Webinar: How customers find products determines your success
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See the full webinar from our UK experts Kevin Sparks and Stuart Patterson about how to make your product more visible across your digital sales channels. The video you´ll find on the last slide. Enjoy the session!
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Webinar: How customers find products determines your success
- 1. How customers find products determines your success
- 5. What customers buy and how customers find products could determine a brands success and even reputation!
- 6. So when a customer comes to your online shop how do they find products? Relevant error tolerant on-site search Dynamic and clean navigation Intelligent merchandising and product recommendations Compelling customer journeys and engaging experiences
- 27. Show relevant products = increased sales, profit and CSAT
Editor's Notes
- FACT-Finder provides search, navigation and merchandising solutions to online retailers to help their customers find relevant product results, that brands control to ultimately drive engagement, conversion and profit. We currently have over 1,500 online shops across 24 countries providing services in 26 languages. We have been doing this for the past 15 years and our parent company is Omikron Data Quality who are Head Quartered just outside Stuttgart.
- We provide our services to many different types and sizes of retailer and across a broad range of product verticals in both B2B and B2C sectors
- So what determines success online. Many people have different views but here at FF we measure success simply through making more sales and increasing profit. To do that customers need to find products. For many years we have sought products from shops and merchants in exchange for money and of course like most things this process has evolved with customers becoming more knowledgeable, more demanding and nowadays more connected. Good customer service has remained important throughout these years of trading and so has the core objective of the customer – WHICH IS TO BUY A PRODUCT Ultimatley how customers find products determines a brands trading success and nowadays could even impact your brands reputation
- For those who dont know who these people are – well they are the UK‘s top 12 Youtubers or vloggers. They share their buying experiences and purchases socially to millions of viewers meaning a favorable review of a product from your brand could promote loyalty and improve your brands success. So if beating the competition online to sell products wasn‘t hard enough retailers now have the added pressure of doing this well or be socially flogged in front of the masses!
- So how do we do this well? We can start by getting the basics right. So when a customer comes to your online shop how can they find products? Through error tolerant on-site search Dynamic filtering and clean navigation Plus other refining and Intelligent merchandising options Compelling customer journeys and engaging experiences etc... Sound Obvious?….and that’s because it is…but surprisingly so many top brands still don’t do this well….
- These examples are all from Top UK retailers The old favourite ‘no results found’ because I omitted a space in the search term. This is elementary and really should not be happening with the technology that is available today. Its reported that 30% of all product searches still result in ‘no results found’ – that’s is simply too much
- Search queries with irrelevant results – this example only has one truly relevant product result out of the 7 displayed
- Finding products via a mobile device In one of these examples the phone on the left shows search suggestions that are not optimised for mobile In the other you can see predictive text has auto populated a search term with only one incorrect letter but this still produces no products results Both are poor experiences when using the primary option to find products on a mobile
- And the irony is these same retailers are investing heavily into other trending growth areas like Omni-channel, Cross Border Commerce and Mobile which without the basics done well are destined to yield less than expected results or worse….FAIL COMPLETELY and in the process damage your brands reputation which nowadays could go viral. So our message is simple, keep it simple – Strip back the experience and drive real measurable value by doing the basics right first – and that is making relevant products easy to find so you sell more and the customer is happy This will then support all your other commercial ambitions.
- A case in point is one of our customers Obi. Obi is the largest DIY retailer in Europe, and the third largest in the world with more than 570 stores in 10 Countries and being a store focused brand primarily they only launched their online shop 5 years ago in 2010 with a view to sell online but also drive customers in-store. With an online catalogue of over 60k products driving value, inspiration and advice through product discovery was paramount for their ecommerce success and maintaining their respected position as the biggest DIY retailer in Europe.
- Through effective, clean and simple search suggestions by product, category, help and advice and more - Obi customers are supported throughout the entire decision making process on their path to discovering the right products and making a purchase
- Their product results are merchandised based on commercial goals that they control with ranking rules which they can apply as frequently as they wish or automated. This can be data driven based on consumer behaviour and click tracking data FACT-Finder captures or Obi can simply apply rules based on seasonal, stock or brand needs. Customers can navigate using clean dynamic filtering based on searched categories which is automated by FACT-Finder but controlled by Obi. Customers can make comparisons on price and we even help Obi provide individual pricing.
