Guided selling in eCommerce can be a double win: you can accelerate the buying process and keep customers entertained with a fun shopping experience. Read on to find out the key benefits and best practises!
Imagine your prospects want to purchase a new mattress because they have pain in their lower back. They go online and type “mattress for back pain”. They’re shown billions of search results, and your site is pushed down by paid ads and brands with strong SEO.
But you have the perfect mattress for their back pain. You just need to show them. Guide them through the buying journey just as you do in your physical store.
So how do you make your mattresses stand out from the competition?
How do you help your customers find the perfect mattress?
How do you personalize your customer experience to encourage customers to make a purchase decision?
With guided selling.
Guided selling in eCommerce recreates the physical in-store experience online by asking customers questions and recommending products that fit their needs and wants. It’s like shopping but from the convenience of your home.
And as we know, customers love smooth and convenient buying journeys. That’s why guided selling is a must for eCommerce brands who want to create a smooth shopping experience online.
In this article, we break down what guided selling is, why it is important and how you can adopt it to transform your business.
What is Guided Selling?
To get your eCommerce brand to stand out from the competition, you have to nurture customers and create a smooth shopping experience.
You need to offer the same experience customers have visiting your store. But that experience has to be online. A guided selling is your best way to transform your sales and meet your online shoppers’ expectations.
But before we go any further, let’s clarify what guided selling is. Also referred to as guided shopping, it’s a selling strategy that guides prospects through the buying journey and helps them choose the products or services best fulfilling their needs and hopefully guides the buyer to buy. Guided selling encourages customers to make a buying decision and thus accelerates the customer journey and increases conversion rates.
Why is Guided Selling Important?
According to our social conversational commerce report, 81% of customers are comfortable giving their preferences to a brand in order to receive a more personalized experience. Also, more than 50% want brands to use messaging to send them personalized offers.
Personalization is a major part of guided selling, making it one of the latest strategic trends among forward-thinking eCommerce brands.
Guided selling builds on AI-powered conversational commerce. It means that customers are invited into an automated, one to one conversation, where they can ask their questions and receive personalized product recommendations based on their preferences shared.
With an automated guided shopping experience, you can also guarantee 24/7 availability to your customers. You can engage them even when your business is sleeping, as opposed to 85% of brands that do not respond to requests in 5 minutes.
A guided customer experience also offers a goldmine of valuable customer information. This information can be used to grow your audience on Messenger, WhatsApp, Instagram Messaging, and other popular messaging apps. Then you can start monetizing your audience with relevant offers.
Last but not least, it’s your best shot to build long term customer relationships. Why is this important? Because customers these days expect brands to recognize them. Remember their names and purchase history. And target them with relevant offers. This can all be achieved with a well-defined guided shopping strategy.
The Benefits of Guided Shopping Chatbots
There are a number of guided selling methods to move customers down the funnel, from targeted advertisements and product catalogs to live support and so on.
But what if you had an automated conversational commerce tool that accelerates consumers through your marketing funnel and engages them personally throughout their purchase journey?
That’s exactly what a guided selling chatbot can do. Using guided shopping bots, eCommerce brands can create personalized brand experiences that convert new customers at scale.
Personalization at its Best Starts With Guided Selling
With so many advertisement pop-ups, attention spans and conversion rates are getting lower and lower. Let’s admit, there is a big gap between the conversion rate you want to achieve and the one you actually generate.
It’s no surprise customers don’t pay attention to ads anymore. What they want is instant, personalized interactions. And this is why guided selling chatbots have massive potential as they deliver a 1:1 personalized experience.
Once customers send a message, your bot picks up the conversation and asks questions relevant to the purchase. Using the information, also referred to as zero party data, directly shared by customers, the chatbot is able to make product recommendations based on preferences, budget, and so on.
Guiding New Prospects to Your Products Most Likely to Convert
You have probably linked your social media and other digital channels to your website. That’s great, but it’s not enough. By leading traffic to your site, you are leaving potential customers to browse on their own. They can get distracted and end their session prematurely.
A chatbot can engage users from the moment they show interest in your content and offer a personalized shopping experience right on the channels and apps they spend their time. By guiding shoppers, suggesting products, and replying to any questions or comments, a shopping chatbot can enhance customer interactions and use conversation to drive purchases. Additionally, a guided shopping chatbot can reach out to customers in the future for re-engagement.
Better Customer Interactions
According to research, 85% of consumers prefer to communicate with brands via messaging. Sadly, it’s impractical to reach out to every customer by yourself, and even if you can, you can’t engage everyone instantly and leverage the insights from those interactions at scale. Did you know that more than 50% of American consumers have at some point canceled a purchase due to poor customer experience?
Through the use of AI, eCommerce chatbots can recognize the needs of consumers and initiate personalized conversations. It’s crucial to have a system that can recognize your customer’s unique set of intents and respond relevantly. Additionally, bots can give suggestions about other products that the customer may like, guide users through complex catalogs or inform them when unavailable items are back in stock.
Returning Prospects to the Buying Process
A guided shopping chatbot can boost sales tremendously, but it won’t convert every prospect who interacts with it each time. Not every visitor is ready to buy in the first instance. Others get distracted or lose interest along the way.
An eCommerce chatbot can bring back prospects who abandon carts through personalized messages. It can offer incentives such as discounts to customers who ditch shopping due to price. With Spectrm, brands can also build Facebook remarketing lists based on customer engagement with their Messenger bots.
Guided Selling Examples for Enterprises
Guided selling enables product discovery and accelerates buying journeys. Its true beauty lies in driving more conversions for your business.
In case you’re still not convinced, have a look at some of our guided selling examples:
Next: Increased Conversions & Personal Connections
In order to improve their customers’ shopping experience, Next, the clothes and footwear retailing giant wanted to build deeper connections with their consumers.
Next adopted guided selling by launching a Messenger chatbot and acting on valuable customer data from the conversations. As a result, the company not only engaged customers at scale, but also offered excellent recommendations, and created personal connections with consumers. The guided selling bot brought more conversions and heightened the shopping experience for its customers.
Daniel Wellington: Larger Audience & Increased Sales
Another great guided selling example is Daniel Wellington, who wanted to try messaging to grow their audience on Messenger, improve customer experience, and boost sales.
A guided selling chatbot on Messenger, optimized with Spectrm, did just that. Based on customer responses, the bot recommended relevant products, drove sales, and increased the company’s messaging audience.
Take Away
Guided selling enables commerce brands to bring the physical store experience online. It’s the best way to educate customers, collect valuable customer insights and accelerate buying decisions.
Guided selling chatbots offer an automated customer experience where customers answer questions and the bot makes product recommendations based on their preferences. It makes the buying process easy and convenient while entertaining customers with a fun shopping experience.
Want to get started with guided selling chatbots? Talk to a product specialist and discover the different marketing use cases guided selling unlocks with our customer success team.
