Digital Product Finder - simply explained

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.

What is a Product Finder?

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.

Product Finder for bicycles — The bike advisor effortlessly leads B2C customers to their ideal bicycle for their next adventure with just a few clicks.

Overview of how it works

A Product Finder guides customers through the consultation with easy-to-understand questions and provides product recommendations that are perfectly tailored to their needs.

Individual Recommendations

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.

Dynamic Question Flow

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.

Advantages of digital advisory solutions:

Increased shopping cart values because customers find what they need.
Reduced returns due to fewer mistaken purchases.
Enhanced customer satisfaction because customers feel understood and supported.
Extended dwell time as users spend more time on the website.
24/7 consultation: Online users can interact with the tool around the clock.
Enhanced competitiveness as companies differentiate themselves from their competition.

Product Finder vs. Product Filter

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.

What problems do Product Finder Tools solve?

"I offer a wide range of products.": Online shops and e-commerce platforms often have extensive assortments. Let's take, for example, an electronics retailer with more than 5000 devices on the website. Here it quickly becomes clear that it's difficult for customers to find the right product. A digital Product Finder solves this problem and quickly leads customers to the appropriate device.
"My products are complex and require explanation.": Some products, especially complex B2B solutions, require thorough explanations. It's crucial to translate technical product features into user-friendly language, helping customers understand why a particular product is best suited to their needs. Product Finder Tools serve as excellent aids, guiding customers through the consultation process step by step and simplifying the explanation of technical product features. This ultimately saves customers valuable time and effort in research.
"Visitors to my website aren't adding anything to their shopping cart.": Digital advisory solutions not only guide customers reliably through the product selection process but also provide individual reasons for why the recommended product is the best choice. This ensures that customers can be confident in making the right decision.
"My product range is dynamic and constantly changing.": Product finders are capable of depicting product data in real-time. This is especially useful for companies that roll out their solution in various markets, offer seasonal product lines, or have constantly changing offers.
"I want to learn more about my customers' purchasing behavior.": Most Guided Selling providers offer tools for measuring the performance of digital advisors. For example, excentos Analytics generates valuable customer insights and provides a detailed picture of how your products are received by different customer segments. It delivers insightful data such as customer preferences, purchase desires, improvement suggestions, seasonal shopping trends, etc.

Step-by-step to your Product Finder

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.

1. Create advisor concept
2. Upload product data
3. Configure recommendation behavior
4. Ready for Go-Live

Benefits of the excentos solution

The AI-driven technology utilizes recommendation logic and a matching engine to deliver personalized recommendations based on user needs.

This ensures that only relevant products are displayed, thereby increasing purchase intent and leading to a higher conversion rate.
Product Finders provide individual reasons to provide evidence and arguments for the selected products displayed as recommendations.

This builds trust and minimizes the return rate.
Machine learning unlocks the full potential of user and purchase data, generating new sales insights and responding in real-time to purchasing trends. This leads to continuous enhancement of product recommendations.
The excentos solution can be integrated across devices and multiple touchpoints of the customer journey. For example, it's possible to implement the Product Finder as a desktop, mobile, or in-store solution.

Additionally, it's possible to deploy the digital advisor with local data feeds in various markets.

How do I create my excentos Product Finder?

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!