- But discovering products is only the start – influencing decision making is also part of the journey Here you can see that not only are product search results driven by FACT-Finder but so is content which is aggregated from various sources containing videos, guides and advice on how to measure and install laminate flooring.
- And of course the experience is relevant no matter what device you use and where you start your journey from. In fact its even more important on a smaller display to ensure that search results are relevant, well merchandised and locally available at the store nearest the customer at the point of shopping. Using FACT-Finder to create and manage new sales channels means Obi can merchandise Countries, devices and stores independently of one another allowing each store’s marketing department to configure individual search and navigation settings according to those items in demand locally.
- This was important to a brand like Obi because they have the fulfilment challenge of selling low cost items that weigh a lot. For example a bag of cement may only cost 3 EUROs but it could weigh over 25 kg so the focus to drive these types of customers in store was evident. But Obi had another challenge and that was some products are available online only whereas others are available in-store only and then of course some where available both online and in-store.
- Other clients we have allow their customers to find products by building brand experiences using the FACT-Finder campaign manager module. This means customers very brand focused can shop and have filtering options tailored to their favourite brands
- Other clients build experiences around key events and occasions to allow customers to shop in more engaged ways using content driven experiences while maximising on upsell opportunities to increase basket values
- Whereas some clients prefer to offer guided selling features to assist less informed or uninspired vistors to their site
- And of course if you need to push or promote certain product lines based on other metrics (end of line, high margin items etc) this can be managed within category also without disrupting the relevancy of results. All of these options work and are designed to help various types of customers coming to your online shop at different stages in their buying journey to find products. Variety is key as we are all unique and react in different ways.
- So what next As we become even more demanding and retailers become even more customer centric there is an even greater need to drive more relevancy and find products designed around you and your buying history. On-site search is changing from the wisdom of the crowd, to the wisdom of the individual. So now its important to offer these experiences at single user level through personalisation features so not only will the core basic remain true to every day shopper but as you continue to buy your buying journey slowly transforms into an even more tailored experience and giving you the very best product choices available.
- There is two ways this can be achieved. Firstly in-session. This means that any visitor to your shop can have tailored product suggestions based on their in-session behaviour without having to login or with FF having any personal information. For example if a customer was to search for ‘a brown leather Gucci handbag’ on a website and then navigated to the shoes category FF’s in-session learning would merchandise this category based on the variants important to the user – in this case ‘brown leather Gucci shoes’. The second option is to personalise using information gathered in session plus other information from your platform or CRM systems so product suggestions can be enriched using previous buying experience as indicated in this example on the screen.
- Personalising search suggestions is often what retailers express and interest in but often have other factors to consider first. For example we hear many objections like… But we have over 3 million site visits per month! We have millions of products with complex attributes and variants! We trade in 25 different countries Have 500+ stores… None of this should prevent you from providing a relevant and personalised experience to allow customers to find products.
- In fact our customers generate billions of searches per year. We have customers with millions of product SKUs – the largest being 14 million! We have a language independent solution so cross border trading is not a limitation. And finally we have the processing power to localise search results based on stock levels in store in hundred of shops.
- So the message is - Don’t let anything get in your way. Don’t let the volume of traffic to your site, the amount of products you have or the languages you trade in stop you delivering the best relevant and personalised experiences throughout your digital channels so your customers find the right products for them and you drive more sales and more profit
- Before I finish I just wanted to highlight the reason we do what we do…. 58% of online sales originate from on-site search. Let me repeat that…58% of online sales originate from on-site search. So getting it right matters.
- So to summarise on what I have spoken about today Throughout the whole journey cleverly merchandised products will unlock sales potential Showing relevant products will increase sales, profit and overall CSAT And remove the blockers to achieve this. This is obvious but surprisingly is still not done well. So invest in what your customer wants - and allow them to discover the products they want
- If anyone would like further information on the Obi example I presented then you can download that at this address plus many other case studies. Alternatively I’m available to answers any questions you may have now.