Guided selling enhances the e-commerce customer experience and helps Shopify stores drive more sales. This guide explores how to integrate guided selling tools into a Shopify sales strategy.
What Is Guided Selling?
A selling strategy for e-commerce stores, guided selling (also known as guided shopping) closes the gap between online and in-person shopping experiences.
Without a retail assistant, online shoppers often struggle to find the right product, causing frustration and even site abandonment. Guided selling solves this by asking shoppers questions to identify their needs, then using the collected data to recommend relevant products, increasing customer satisfaction and driving conversions.
What Are Guided Selling Tools?
Guided selling tools support the shopper at specific customer journey touchpoints. Examples include:
Product quizzes - Identify shopper needs to make personalized product recommendations.
Comparison tools - Allow shoppers to compare the features of two or more products.
Product filter functions - Enable shoppers to view products by size, material, use, color, brand, or other attributes.
AI-driven recommendations - Recommend products to the shopper based on previously viewed or purchased products.
How Does Guided Selling Work?
There are five key stages to e-commerce guided selling:
Understanding customer needs - Customers refine their product selection using a guided selling tool, like filters or a product quiz.
Processing customer input - The guided selling tool analyzes shopper preferences and responses.
Providing tailored recommendations - The tool displays the products that best match the shopper’s needs on a result page.
Guiding shoppers toward a sale - The result page includes customer reviews, detailed product information, and a streamlined checkout process to drive conversions.
Following up with further recommendations - Retargeting emails deliver personalized product recommendations and complementary products appear when the shopper next visits the site.
Benefits of Guided Selling For Shopify Stores
Guided selling benefits Shopify businesses by:
Identifying Customer Needs
Guided selling provides sales, product, and marketing teams with direct insights into customer needs and wants.
Educating and Advising Customers
Guided shopping explains product features and selling points to customers — even when shopping online.
Reducing Decision Fatigue
Guided selling helps customers make purchase decisions, removing barriers to conversions.
Providing a Personalized Experience
Despite heavy competition for customer attention, e-commerce guided selling provides a standout, personalized experience, making customers feel heard and fostering a positive brand impression.
Increasing Average Order Value (AOV)
Guided shopping enables product upselling and cross-selling, encouraging customers to purchase more.
Product Recommendation Quiz Guided Selling Best Practices
Like a shop assistant recommending complementary products, guided selling tools — including product recommendation quizzes — increase AOV. Here’s how:
Product Bundling
Present customers with personalized bundles to encourage larger purchases and increase AOV. For example, skincare brands can recommend products to form a skincare regimen or clothing brands can suggest items that “complete the look”.
Ensure all products can easily be added to cart with a clear “add all to cart” CTA (call-to-action) button.
Subscriptions
Subscriptions drive recurring revenue. Incentivize sign-ups with a subscription option on the quiz result page and offer a discounted price to subscribers.
Cross-Selling
After a shopper has made a purchase, follow up with another guided selling best practice. Use collected data to cross-sell other products with personalized emails and on-site recommendations.
Guided Selling Examples with VQB
Visual Quiz Builder helps Shopify stores implement guided selling with engaging product recommendation quizzes. Explore guided selling examples below.
Semaine Health
The Semaine Health quiz results page offers subscription options. As part of the guided shopping experience, customers can view subscription costs and savings compared to one-time purchases.
Customers can also select the subscription frequency and add products to cart from the quiz results page.
Face Club
Face Club is a skincare brand that uses product bundling as part of a guided selling strategy. The quiz recommends a product to fulfill every stage of the skincare regimen, encouraging shoppers to add all items to cart for optimal results.
Hidden Crown
The Hidden Crown product recommendation quiz is another great guided selling example.
Customers see hair extension recommendations at the top of the quiz result page but can scroll further down to see related hair extension products, tools, and accessories.
Use Product Quizzes In Your Guided Selling Strategy
Add a Visual Quiz Builder product recommendation quiz to your Shopify store to increase customer satisfaction and sales. Start your free Visual Quiz Builder trial today
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