In this blog article you will learn why your online shop should rely on digital purchasing advice – and why it is almost negligent not to do so.
Let's say you want to buy an e-bike. Although there is a stationary bike shop in your city, it is Sunday and weekdays you are too busy.
So you google the term and come across the website of a bicycle dealer in the first entry after the paid advertising pages – and are happy about "Germany's largest selection".
On the category page "E-Bike-Pedelec" you will find 1894 different bikes, among which you will surely find what you are looking for.
And which of the “Popular Categories” should you choose? The terms trekking, city and cross e-bike are somehow familiar to you, but: Carver, Cube or Haibike e-bike? Never heard of it!
You feel increasingly overwhelmed by the many choices and are afraid of your annual holiday, which you would have to spend to find the right one for you among these almost 2000 bikes.
You've read that consumers need 2-3 months of “Consideration Phase” to acquire knowledge and research the right bike – but that takes too long.
So you want to narrow down the selection and since you also want to cycle into the mountains, click on the category "E-Mountainbike" – and you only have 335 bikes left to choose between.
On the left side of the menu, you can narrow down your search even further by brand and price – but there is a problem: you are active in e-commerce and are not a graduate engineer in bicycle technology. So how should you know how high the suspension fork should be in millimeters, which frame size fits you best and which battery capacity in WH you need so that you don't run out of juice on the way up?
The cheapest bike on offer costs €1,650 and the most expensive €14,000. But you have no idea what an e-bike with an excellent price-performance ratio can cost, which battery position is suitable for you and how many gears you need.
Frustrated, you leave the website, joining the 54% of consumers, who account for this high bounce rate due to the lack of digital buying advice. On the other hand, … is there actually such a thing as “digital buying advice”? The answer is YES!
A digital buying advice can now be displayed via a software. The software solution from Neocom is one of the leading in the field of bicycle consulting. The Neocom advisors guide your shop customers through the product pages and links in a targeted manner – until they are in front of the bike of their choice.
Digital buying advice with AI reacts to your customers by means of a human-like conversation, which provides all the desired information, which leads to a personal consultation as in the specialist store. Digital buying advice responds to all customer needs and makes individual buying recommendations. This leads to:
👍 Optimization of the customer journey and high customer satisfaction
👍 Reduce bounce rate and increase conversion rate
👍 Excellent customer loyalty and referral rate
👍 Comprehensive customer data and an exact user profile
👍 Competitive advantage over webshops without digital purchasing advice
The good news for e-commerce companies is: A digital buying advisor is easier than you may think – and increases sales just as effectively as a good specialist advice in brick-and-mortar retail!
The second entry in Google's search for e-bikes shows, how digital purchasing advice works in practice – our customer fahrrad.de:
Click here to get to Fahrrad.de Case Study
The conversion rate of a website is mainly related to how well consumers find themselves on the site and in the product range. If you enter "E-Bikes" in the search bar at fahrrad.de, you will also achieve a high hit rate with 1,256 items – with the difference that you can narrow down the range with a digital advisor as precisely as possible according to your needs.
The advisor responds to customer requests and helps with decision-making process. This eliminates time-consuming research by the consumer. In addition, the two biggest stumbling blocks of the customer journey are eliminated: the exit, because you did not find a suitable bike – or the return, because you bought the wrong mountain bike for lack of advice.
Compared to the conventional buying process at fahrrad.de, Neocom's digital buying advisor was able to:
✅ Reduce bounce rate from 60% to well below 20%
✅ Increase the number of consumers who went through the entire consultation process and click on the desired result to 82%
✅ Increase click-through rate to 65%
✅ Almost 60% of site visitors use digital purchasing advice, which indicates a broad acceptance and an urgent need for extensive webshops.
Neocom's leading digital buying consultancy is based on the following innovative approaches:
Data connection
Simple as it is effective: You provide us with your product feed and we scan your data set and collect all relevant information. We then match these with our expertise playbooks to create a perfectly tailored conversation for your customers.
Expert knowledge
The Neocom real-time conversation is of course man-made - but completely software-controlled. We use the best of both worlds to create intelligent yet humanly understandable conversations. This gives the impression of talking to a competent sales rep who intuitively guesses customer questions and always has the perfect answer.
Unique conversations
Neocom generates intelligent question-flows based on the previous selection of users. The smart algorithm eliminates invalid questions from the flow so that each conversation remains unique and guarantees a pleasant customer journey.
Smart Ranking
As soon as trends can be worked out during the conversation, Neocom's AI creates a summary in which the main features of the three top products are compared. With this Smart Ranking, your customers can see in detail why one product suits them better than the other – and are strengthened in their purchase decision based on, for example, the following criteria:
✔️ Best performance (but also expensive if necessary)
✔️ Best price
✔️ Best value for your money
The product with the best price-performance ratio forms a perfect symbiosis of features and price and is proposed to the user as a top product.
Integration
The Neocom conversation guide supports iFrames, modals or full-screen pages and can be flexibly integrated into your online shop – whether as a teaser on the homepage, as a link on the product pages or at a prominent point in the menu. No coding needed!
Respond now before even more users are lost in the unmanageable depth of your webshop! A digital buying advisor costs a fraction of a real specialist consultation – but is just as crucial for your future success in e-commerce.
With the special Neocom solution for digital purchasing advice, you can now give your customers the awesome feeling of having a personal advisor by their side who will answer all their questions and guide them efficiently and in a time-saving manner to the right product.
Arrange a non-binding demo and boost the conversion rate of your online shop to unprecedented heights!