finder helps customers feel more satisfied with their purchase decisions. This leads to happier shoppers who are more likely to come back for future purchases. It brings the best parts of in-store shopping to a digital setting, effectively making online shopping feel less impersonal and more enjoyable.
Our customers are successfully using Monetate’s Product Finder to better understand what shoppers want so they can create guided, personalized experiences. Here are two case studies that demonstrate the power of an integrated product finder.
Monetate product finder spotlight #1: Nespresso
Nespresso, a premium coffee brand, wanted to help customers discover new coffees they would enjoy in addition to their usual favorites. Nespresso used Monetate’s Product Finder to create an interactive quiz that asked customers about their coffee preferences, such as intensity, flavor notes, and brewing method.
The product finder used this information to recommend specific coffees from Nespresso’s catalog that matched the customer’s tastes. The results were impressive: a 42% completion rate for the quiz, over 50,000 customers engaging with the tool, and an 18% increase in conversion rate for the recommended coffees compared to the site average. By providing personalized suggestions in an engaging format, Nespresso successfully guided customers to new products they loved while driving measurable business impact.
Monetate product finder spotlight #1: Top Skin Care Brand
A top skincare brand wanted to help customers navigate their extensive product catalog. They created an interactive “Skincare Finder” quiz with Monetate’s product finder. The quiz asked customers about their skin concerns (e.g., aging, redness), skin type (e.g., combo, oily), and product preferences.
The brand used customers’ responses to recommend appropriate products, helping customers discover items that suited their skin type, interest, and individual needs. The Skincare Finder did not disappoint – it had a 12% clickthrough rate from the quiz to recommended products, with the CTR going as high as 25% for certain high-interest products.
Benefits of Monetate Product Finder
Adding a product finder to your website is a great way to gain insight about what shoppers want – without being too intrusive. A brief quiz provides enough information to help you make appropriate recommendations and guide customers to products they’ll love. It’s an effective merchandising strategy that helps shoppers navigate large catalogs that may otherwise be overwhelming. It also helps retailers showcase products that may otherwise have been overlooked.
Monetate’s Product Finder is a powerful merchandising tool that allows you to connect with digital customers on a more personal level. It echoes the kind of in-store guided selling experience that customers get when they shop in a physical store, so that customers feel recognized and can more easily find what they want. Product finder data can be used to inform future merchandising strategies, product development, and marketing efforts.
Ready to see how Product Finder can enhance your eCommerce merchandising strategy? Schedule a demo with our team to learn more about its powerful capabilities and how it can drive growth for your business.