These customers are in the Refining stage and have high engagement in this stage. They have not been on a product page in the last 10 events and are not likely to progress to Evaluating.
Their behaviour highlights a need for guidance and clarity in their shopping journey, from broad exploration to focused decision-making. Your job is to help them make a decision.
One reason for this might be the paradox of choice. It is likely that users might be overwhelmed by options and underwhelmed by their ability to decide. The goal here is to streamline their decision-making process by making product discovery more intuitive and less daunting. How can you help them make a decision?
Product Discovery: Highlight product differentiation
Product Discovery: Highlight product differentiation
The key to assisting users when searching for product lies in clear product differentiation. Enhancing the visibility and understanding of each product's unique benefits can significantly impact eveyones decision-making process. Remember, you’re selling the sizzle, not the steak. You're not selling what the product is, you're selling what it does.
Execution examples:
Elevate Product Imagery: For some products in a listing format, consider making some products stand out more than others. Perhaps this could be based on what the user has seen previously or shown an interest in? Some products might have more of a benefit than others be that an exclusive product or something that has a unique attribute. Alternatively, just showing best sellers or highlighting products that are best sellers also works well (tip: consider asking what does best seller mean to your audience - and do they believe it)
Craft concise benefit statements: Giving the user something beyond titles and descriptions in listing pages. Consider including elevator pitches that highlight the unique selling points and benefits of products directly within the product listing grid. Think about how you would sell the product in a single sentence?
Product Discovery: Promote filters
Product Discovery: Promote filters
Filters are a powerful tool for narrowing down choices, yet their potential is often under utilised by most audiences. Some of the reason behind this is that they are static, attribute driven (and therefore un-inspirational) functions. Asking what % of your users use filters? What % of this segment uses filters? How can you encourage that behaviour believing that filters that will support this segment? (having some evidence behind that statement will be powerful)
Execution examples:
Make filters more visible. Consider innovative ways to break up the product grid with reminders or prompts to use filters, especially when a large number of items are available. You could reiterate how many products are available to assert the paradox of choice, forcing the user into a mindset of “I should use filters”. Making filters sticky is a popular strategy here, or placing reasons why to filter in the product grid itself would also work particularly well.
Optimise filter attributes. Align filter options with customer preferences and behaviours, rather than uninspirational functions or attributes. Highlight the most frequently used filters by prioritising them. Consider adding a small strip at the top or bottom of a page that encourages filtering on a popular attribute eg. men vs women. For these, think of the discernible differences between attributes that really support a decision making process.
Alternatively, consider introducing more human, relatable attributes that resonate with shoppers' desires, emotions or outcome of the product.
Product Discovery: Promote recommendations
Product Discovery: Promote recommendations
Recommendations are a fantastic way to promote the breadth of your product offering. You’re using cues that your audience has given you and turning that into a contextualised series of products that, in theory, should meet their needs. It’s relevancy 101. According to a report by Barilliance, product recommendations can increase conversion rates by up to 5.5 times, or from Salesforce, it can contribute to as much as 31% of site revenue.
So, when the objective is promoting product discovery, making your recommendations more prominent is only a good thing. At this level, this is about demonstrating the breadth of product that you have available to better engage with a response of “we can most likely cater for your needs”. This is about supporting product discovery. Your job at later stages is to then convince them that that is the right product for them.
Execution examples:
Recommendations location. Think of placing recommendations further above the fold, in a sticky position on the site as the user scrolls, or, just in general, more prominent positions. Perhaps consider adding more products in eg. instead of showing 4 in a scrollable format, add 16 in a block taking up more real-estate as the user is still in a “browsing” mentality
Recommendations context. Consider adding elements within your recommendations module to capture the users interest. Incorporating user-generated content, such as customer reviews and ratings, alongside these recommendations can reinforce the perceived value and credibility of your products, encouraging further exploration.
Recommendations context. Consider the naming convention of recommendations to add context and persuade users to really engage with your recommendations set (eg. “we recommend” as a title doesn’t really cut it, why do you recommend them?)
Product Discovery: Product Quizzes
Product Discovery: Product Quizzes
Product recommendations take implicit signals and turn that into a series of options for your audience. Product quizzes, on the other hand, take explicit signals and turn that into a series of options. They’re popular amongst brands where the end product is somewhat more complex - mattresses, for example, where the attributes of a mattress are so key and, quote unquote, personalised for the end user.
The idea of securing some guaranteed engagement from the individual, to give back some contextualised recommendations is so powerful that sometimes quizzes are even secured behind email capture fields - the idea of a value exchange in full force. A report by Octane AI indicates that e-commerce stores using quizzes have seen up to a 2x increase in conversion rates.
Execution examples:
Engage visitors with quizzes that deduce their preferences, offering tailored product recommendations based on their responses. Think about the questions that you’d ask in a store. It’s less about the attributes of the product, and more about the outcomes. If you’re selling a mattress, whether you’d like a hard or soft mattress is one thing (attributes) but how important sleep is to you is another thing (outcome)
Reprioritising quizzes on the page as a method to encourage engagement can be useful. If momentum is decreasing or the user is showing some signs of decreasing intent, whilst still trying to refine their products, using a product quiz at that time could really help push them through the refinement barrier. Consider the location of this.
Consider the context of the quiz, too. If the quiz is on the page already, despite a user showing signs of slowing down, reminding the user that it’s there, think about using language to persuade or encourage engagement. How many of your audience use the quiz every month, and how successful are they? Use social proof to give confidence in product quiz utilisation.
Having a value exchange at the end of the quiz; according to Klaviyo, brands that send personalized emails based on quiz results see a 60% higher open rate and a 50% higher click-through rate compared to their average emails