Strengthen the relationship with your customers through Guided Selling and a digital product advisor.
With a digital product advisor, the customer is guided step by step through your website to find
exactly the product that is suitable. Without detours, without long searches, without frustration!
The digital product advisor based on artificial intelligence (AI), takes the customer by the hand, precisely limits the search and makes suitable purchase proposals accordingly.
There are various ways to implement Guided Selling and to use it appropriately for your company. In this article, we explain the exact definition of Guided Selling and discuss numerous benefits that will improve your sales strategy.
In addition, we will explain 5 steps of Guided Selling, with which you can increase your sales through AI!
By definition, Guided Selling is a solution for e-commerce, that personalizes the buying experience for customers and thus contributes to a higher purchasing decision. It is particularly sutiable as a digital advisor for products and services on your website.
What else does the Guided Selling Definition explain? A digital product advisor is a software-as-a-service tool (SaaS) that strengthens the contact between companies and customers and contributes to the improvement of e-commerce. The personal and individual advice that a retailer normally takes on in the retail store is now digitally facilitated by the sales advisor.
Especially in the case of technical products for which expert knowledge is required, digital advice can be indispensable. When looking for a new laptop, a modern mobile phone, or an e-bike, the customer quickly feels left alone when an extensive consultation – as in the shop - is missing!
The digital sales advisor, supports prospective buyers to make an informed purchase decision, and at the same time increases the Conversion Rate of your company! For online shops that offer a variety of products, Guided Selling helps narrow down the search and thus filter out the right product for your customers.
90% of all interested parties start their search on the Internet via online, 5-500 touchpoints are necessary to find the right product, and 54% of all interested parties who visit an online shop leave it again without buying anything! Often this happens out of displeasure about too large a selection, a confusingly divided website, or a difficult and far too complex navigation.
Also search fields usually only help to get into the desired product category. Especially here, the customer often cancels the purchase because they still have too much to choose from. If to many options appear through the search, the user quickly feels overwhelmed and leaves the page again.
In order to minimize the bounce rate and actually accompany customers to your desired product, the digital product advisor helps! This not only makes visiting your website a shopping experience, but also facilitates the purchasing decision process.
Using smart AI-based algorithms, Guided Selling can double the click-through rate, halve bounce rates and ultimately increase sales noticeably and sustainably.
How does Guided Selling work?
Neocom's Guided Selling Tool is based on artificial intelligence and can be integrated into your existing e-commerce shop without much technical knowledge. There are several ways to do this.
In order to keep the termination rate of customers as low as possible, we recommend integrating the AI software at various points in the online shop. This allows your customers to find the right product quickly and intuitively on the website.
The integration of the software can be done in the following places on your website. This is because it should be made as easy as possible for the customer to narrow down their search in order to find their desired product quickly and intuitively.
However, before you get started, there are a few points to consider. The best Guided Selling Tool can't help you if you haven't previously analyzed your target audience and their buying behavior. In order to achieve the greatest possible success, take a look at the following points in advance:
🤔 Where is the highest bounce rate on your side and why?
🤔 Where do your customers spend the most time but don't buy?
🤔 What is your e-commerce customer journey and where does it break off?
Engage the sales advisor exactly where customers typically jump off in your online store. Analyze what could be the reason and optimize the sales result for your customers here with Guided Selling! This way, your customers will find exactly what they are looking for and you will increase your sales.
A product finder makes it much easier for your customers to search for products. With a graphically appealing guide through icons, suitable suggestions are made to customers to narrow down their buying decision - and simplify it. This often leads to finding the famous needle in the haystack!
In order to limit the choice, the Guided Selling Tool shows the customer the optimal compromise, such as the best price-performance ratio, the best quality or the best price
Advantages for the company
👍 A higher customer loyalty
👍 A better conversion rate
👍 Multiple and fast leads
👍 Less bounces
👍 Higher CTR due to highly optimized product finder
👍 Low focus on price / greater focus on product
👍 Decreasing number of returns
👍 Qualitative marketing through qualified customer data
Advantages for the customers
👍 Multiple entry points (homepage, banner, search box, pop-up)
👍 Simple Customer Journey
👍 Individualized shopping experience
👍 Faster purchase decision
👍 Increased customer satisfaction
👍 Easier product discovery
👍 Targeted product purchase decision
👍 Simplified process
👍 Personal (digital) support
👍 User-friendly mobile shopping experience
The software from Neocom follows a 5-step system to evaluate your data in the best possible way and to enable a smooth process on your website. We proceed as follows:
1) Use of a Neocom advisor
Select one of the Neocom playbooks (product categories) that contain the expert knowledge and product advice “Out of the Box”. Then connect an existing product feed (e.g. your Google Product Feed) and Neocom will automatically dock your data to the Playbook interface. Then simply implement the Neocom conversation via iFrame or JS Snippet on your website.
2) Record customer requests
Through a graphically appealing step-by-step guide with icons, the customer is guided through various options. Each selection limits its search more and brings specific suggestions to light. As a result, the visit to the online shop is personalized and can contribute to faster decisions.
3) Evaluate results
The results are then evaluated by our software in order to offer your customers an individual compilation of the best models, products or services. The personalized offer responds to specific customer requirements, such as "must be suitable for travel", "the cheapest but best model in the price range", "this color, in this size, in this style".
4) Present matching products
The matching products are presented by means of a ranking list. If no product meets all the requirements of the interested party, suitable alternatives are proposed. Compared to conventional search fields online, our algorithm can respond even more precisely to the customer's wishes and thus make accurate suggestions.
5) The end of the purchase
Guided Selling gives sales a central importance. The goal is to encourage prospective buyers to make a buying and thus convert them into customers. The customer's wishes are in the foreground. At NeoCom, we value objectivity, transparency and clarity. Our software lists the right products, the customer looks at all the features of the articles in a list, and is seamlessly guided from page to page until the right product has been found.
If you offer a small range of products, sell more offline than online, or are simply so well positioned that your products sell on their own, then guided selling is unnecessary.
In fact, the tool is best suited when you offer a variety of goods or services that quickly lead to frustration or abandonment without online advice from a customer.
We hope that with our article we were able to answer the question "What is Guided Selling"! Did we get your attention in using artificial intelligence to increase your sales in 5 steps? Then book a demo session here.
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